Candy_vol2_issue_2

Volume Two, Issue Two.

Cover.

‘Smile’ (exclusive illustration)

by Ian Stevenson.

This page.

Goldsmiths Students’ Union badges

by NB:Studio.

*The difficult second volume.

INTRODUCTION. AIDAN KELLY. ALAKAZAM. ANDREAS PETTERSSON. ANDREW RAE. ANTHONY LISTER. AZSTAR78. BUILD. CONOR HARRINGTON. DAVE KOMISKEY. EOGHAN KAVANAGH. FRENCHIE. GAETAN BILLAULT. HELLOVON. H099.

IAN FRANCIS. IAN STEVENSON. JEANNIE O’BRIEN. MARIA MOORE. MATT SMALL. NB:STUDIO. NGUAN. NON-FORMAT. SARAH KNIGHT. SEAN HILLEN. SEAN WOOD. SERGIO MORO. STUDIO OUTPUT. SYNTH EASTWOOD. TOMMY KANE. WK INTERACT. THE BORING BUT IMPORTANT BIT. --------------------------------------------------------------CandyCollective and CANDY magazine are independent ventures developed to showcase exceptional creativity, in it’s many guises, worldwide through innovative formats and unique projects. All informations and visuals contained within this document remain the copyright of the creators, they are simply being shown for the purpose of presentation.

No elements of this document may be used, reprinted or transmitted without the prior consent of the publishers and the people featured in the piece being featured. Should any credits be wrong, please contact us and we’ll set it right next issue, you have our word.

--------------------------------------------------------------HTTP://WWW.CANDYCOLLECTIVE.COM Postal address: c/o DYNAMO, 5 UPPER ORMOND QUAY, DUBLIN 7, IRELAND. --------------------------------------------------------------© 2008 ME&EYE // HTTP://WWW.MEANDEYE.COM ---------------------------------------------------------------

Introduction.

This page.

‘Jesus appears in Newry’

by Sean Hillen.

And so begins the next chapter of the Candy roadshow...

After 2 solid years where we published 10 issues of the magazine, produced 30 SweetTalks all over the world along with many other projects and curating our own space at last year’s Electric Picnic we were feeling the strain. Rather than just diving headfirst back in again we decided to give ourselves a little break in order to recoup, regroup and plan our second coming a little more than before.

The result has been a really interesting exercise and these learnings are hopefully going to inform us for the next few years of Candy goings-on. Starting out over 2 years ago I never had a clue that a spark of an idea would lead me to meet many of the people I’ve respected let alone host our own events across the globe and be part of the exceptionally vibrant scene here in Dublin and Ireland (come see for yourself, I’ll buy you your first pint!) so if the next stage brings more of the same then I couldn’t ask for more.

Many thanks to everyone around the world who continually send us messages of encouragement, it really does help. Thanks also to the ever-growing bunch of contributors who tirelessly put time into preparing the content and helping make this all happen, without you our efforts would be patchy to say the least. This project has never been about money (thank God as there’s never been any) or glorifying anyone above another, it’s simply about celebrating creativity in it’s many guises around the world and we intend to keep this going long into the future.

Until next time, keep well. Richard. richard.seabrooke@dynamo.ie

Next page.

‘Skyline’ by Eoghan Kavanagh.

Staff.

Contributors.

Thanks.

Support.

Staff.

Contributors.

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Richard Seabrooke.

Mark Blamire.

richard.seabrooke@dynamo.ie

blam@neue.uk.com

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Aidan Kelly.

Richard Gilligan.

aidan@aidan-kelly.com

rgilliganphoto@yahoo.co.uk

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Asbestos.

Wes Trumble.

me@theartofasbestos.com

wes.trumble@dynamo.ie

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BRENB. hello@brenb.net

Zoe Coombes @ Commonwealth.

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coombes@commonwealth.nu

Cameron Ross / Nick Merrigan.

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cameron@newmedia.ie nicholas@newmedia.ie

Thanks.

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Lucy Corscadden.

To all the contributors, interviewees and readers around the world who helped make this happen and stuck with it, it’s been a hard slog and we hope you enjoy it... Back with a bang!

lucy@meandeye.com

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Simon Roche. simon@fieldmice.ie ----------------------------------

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Postal address.

Richard Seabrooke / CANDY. c/o Dynamo, 5 Upper Ormond Quay, Dublin 7, Ireland.

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CandyCollective proudly presents SweetTalk, a night of presentations from some of Ireland’s leading creative talents together for one night only at The Sugar Club, Leeson Street, Dublin 2.

Featuring -

Aisling Farinella.

Fashion Stylist / http://www.aislingfarinella.com

Brown Bag Films.

Award winning directors, animators & producers / http://www.brownbagfilms.com

Colm Mac Athlaoich.

Illustrator / http://www.monstertruck.ie

& Matthew Thompson.

Photographer / http://www.matthewthompsonphotography.com

Thursday 13th March 2008, doors 7pm, show from 8pm.

Admission 8 euro available on the door.

Candy & SweetTalk are supported by the kind people at PictureWorks, McGowans Digital Print, Andy.ie, Creative Ireland, DesignFreak.net & The Sugar Club.

For more information visit www.candycollective.com

CandyCollective proudly presents SweetTalk, a night of presentations from some of today’s leading creative talents together for one night only at The Sugar Club, Leeson Street, Dublin 2.

Featuring -

Aidan Kelly.

Photographer / Dublin / http://www.aidan-kelly.com

Ben Drury.

Graphic Designer & ex. Creative Director of Mo’Wax Records / Devon, UK / http://www.thesilentlistener.com

Hort.

Graphic Designers / Berlin, Germany / http://www.hort.org.uk

& The Hive.

Advertising / Dublin / http://www.thehive.ie

Thursday 17th April 2008, doors 7pm, show from 8pm.

Admission 8 euro available on the door.

Candy & SweetTalk are supported by the kind people at PictureWorks, McGowans Digital Print, Andy.ie, Creative Ireland, DesignFreak.net & The Sugar Club.

For more information visit www.candycollective.com

candycollective proudly presents a sweettalk special edition on saturday june 7th 2008 with stefan sagmeister, non-format & more to be announced.

Tickets 10 euro are available NOW from http://www.tickets.ie Strictly limited capacity of 300 so book now.

Candy & SweetTalk are supported by the kind people at PictureWorks, McGowans Digital Print, Andy.ie, Creative Ireland, DesignFreak.net & The Sugar Club.

For more information visit www.candycollective.com

15th Barcelona International Festival of Advanced Music and Multimedia Art www.sonar.es

19.20.21 June

an initiative of

supported by

yazoo, justice, goldfrapp, camille, róisín murphy, hercules & love affair, diplo, boys noize, bc & jc feat. darren emerson, madness, neon neon, yelle, flying lotus, erol alkan, dj mehdi vs a-trak feat. kid sister, m.i.a., x-102 discovers the rings of saturn, miss kittin, antipop consortium, frankie knuckles, spank rock, yo majesty, buraka som sistema, chloé, the pinker tones, theo parrish, basquiat strings, mary anne hobbs, shackleton, leila, mala, jimpster, milton jackson, ben watt, the duloks, little dragon, chacho brodas, cabo san roque, sebastian, busy p., krazy baldhead, tender forever, northern state, tara de long, konono nº1, kid acne, asstrio, kalabrese pres. the rumpelorchestra, ove naxx, le rok, yellow swans, the heavy, daedelus, the long lost, pilooski, discodeine, dirty sound system, dj scotch egg, bogulta, maruosa...

in collaboration with

also sponsored by

technological associates

associated media

ALAKAZAM.

I’ve been a fan of Will Sweeney’s work from the moment I first laid eyes on it. Incredibly vibrant, beautifully detailed and always challenging his work reinvents itself in every application. Whether it’s for a comicbook, a cd cover, a vinyl toy or just an illustration of a mystical land far, far away his pieces immediately capture your imagination and guide you in before leaving an indelible mark on your mind. There’s weird and wonderful things here, visions you’ve never imagined possible but they exist here, in vivid technicolour, for all to enjoy and embrace. In recent times Will, a longtime collaborator, chose to become the curator and launched the wonderful clothing company Alakazam and this is why we caught up with him for a chat. Ladies and gentlemen, best take your seats and enter to the wonderful world of Will Sweeney.

Interviewee : Will Sweeney.

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Official site : http://www.alakazamlabel.com ------------------------------------------

Interviewer : Richard Seabrooke.

Previous page.

‘Attack On Rastapopolis’.

This page.

‘Doomkopter’.

Left to right.

‘Recovered Artifacts’, ‘Monsters on Drugs’, Alakazan (Season 3) preview poster & page from Wonder Showzen.

When did you first know you were creative? I knew the day I could make up lies which came in handy when I got caught red-handed by the woman in Allcooks robbing a packet of on-special biscuits. My Da went mental and though the lies didn’t save me from his wrath they did show some creativity.

I suppose it was when I was about 8 or 9...I was very into drawing from an early age. Halloween was very exciting when I was growing up. It became a tradition to hold a party, my mum and I would decorate the house with skeletons, cobwebs etc plus lots of my drawings of ghouls & monsters... I would design invitations and friends would come along properly dressed up (they made a real effort) as various mummies, zombies etc. and we would go trick or treating, scaring many old ladies.

What was your path from finding out about your creative streak to taking it fulltime, did you hit college or did you just decide to doo it all yourself?

At school I realised I wasn't interested in/wasn't capable of much else other than drawing... I wanted to be in a band full time around the age of 14 - 17, but that didn't happen, so I thought it would be best to go to art school, once I decided on Illustration as a career path, things fell into place a bit more and I had a definete direction.

How would you explain your style of work, both to the readers and then to your oldest relatives at a Sunday bowling brunch?

A slowly evolving universe of narratives and pictures..line art and flat colour comes into it, as well as more organic, fungus like pencil textures.. (b)...just nonsense really...

You seem to have emerged on the UK creative “scene” at around the same time as a lot of very cool people, many who you worked alongside like James Jarvis, Fergadelic, Lizzie Finn and the like. What do you remember about this time in Britain, was it a bit of a watershed in terms of emerging talent or was it down to magazines like The Face, Don’t Tell It!, Dazed & Confused, Scene, etc., places like Slam City Skates and also a new “can do” attitude that suddenly there were these many new outlets for exceptional work?

Personally, I don't think it had much to do with magazines - although James (Jarvis') illustrations for the Face were very influential. When I finished my MA around this time it seemed that graphic design and illustration had been going through quite a boring period whilst people got over their infatuations with computers, the most exciting things in the UK had been coming from things like Mo' Wax, Holmes and Slam city all of which were also making strong connections to things happening in the states like Grand Royal and also in Japan with Hysteric, Bounty Hunter, Undercover and Bape. Then Silas took things in The UK to another level, in terms of giving 'streetwear' a different identity a bit removed from the predominant hip hop influences. I think that a more organic, personal and hand made approach to graphic art & fashion emerged at this time, also it seemed more honest.

The best sandwich known to man... Details please...

At the moment I enjoy pitta bread with Halloumi cheese, watercress, marinated artichokes, romaine lettuce and jalapeno's.

Americans classify hamburgers as sandwiches, the best burger I've ever had is at a place called Applepan on Pico boulevard in Los Angeles, it's an old 50's style burger bar which has never been franchised and still keeps it's burger sauce recipe secret after all these years. >>

Previous page.

Beck sticker.

This page (left to right).

‘Tombs of the blind dead’, Heart it races’ cover, Architecture in Helsinki cover & Hysteric Mini cover.

Coming out of Slam and it’s many associations you hooked up with the great people at Silas for some regular collaborations. Describe what made working for them so appealing, what approach did you take to a commission of theirs?

I didn't have much to do with Slam early on, although I got to know a lot of people who worked there later.

I got involved with Silas through Ben Sansbury, who I went to college with. Working for Silas was great, it was working for friends who shared similar interests and influences. Also, the other Silas artists were a massive influence on my work. I was given a lot of freedom creativly and Russell & Sofia always had inspiring ideas for commissioning artists.

You’ve recently started your own clothing label Alakazam, why did you feel the need to do this, aren’t there enough t-shirts in the world?

Totally, it's very boring isn't it?

Alakazam is more an excuse to put on exhibitions and creative events, the T-shirts are meant to be a way of funding and promoting this.

You’re also credited with inventing a fantastical land called Greenfuzz and also the many delightful creatures who live there. Care to explain the origins for this place and the many characters who reside there?

Many of the characters from TFG emerged from a particularly stupid hangover the first time I visited Japan, it was when we did the 'Where is Silas?' group exhibition in Tokyo. The day after the private view the artists (James, Fergus, Lizzie, Ben & me) were asked to do a book signing, this went on for hours and I began to draw food based characters on people's books & posters. This evolved in my subconscious as an almost parallel universe, restricted in palette and capable of incorporating many of my own interests in pop culture, food surrealism and mindless violence.

Your heroes and why?

Max Ernst, Jack Kirby, Paracelsus, Lux Interior, Jello Biafra, Flan O' Brian, Dave Day from The Monks (RIP), Terry Gilliam, Alice Coltrane. Individuals with vision, talent and a positive attitude to progress through creativity + a bit bonkers.

Your villains and why?

Religious fundamentalists of all kinds, Margeret Thatcher, General Pinochet, Tony Blair, the many headed monstrosity that is the current Bush administration... and also a particularly annoying man from Valencia that ripped off Alakazam. - All of whom are parasites or worse.

The ultimate collaboration you have yet to do...

An animated space rock opera based on Dante's Inferno, scripted

by Noel Fielding & Julian Barrett, directed by Rene Laloux, with music from Hawkwind. >>

This page (left to right).

‘High Speed Kumquat’ print & Beck sticker.

This page (left to right). ‘Life on Mars’ & Architecture in Helsinki cover.

Reading between the lines music seems to be of huge interest to you so what are your 10 favourite albums of all time?

In no particular order; The Cramps - Psychedelic jungle.

The Monks - Black Time.

The Bonzo Dog Band - Keynsham.

Can - Tago Mago.

The Pink Floyd Piper At The Gates of Dawn.

Roxy Music - Roxy Music.

The Coasters - Greatest Hits.

Brian Eno - Taking Tiger Mountain.

Lou Reed - Transformer.

Charlie Feathers - Get With It. Dead Moon - Dead Moon Night.

And your 10 favourite tracks of the moment?

Mighty Baby - Egyptian Tomb.

Syclops - Where's Jason's K? Yura Yura Teikoku Track 2, Hollow Me LP. The Who - Underture from Tommy.

Alice Coltrane - Lovely Sky Boat.

Chuck Berry The Jaguar & The Thunderbird.

The Open Mind - Magic Potion.

Clara Mondshine Die Drachentrommier Wooden Shjips - We Ask You To Ride.

Beyond The Wizards Sleeve - EP4.

What can we expect from your good self and also Alakazam in the coming year?

A new Greenfuzz toy coming soon, Greenfuzz comic part 3, A book of new drawings, loads of useless T-shirts!

This page (left to right).

Page from ‘Greenfuzz’ & ‘Nobody Move!’.

Next page.

‘Compost heap’.

ANDREW RAE.

Andrew Rae is the Cecil B deMille of the illustration world.

Like deMille his work is honest, there are no camera tricks here.

His drawings tell an intimate story but on an epic scale with a veritable cast of thousands. He creates real worlds with rich characters...

Mr. Rae, are you ready for your close up?

Interviewee : Andrew Rae. -----------------------------------------

Official site : http://www.andrewrae.org.uk -----------------------------------------

Interviewer : BrenB.

Previous page.

Collaboration with Chrissie MacDonald.

This page. ‘Moving pictures’ work for Print magazine.

This page.

Illustrations for Soho House’s ‘House’ magazine.

Next page.

Personal work and commissions for Mojo magazine.

My parents kept our washing machine in my bedroom as I was growing up. My dreams are still haunted by evil spinning trouser monsters! On the other hand it did lead me to start drawing comics! Did your parents have an influence in you becoming an artist?

Well they never tried to stop me which was very nice if a little foolish of them. My dad wrote a selection of poems for kids when I was young and I drew pictures for them, I've still got them and they demonstrate that I haven't really developed that much since then.

Can you remember your first drawing where someone told you it was good?

I remember getting a gold star for a drawing of a medieval serf when I was at primary school they made me stand up in assembly they liked it so much so I guess that may have been the moment that set on the road to where I am now.

Speaking of influences, what shows did you watch on TV, what books and comics did you read as a kid? Does this filter into your work today?

I was a big fan of Asterix when I was young and then I had an unhealthy interest in the John Landis film American Werewolf in London after watching the making of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video.

Are you a doodler or do you use references?

I'm slightly jealous of people who work without reference but I'm not one of them, I can and do draw without reference but I prefer the drawings I do that are based on life even if it's been altered heavily, there is a lot more variety and peculiarity in the world than I could ever think up on my own.

Jesus once said “Blessed are the illustrators. For show me an illustrator and I’ll show you a lonely sad man, who works alone in a small dark room.” I’m paraphrasing but you seem to have countered this blessing by becoming a member of illustration collectives! Can you tell us a bit about Peepshow and Black Convoy and how it informs your work experience?

I did go through the lonely sad dark room stage but I really missed having people around. Now I'm in a studio I wish everyone would shut up and give me some peace.

I work very closely with Peepshow and in fact we are a fully fledged company now and we share a studio in Shoreditch. I'm not with Black Convoy anymore as it became too difficult to maintain the two.

How did your role as Art Director on BBC animation series Monkey Dust come about? Maybe you could describe the process involved in such a high profile and collaborative project?

I got that job off the back of some flyers I was doing for Perverted Science. Money Dust was quite a beast as so many different animation studios were working on it at the same time and they all have different ways of working, I was brought in to try to help gel the different styles together and give the animators some reference, so my role there was mostly to design characters and backgrounds and then the animators would work from it as closely they were willing or able to. On the first series they called me assistant designer or something and on the second two I was art director even though my role didn't actually change, I think they just pick a term that seems to fit when they're doing the credits. >>

This page.

‘Of Beasts and Machines’ for Concrete Hermit.

Next page.

‘10 ages of man’ for US Esquire magazine.

This page (left to right).

‘Of Beasts 2’ and work for Perrier.

Next page.

‘Good vs Evil’ personal work.

Your illustrations are filled with a rich cast of characters. Do you create back stories for them? Do some of them have recurring roles? Have you any favourites?

Some of them have back stories and some crop up again and again for instance there's one called Mantelope that I've used a lot which is a mixture of Tall Dan an old friend of mine and and Antelope and I've always enjoyed drawing skeletons since I was wee. I'm interested in bringing the characters to life more and giving them stories although I've not quite worked out how to do it just yet. I've been working on an image of characters that animate when you click on them that I'll be putting on my website soon which I've really enjoyed doing so that's a step in the right direction.

Did you insist on visiting New York so you could achieve that authentic look for your recent This is New York City poster for the NYC Tourist Board? What other perks have you swagged in your career?

I didn't actually get to go out to NY at that time but I have been there loads of times and I intend to keep going back, I've always toyed with the idea of living there but I'm a bit too rooted in London now and I'd miss the old place so I guess I'll just keep visiting the Big Apple whenever I can. I did get flown over to Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Penang for a job I did for MTV Asia once, they got me tour guides who showed me around and even offered me the services of some prostitutes (which I politely declined), but that doesn't happen often as an illustrator, if anyone needs a location shot it's a lot cheaper to send a jpeg than fly the illustrator over there.

Previous page.

‘Robot Friend / The Human Body’ personal work.

This page.

‘Mermaid Catching with Dad’ for If You Could. http://www.ifyoucould.co.uk Next page.

‘Perverted science mural’ for Dreambagsjaguarshoes.

Final page.

Weezer album cover for Geffen.

Apart from me (obviously), whose work is really exciting you at the moment?

I just got a book called ‘BibliOdessey’ by someone who just calls himself Paul K it started life as a blog http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/ which is full of absolutely amazing images discovered in various libraries and museums on line catalogues and is really inspiring to me.

Thanks for taking part Andrew, we’ll just finish now with our trademark quick fire round…

Favourite bar?

The Royal Oak on Columbia Road First alcoholic drink you sneaked?

Probably a mixture of spirits from my parents drinks cabinet.

Name a dance move you have perfected?

I used to be able to hold onto my left foot and than jump through the gap with my right leg but I fucked it up spectacularly at a Talkback party and I haven't had the balls to try it again since.

What have you successfully shoplifted?

I stole loads of pick and mix with James lock one time and after we'd scoffed the lot we went round his house and his Mum made us dinner and we had to eat it so as not let her know we'd been thieving, that comeuppance may well have stopped me from getting into a life of crime.

Best method for staying awake all night?

Drugs, Conversation, Dancing, Television, Work, Anxiety in no particular order.

AZSTAR78.

Daniel Anthony St. George 2nd, a.k.a. the artist formerly also known as AZStar78, is a painter currently living and working in Brooklyn. However he has also lived in Los Angeles, England, Tampa and San Francisco during the course of his 30some odd years on the planet Earth. His body of work encompasses thousands of drawings, paintings, prints, and self published books/zines.

DSG2 is a self taught artist who has been drawing since childhood; his work is intensely personal and deeply autobiographical.

He has been an art director, designed his own line of clothing called Spiked Punch, and worked with the likes of Stussy, Typestereo, 111 Minna Gallery, Giant Robot and Jeremyville. His plans include creating installations and moving sculptures, which will allow the viewer to physically enter the realm of his experience, and printing limited edition silk screened art books. DSG2 is also extremely fond of black teas and rainy nights..

Interviewee : AZStar78.

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Official site : www.azstar78.com -------------------------------

Interviewer : Aidan Kelly.

How and when did you start out being an artist?

I'm never sure how to answer this question, honestly, and it's always asked. I believe either you wake up every morning and just start to do art or you don't, like an ant knowing to find food. It's just in my nature, from early childhood I'd have to draw - I wouldn't have even passed my classes if I hadn't turned in extra credit drawings. It is my survival mechanism, I guess.

What inspired you to become what you have become?

I always want to be moving forward in life and help out others who I believe are trying to change the world… I still feel like there is a long way to go. I really want to change or alter the way people think, to change the world in my own way. I'm silly and romantic, so I think that plays a huge part in everything.

There's a very rudimentary feeling from your work, almost like drawings from an earlier time, with basic tools, is this intentional?

Everything I do is planned out. Nothing is just random, it all means something. I use old book pages, tea, pens and ink mostly. I use tea because I grew up in England, and the heavy paper I use is from India where tea comes from, nothing is just nothing. We all pick things in life with reasons. I use vintage book pages because the text reminds me that I can't spell and the love hate relationship I have with it is similar to that of my father and I. It brings up old memories of being in summer school for failing classes.

Your themes are iconic sometimes, pyramids, suns, shapes and objects that have attachments. What ideas are you trying to portray?

Attachments… attachments… Yes, we are all connected I believe. I don't believe in souls - well, I do but I don't believe that they are ours. These shapes are my ideas of how energy is flowing and how we are all connected by energy but we fail to understand them. A Pyramid is just 4 triangles leaning on each other for support, creating a mystic temple for all our fears.

When I'm in the act of painting or drawing, the world falls away and my hand just dances across the paper naturally.

I want my work to feel honest, true and as if it is not trying too hard. I love triangles because they are forever building off of each other, forever - I want love and life to be forever but I find that it is not and I write these things down in my work, how I'm feeling, how it makes me feel.

Do you believe that the work is a very personal process for you?

It is my therapy - how I release all the things I fear, being alone, lost, love… My work is dark in nature but I do believe that in order to see the light you must have darkness and it doesn't have to be an ugly thing. My work is trying to say, “I cry, you cry, but that is okay. We're all alive and we feel the same.” Life is simple but we make it complex.

Is the text that you attach to the work autobiographical?

Are you talking about how you feel directly?

All the things I write are what I'm feeling and how I feel at that time. It's not deep, it is almost like being drunk and just telling someone you don't know what you really think of their shoes or just the stress of not being able to pay your rent on time. Mostly, I talk about rejection from the world and the ones you love. Sometimes it's funny and sometimes it's sad and other times it just is. Normally, you will find words missing, misspelled and things crossed out because that's I who I am. >>

Do you exorcise demons in the work, some of the characters are a little scary if you don't mind us saying so!!

These characters have mutated from their original birth 10 years ago and now seem as if they are leaving my world so I'd say yes, they are being exercised from my being. At first, they were cute and fuzzy and maybe a bit “pop” but as I got older they became crazier as I guess I have too.

Wanting so much from the world, needing, hurting, and hunting. They started to hurt themselves and others became monsters and demons. Now they struggle to stay with me but I'm trying to just move on and find something that isn't damaging or so needy. I think they are extremely upset by this. I'm very in love with the ghosts they are leaving behind, simple with eyes that just gaze back at you normally with no limbs to grasp or claw, almost like memories that haunt us in our sleep. They don't cause damage; just remind us of who we are or who we think we might have been.

In the record sleeve series, you seem to be wiping out or covering up these lives, would you agree, can you talk about this?

The Records, I've put them on hold for a bit and only recently I'm finally coming back to them… They are extremely personal and focus on the text and the imagery equally. I only use 3 colors of paint - grey, black and white.

The people on the records are expressing their feelings, I normally only use 50s pop singers because the records and titles of the song are so honest. Normally, I don't have to cross words out to make it say what I want it to. They hit it on the head, but in today's world we hide behind who we think we should be. The Era of Myspace, where everyone has a page showing how cool he or she want you to believe they are. It is rare you find a page that says “I cry at night too” or talks about how we are weak and sad and alone.

Would you prefer the more physical act of drawing and painting as opposed to working with mixed media, which do you prefer?

Neither. I want to make installations and build rooms full of things be it clay or paper or found objects. I don't want to be limited by a media or style. I look at it like cooking, I might be good at cooking tacos but you know I can't eat tacos every night so I try new things. I guess some people could eat tacos every night but I can't… I sometimes want a star fruit, tuna steak sandwich with olives and thinly sliced fried taro. What about you?

The work seems modest in size, are you thinking of larger scale works, or have you already done larger works? Is it better to work at smaller sizes?

I have previously worked on big works and I'm working on big piece now, but it is harder to sell a $5,000 painting and/or store it than it is to sell a $375 one which is so simple to put away. I'm just waiting to grow and have the right space. I've been nomadic for so long that small works seemed appropriate… I could just up and leave to Berlin in a few months but right now I think I'm happy where I am and I'll start working on new larger works in the future.

What are you working on next, and in the future?

I recently started curating art shows. I'm also working on doing an event during ArtChicago at Version7, as well as, other shows around the world. Along with that, I'm always making new art. I'm excited and wonder what will happen next as much as you are. That is why I get up every morning.

CONOR HARRINGTON.

Over the last 12 months Conor Harrington has been locked away in his cold studio developing a new direction in his painting. And the culmination of this process was his in January show entitled ‘Weekend Warriors’.

This body of work shows a progression in his representation of the male figure in an urban environment. His departure from previous work was to choose the figures of men taking part in historical re-enactments with these men recreating the Napoleonic wars. The results are truly stunning, Conor has now created a new high watermark, so to all other painters out there, “Look on his works, ye Mighty, and despair!”.

Interviewee : Conor Harrington.

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Official site : http://www.www.conorharrington.com -------------------------------------------------

Interviewer : Asbestos.

Conor’s work is available to buy here www.lazinc.com/artists/conorharrington/

First page.

Conor in his studio.

Photo by Asbestos.

Previous page.

‘Horsepower’ This page.

‘The Carnival Goes On’ & ‘A Saint with the Powers of Superman.

Previous page.

‘From the Ghetto to the Global Screen’.

This page (left to right).

Prints for Lazarides Gallery. London http://www.lazinc.com/artists/conorharrington & ‘One Man’s Heroic Waste of Time’.

The ‘Weekend Warriors’ show is a new departure in you work, can you tell me how you got to this point and what the underlying theory is behind these paintings?

I felt that I needed to push my work forward a bit. Weekend Warriors was to be my 4th show and I felt like I had come to a hiatus with my previous work. I've always played around with issues of masculinity, especially in an urban context so I zoomed in a little to narrow my focus. I eventually settled on the rather unlikely world of historical re-enactment. I like the fact that on first appearances, historical re-enactors seem to have very little in common with the urban world that my work has always depicted, but on closer inspection there are many similarities. What interested me the most was the fact that these guys dress up on the weekends to live out escapist fantasies and roles as warriors and heros. Kind of like assuming importance, strength and power.

This really is no different to most hip hop lyrics, for example when Wu Tang rhyme about being kung fu masters. Also the Napoleonic period which my show was based on was a time when soldiers rode into battle dripping in gold and jewelry. Bling culture is as important now as it always has been to denote status and wealth.

I'm also quite interested in empire and control, which is where the historical period is appropriate. The first few works that I did in this series were based on the Roman Empire, the daddy of em all. I see street art and graffiti as being an extension of that human need for invasion and control, although this time the fight takes place on our concrete battle fields, with crews stealing space and gaining territory through citywide frontiers that never belonged to them in the first place. Thankfully nobody gets hurt this time though.

Several of the protagonists in your work have their eyes or faces obscured by abstractions in your work, what is the thinking behind this masking of the subjects?

I've always been a bit slow about rendering faces. I never like to think of myself as a portrait artist so perhaps I'm in denial. Faces always steal the spotlight no matter what else you have going on in the painting and sometimes people can judge a painting by the face alone.

My degree show in 2002 was based around paintings of urban figures with their faces masked and identity concealed so I guess I have carried this feature with me over the last few years. Also lately, I've been looking a lot at abstract painting. Jackson Pollock's work was all about achieving a sense of overallness on the picture plane and i think in a way that I am striving for something similar. By obscuring the face, and hiding parts of the figure your focus switches to other areas, taking in the piece as a whole as opposed to a figurative painting with the usual subject and background relationship.

Your work transcends urban and fine art, how do you feel about blurring the lines between two scenes that have never seen eye to eye?

I try not to think about it but it always pops up never the less. I was brought up on a healthy diet of graffiti and hip hop culture. I also studied painting so initially when I first graduated I felt like I was in no mans land, too street for the galleries and not street enough for the graffiti world. But thankfully the whole urban art movement is changing so rapidly that it has completely opened up and diversified in recent years so there is plenty of room for all of us. I still feel it a little, especially as the street art scene is predominantly biased towards an illustration/ comic/ design sensibility with easily accessible works taking prominence.

I think a lot of people don't really get what I do because they are used to so many urban art pieces telling them what to think.

The most exciting thing about working in the urban art scene at the moment is that things are changing so much that this time there'll be a permanent mark made. We may be experiencing a temporary boom in the market in terms of sales and prices but hopefully the sheer quantity and quality of artists working at the moment will make a lasting impression on the contemporary art world.

I never like to be seen as an urban artist or a fine artists but i suppose there will always be boxes. If I have to be put in one, I'd like to be gently placed in the one labeled 'painter'.

This work contains a new stylistic element that of the bold stripes running through the paintings, where did the inspiration come from?

I wanted to break up the tight figure/loose background relationship in my work and liven things up by introducing a third party. This third party came in the form of stripes lifted from photographs of Formula 1 tracks. Another unlikely relationship, and one that is far from explicit but I feel it works as Formula 1 is another glamourous arena dominated by men trying to go faster than each other. More importantly, the flat blocks of colour breaks up the intensity of the painting and offers more possibilities for me and with my future work.

What has the journey been like creating this new body or work?

It’s been good I think. I've been fairly clear and decisive with my work and hopefully it has shown on the canvas. As I mentioned earlier I felt like I was running out of options after my 3rd show but now my work could go anywhere, be it on horseback or behind the wheel of a speeding car. Yikes.

What next for Mr Harrington?

Next Mr Harrington will be going north and going abstract. I'm doing a show in May at Lazarides Newcastle but this time I'll be leaving Napoleon and Schumacher in London as it'll be an abstract show. I'm quite excited by it but also a tad terrified without having a figure to anchor the paintings. I'm also trying to get on top of my outdoor work this year. I've been neglecting it for the last few years so I think I'm ready to leave my studio for a while and paint in the great outdoors. I've just painted my friend David's van and I'll be in Italy next month to paint in the Piazza Il Campo in Siena as well as a few other wall projects this year. It feels good to leave the studio and about time too.

Previous page (left to right).

‘Make Me a Superhero’ & ‘Sowing The Seeds of Dischord’.

This page.

‘In Polemic Position’.

Next page.

Pieces pre-’Weekend Warriors’ exhibition.

This page.

‘Dislodge the General’ & ‘Dinnertime Bandit’ Next page.

‘Make Way for the Quiet Superpower’ & ‘All Sound Fury.

Following page.

‘Weekend Warriors’ book detail.

Design by Asbestos.

This page.

‘Dictator and Dancer’.

Next page.

‘David’s Van’.

This page.

‘High Roller’.

Last page.

‘Confessions of a Middle Class Criminal’.

SKYLINE. EOGHAN KAVANAGH.

Since setting up his own studio in 1995 Eoghan has worked extensively in commercial photography for both advertising and design clients. Over the last 10 years he has also been working on a personal project photographing ‘Irish Landscapes’.

Using a specially contructed Ebony field camera and a 75 mm Linhoff lens Eoghan seeks out secluded locations in Ireland and has succeeded in creating a collection that is fresh and contemporary.

The images are taken on a 5"x4" large format plate film which captures each scene with immense detail and allows him the freedom to produce large scale prints up to 3m in length without compromising on quality.

Eoghan produces all of the prints himself retaining control over quality and edition numbers.

Having held two solo exhibitions in Dublin last year, Eoghan continues to ad to his portfolio.

With winter behind us he is making plans to head off on location again.

His full collection is available to view online at http://www.skyline.ie His next showing will be at the Spring Art Ireland collection in the RDS on March 27th.

Interviewee : Gaetan Billault.

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Official site : http://gaetanbillault.ultra-book.com http://g.billault.free.fr -----------------------------------------------

Interviewer : Richard Seabrooke.

GAETAN BILLAULT.

Originally from France, Gaetan decided to move to Dublin in search of dreams fortune and recognition on the street.

Not saying that he needs it, the work he does stands on its own without introduction, its sparkling in its difference, there's originality in there. Stark and graphic, sometimes using multimedia and strong character driven designs, has seen him work for locally known Bodytonic on their poster and flyer campaigns and work for a special fair trade idea 'Leaf' and his work for Mongrel and the Fringe Festival all add up. Of course the object is to get people to see your work and this won't be difficult in Billault’s case, these works, pre and post 2006, stick in the mind once you've encountered them. The clean lines and meandering ideas capture a sense of fantasy but in a real world context.

A little bit psychedelic and beautiful. Remember the name.

Previous page.

Work for The Bernard Shaw, Dublin.

This page.

Personal work.

This page (left to right) ‘3-d’ font, painting with detail and illustration for Neon Love.

This page (left to right) Work for Pogo & Triple Five Soul.

Next page (left to right).

Synth Eastwood submission & t-shirt graphic for Bodytonic.

What’s your very first creative memory?

I think that was sometime when I was around five years old. This one is probably the one that I remember the most. My parents lived in the country side and we had a big garden and at the back of this one a heap of earth who been there for ages. With my sister we use to spend our afternoon there sculpting wierd patisseries made with muck.

Do you have formal college training?

Yes, I started art school when I was 15 years old. I was in a school specialized in applied arts for 4 years where they used to teach us art, product design, fashion design, graphic design... After this I had to make a choice and I chose graphic design for two years. Finally I finished school with a DSAA (Superior Diploma in Applied Art) with a graphic design specialisation for 2 other year. We were working like teams with product designers, I was 23 when i finished school.

Did your family encourage you to be creative or did you go against your family history in becoming what you are today? How do you describe what you do to your oldest relatives?

My parents were always there for me. I became independant pretty fast, so they always trusted my choices. They never interfered, ever, even if it took them a long time to understand what i’m doing. Art school in France is pretty expensive, and my parents always gave me a leg up when I needed it. My oldest relative is my grand mother, I’m sure that she still does’nt really know what I’m doing she tells her friends that I’m a drawer, she is pretty proud of me even if it’s still abstract for her.

How do you think this has benefitted you over doing it the other way?

It’s good to be surrounded by people who are learning at the same pace as you and to be imersed in the subject. You never stop learning but in college you are free to experiment.

How would you describe your style?

This question is the hardest one for me. I don’t like that much having a fixed style. I don’t even know if I really have one, I guess it’s pretty organic, I try to allow it to have a perpetual evolution. I try to be diverse, somedays I could be working on a corporate logo and others I could be making an illustration or dolls.

I like spending time to work on details.

How long have you been working commercially, how’s it working out for you?

I started straight away after my diploma in the agency where I use to be a trainee for few months when I was student: “crazybaby!” in paris. I stayed over there 6 months. After I wanted try working freelance to experience the solo side of graphic design. I worked as a freelancer for few months but I missed a creative environment, I missed having creative people all around me. That why I decided to looking for an agency who would like to have a freelancer within the studio and so I started to work with “Icone Paris”. I had a great experience with them it’s a really motivated creative team.

It’s nice to have creative control, it’s also important to be challenged by limitation in some works.

You currently live in Dublin rather than your homeland France. What has you over in this neck of the woods, surely not another one of those evil Irish partners scouring the world with the specific aim of getting the claws in and then dragging you kicking and screaming to the land of good butter, Eurovision success and the joy that is Twink (Google her)? How do you find working in Dublin versus France, do you think there are many similarities between clients here?

I met a french artist, Jeanne Merer, who was living here in Ireland, she needed an hand for her exhibition here in dublin so I decided to drop everything and join her for 3 months as a sort of work placement. I got a grant from the government called the Leonardo grant to help me out. And now I’m still here trying step by step to be a part of the dublin artistic scene.

I was attract to the challenge of starting over somewhere else, in a new culture. It wasn’t easy, it’s took me time to feel confortable with the language and creat relationships professionaly and otherwise. It’s hard to find people who want to work with someone who has bloody awful english. It’s also hard to find people who trust you, just because they don’t know if you gonna go back to france in two weeks or two years or never ever.

What I appreciate here and what is hard to accept is that it takes time to find people with who you can seriously work with. But when you find them the relationship is pretty strong and honest.

But I have to say it’s not really different in france. I m working with people from france just with the net, they currently give me work to do, we have a good relationship despite the distance and I just met them few times.

It does’nt really matter where you are there isn’t much diference between people. The difference between cities like Paris and Dublin has more to do with size then the attitudes of people. In paris creation is everywhere but it’s a bigger place so it attracts more creative people, there is more competition too. People are more stressed than here clients are more relaxed, but maybe a bit too easy going! >>

Previous page.

‘Couv carnet’.

This page.

Personal work & ‘iAnstalation’.

Next page.

Poster for ‘La Fleche d'Or’ & Synth Eastwood submission.

This page.

Illustration for Bud Rising & commissions for Pogo.

Next page (left to right).

Commission for Toni & Guy, ‘Labyrinth’, Leaf t-shirt illustration & ‘Mon boucher artisan’ illustration.

This page. ‘Dolls’.

Next page.

Designs for Pogo.

Next page.

Leaf t-shirt illustration.

What are the biggest challenges for you as a freelancer in moving to a new city, how did you get a foothold in things over here?

That could be one of the biggest challenges of my life just because I have to prove to myself and to everyone that I’m able to find what i really want in a new country where nobody knows me and where i dont have any connections.

But working alone forces you to be self sufficient.

The sensation that i had here when I arrived was the best that I ever had, I did things and contacted the kind of people that I probably couldn’t in france, over there everything was comfortable and established. I felt a bit like a survivor, I didn’t have anything to loose here because I hadn’t start anything yet ! I never had this sort of cheek before.

My first contact was Jeanne Merer a french artist who has been living here many years, she showed me the artistic scene in dublin, I went in opening exhibitions, met helpfull people who gave me contacts. That’s how I started here, it was pretty fast at least, it was faster than i thought.

The type of work you take on is very varied but in time is there any particular field of work you’d love to do more within, whether that’s music, fashion, organic farming, etc.?

I would love to work more in fashion design or music but I’m not against the idea of working in any field, even the most seemingly mondane subject can inspire my creativity. I can find inspiration in everything,

How would you describe the creative scene here, who’s floating your boat at the moment?

The creative scene here is really young, artists have a lot to prove. And that’s really challenging, the target audience is there more than ever and people are aware of ideas maybe more than towns like Paris where people sometimes are afraid to take risks.

The problem in Dublin is that even if the target audience and creative people are here, design still doesn’t heve a strong place in Ireland. That why the actual scene is still pretty small and can feel a bit closed sometimes. On the irish scene I really like the Angry collective, Mongrel always have some great images...

Internationally too, who would you see as the modern day pioneers of imagemaking?

I also like european designers like Antoine&Manuel, Non format, Mario Hugo for illustrations and the swiss graphic design scene.

You’re involved with the Bodytonic guys on doing visuals for some of their projects so you’re always around music whether adding visuals to it, listening to it or just downright dancing and sweating to it. With this in mind what tracks and albums are rocking you at the moment?

Sure listening music, going to gigs are some of my main sources of inspiration. I like many difrent type of music but pretty much indie, alternative folk, electro rock music.

I m listening to Mathieu Boogaert for the french scene, Beirut, Final Fantaisy, Radiohead, Feist, Architecture in Helsinky, the Go team.... I also like gypsy music. I recently inlove with Hawk and a hacksaw.

The perfect big night out...

For me it’s a dinner with friends with a good bottle of wine, maybe two bottles, maybe three...and the rest of the night out. You people are giving me bad habits.

The perfect rainy day in...

Dinner with friends, four bottles of wine.

Being an island Ireland is prone, one day, to sinking into the sea. A boat has arrived to bring us all off to somewhere high like Scotland or Narnia but they only allow us to bring 5 things each, what’s in your case? Please be careful, if you bring the case I mentioned you only have 4 items, the rogues are very strict, boo!

In this case I will put my parents stuffed fox, a bloc of camembert, a bottle of red wine and a clean underwear.

The ultimate commission you have yet to do?

I guess that producing the design of my own book would be the ultimate commission.

Your new year resolutions...

Stop smoking, it’s traditional.

Anything else we can expect from your good self this year, promise not to tell anyone...

I recently produced motives for an organic clothing label called “Leaf” I’m looking forward to seeing the final products. I’m also planning to have an exhibition sometime this year.

This page.

‘Sign Details’.

Next page.

‘Eclosion’ font & Leaf t-shirt illustration.

Next page.

Leaf bag graphic & ‘Organic’ font.

This page.

Illustration for Pogo & ‘Beautiful Soul House’ illustration.

IAN STEVENSON.

Interviewee : Ian Stevenson.

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Previous page.

‘I Am Hot’.

Official site : http://www.ilikedrawing.co.uk -----------------------------------------

Interviewer : Richard Seabrooke.

This page.

‘Ice Cream’.

Next page.

‘Lost Heroes’ detail.

What’s your first memory of drawing?

I remember as a child drawing strange characters in crazy lands but I haven't looked at them for many many years.

Maybe they are in a cupboard somewhere, hmmm I wonder what they look like....

When did you decide to take it seriously and go full-time?

Was it a natural progression, was it after college or did you feel it was more like a calling to a vocation, maybe it was neither?

I studied graphic design at college and then worked as a graphic designer for a few years. This was good but I knew many of the things I wanted to try wouldn't get approved and so I left to explore my mind.

A typical day in the life of Ian Stevenson looks pretty much like this...

I open my eyes and become aware of my breathing. Make and a cup of tea and look at the list and realise there's too much to do. Then I try to get on and do this stuff but often get distracted with other stuff.

Do you have to be a good mood to work or does your best work when you have some bad vibes or frustrations itching to get out?

Any mood is good and the drawings generally reflect my thoughts at that point.

Your favourite project or collaboration so far?

Why was it so good?

I enjoyed drawing on rubbish as it felt like I was doing something that hadn't been done before. I'm working on some animations now with another writer and an animator and that has always been a dream.

The most frustrating type of project is one where...

People ask you to pitch ideas for free. Hmmm interesting.

The ultimate collaboration you’ve yet to do?

Again, what would make it so good?

There many many things that need to be done. More of everything please.

3 non work related highlights of your life so far?

Being good at the monkey race on Sports Day at primary school. The is a race where you have to move on all fours, oh yes just like a monkey. I had a good time playing frisbee with the wind once, I threw it and the wind threw it back. I had to run a little but not enough to ruin the game - good work the wind. I went snorkling once and that was good but breathing under water is a bit odd.

Rather than just work on clean white pages in the comfort of your own studio you seem to enjoy going out into the real world and injecting some of your trademark observational humour into even the most neglected familiar items like coffee cups, rubbish bags, cardboard boxes and just about anything else. What do you hope to achieve through this, do you think us humans take ourselves and the life around us a little too seriously?

It's good to get outside and walk about. Hopefully the drawings I do on my way make people think and smile.

Got any good jokes? I’ve got a dinner party in a week or two and it’d be good to have some ice breakers before the finger buffet goes awry...

Here is a joke made up by a four-year-old. Why is the gorilla eating an orange?... because it doesn't like bananas.

What other creative people do you like the work of, they can be dead or alive?

Flight of the Conchords, Jim Henson, The Mighty Boosh and Hanna Barbera are some of them.

I see you did some work for Paul Smith, what was this for and how’d it come about? Did you get to meet the man himself, did he pay for your coffee? Seemingly there’s someone employed with them whose job is to travel the world finding pieces to furnish his many shops and offices, now there’s a job to like...

I didn't meet the great man himself but I hear he selected the artists to be involved and he went to the show launch in Japan. Maybe one day we could drink that coffee. >>

This page (left to right).

‘Pacman’s brother’, Mother London toilets http://www.motherlondon.com & ‘Punk Studio’.

Next page.

‘Festival’ & ‘Ring Disney’.

From the work you do you seem to like music too, a lot even...

What’s on rotation on your stereo at the moment, what music’s good for working, what’s good for not working?

Generally all music has it's moments but somehow some crazy mental Jazz got into my collection and when that pops up randomly I wonder why I'm getting annoyed and then I realise what is playing. I think I may delete that nightmare of random musical noise and it will hurt me no more. Also internet radio is throwing out some interesting jingles at the moment.

Jamie Oliver has decided to make you one of his adopted friends for his new show ‘I Like Cooking’ and he’s told you to invite 7 other friends over and choose what you want for dinner (starter, main and dessert), who’s getting asked and why (can be peers or just friends) and what are you all having? (Jaysus, even typing this I’m getting hungry!!)

I think I will invite friends. Jamie can make what he likes but I think that interesting nibbles may work best.

Rumours abound that people, common folk even, can get their sticky little mitts on your amazing work. Where’s best to start on the quest for some wall furniture, casual clothing and trendy bookshelf fodder?

All the handy little links are featured on my website and everything is but a simple click away. Click click my friends, click click.

Some jealous bugger has robbed all your art materials and also torched all the art supply shops in your local area...

No-one will send you anyone and there’s no transport infrastructure for the foreseeable future to go to the next town. Yikes. What would you turn to if liking drawing wasn’t enough to guarantee you food on the table, I’d surely take up something in the artisan food game like smoked chewing gum or lamb fondue or something...

I'd have to use my pretend army training and go to the woods, living off wild animals and other edible forest goodness and sheltering in the trees. Waiting until the time was right to hunt this jealous robber down and avenge this crime.

What can we expect from you in the coming year?

Any new year resolutions still standing?

More creatures, animations and music.

Previous page.

‘Very worrying’.

This page.

‘Pimp my pump’ & ‘Lost Heroes’ detail.

Next page (left to right).

‘Rubbish Art’ & ‘Come On In’.

Final page.

‘Rubbish Art’.

MARIA MOORE.

Interviewee : Maria Moore.

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Official site : http://www.mariamoore.co.uk -----------------------------------------

Interviewer : Aidan Kelly.

You can almost hear the people sighing with relief, they let a long breath out as if to explain the situation, put a fine point on it. They turn their heads to see if anyone is watching, nobodies watching, they’re too busy themselves, with work or a day off or practice, anything other than hectic life itself. Does it go that life happens in between events that you think are what life’s about?

Maria Moore’s work is breathing heavily, space and moments of clarity and a pictorial version of those times you drift off and stare at the corners of things, nothing particular, just drifting.

Her colours and framing are dreamlike too as if a flashback to all the best memories you had growing up, but in saying that the reality is here and now, there’s things to be done, washing to put out.

Previous page.

‘Dog’ & ‘Mum and Angel’.

This page (left to right).

‘Lake chair’, ‘Red chair under trees’ & ‘Sofa’.

This page (clockwise from top left).

‘2nd hand shop’, ‘Beach’, ‘Woodyard’ & ‘Grass’.

Next page (left to right).

‘Lollipop’, ‘Waitress Sitting’ & ‘Waitress’.

Hope you are very well Maria! There is a great deal of space in the photographs, is this saying something about the lives they lead outside the photograph?

No. The idea behind the Park series was the relationship between the park and people who use it. I see the images as urban landscapes with isolated examples of human interaction.

Therefore the use of space in the final image focuses the viewers attention on my key point; the importance of urban parks in peoples’ lives.

When did you start taking photographs knowing you were a photographer or are you an artist? Do you think it’s important to witness these events?

My first experience with photography was when I picked up my brother's camera (aged 15). I loved the feel of it in my hand and the potential it had to capture moments in time. This inspired me to go to night classes and learn how to use it properly and from then on I become fascinated with the act of capturing people and moments in their lives. This is the true reason why photography resonates with me strongly - it's the power it has to capture life in all it's richness.

For me a photographer is a job description not a title.

I take pictures so therefore I'm a photographer?

I'm interested in life, cultures and social issues and I feel compelled to document these. Therefore It's true to say I'm a witness and I capture these events through the medium of photography. For myself the realisation of becoming a photographer/artist is irrelevant.

In your section of photos on ‘Lines’ can you tell us what your idea was behind this project?

Lines is a social documentary in the form of a landscape. Most people the world over own or have the use of a washing line. I wanted to see if it was possible to capture the rich variety of human habitats using this simple device.

Do you think that people tend to follow patterns but would like not to? Do you see this in your work?

For me it's the opposite of seeing patterns - it's picking up the nuances within the patterns of everyday life - it's the things that make us individuals with the course of our existence. It's those subtle differences that gains my interest.

In the ‘Market street’ collection, daylight is missing from the normal view of a market and a traditional setup, can you tell us more about ‘Market street’?

I was walking through a local market last winter (in the evening) and noticed how beautiful the people were lit by the market traders lights. It reminded me of an old masters painting. As I began to observe, what became interesting to me was the social interaction between buyers and sellers, from frenzied haggling to the focused inspecting of produce. This was most pronounced in the last half hour of trading - when the real bargains are to be had. It's the contradiction between the hustle and bustle of a working market and the beautiful serene lighting of the subjects which gives this series it's power.

We would like to find out more about abbey, is that the name of the girl or an organisation?

Abbey - Is the name of a UK Building Society (formally as Abbey National). These two images where part of a series, which were used in there UK marketing brochure.

Although the work is very independent you have worked with some big names like the BBC and your National Gas company amongst others, are these good working relationships? Can you talk more about this?

In these cases my relationship is almost always with the advertising or design agency. If I've been chosen to work with a client, they will have already been sold into my work and will have agreed a creative brief for me to work from. This is a very important stage in the process and fundamental to a good working relationship if all parties are in the same place at the beginning it allows me to have a good understanding of what's required and also gives me a clear direction in where to focus my ideas.

Are these photos mostly set in the UK, do you think they reflect the British way of life accurately?

Not all of my work is shot in the UK, but when I do I believe it reflects moments of life in Britain, but not necessarily a British way of life. I'm interested in people rather than society - it's much about the individual and how we are all different, rather than how we are all the same. This is particularly true of my portraits.

Is there sadness prevailing?

Or do you see good and happiness in all this work?

I don't think it's a question of sadness or happiness, it's about honesty and respect for people. When I shoot I try to be as accurate as possible. I'm generally quite a positive person, so I suppose the majority of my images reflect this but there's not conscious decisions or themes running through my work.

Anything new on the horizon for you that you could talk about?

At this moment I've got a couple of commercial projects on.

Which is great - but it has a knock on effect with my personal work. I've projects in the pipeline- but there in early stages. I'm itching to get going again!

This page and next.

‘Lines’.

This page.

‘Orange Order’.

NB: Interviewee : NB:Studio.

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Official site : http://www.nbstudio.co.uk --------------------------------------

Interviewer : Mark Blamire.

STUDIO. I first became aware of NB:Studio’s work in 1999 whilst reading an issue of Creative Review. They had just produced a stunning poster/calendar for Knoll and the image immediately went into the visual filing cabinet of my brain. Later in 2001 NB:Studio produced a poster for the film 'Requiem for a dream' proving that it is still possible to produce great design for a medium which tends to follow all the old visual clichÊs and tired worn out rules. From my brief personal experiences of working for the movie industry, this believe me is a major achievement. Again I was drawn to their craft and there ability to bend the rules and deliver something original and fresh.

In 2006 I formed Blanka and for our first exhibition we needed to come up with 28 contributors to make up 28 posters for the event, NB:Studio were one of the first people to be invited to contribute and the poster they delivered for the event proved to be one of the most original and also commercially popular answers to the brief. Since then I have been lucky enough to work with them on several occasions and they are always a joy to work. They genuinely surprise me with the quality of the work they deliver and also the time they appear to dedicate in answering the brief we set. For our second exhibition in 2007 I had to attend a meeting at their offices where I was again confronted with the Knoll poster, the reproduction in Creative Review of the poster 8 years earlier had inspired me but seeing the print framed in their offices for the first time was a much more pleasant and exciting experience, we were lucky enough to be able to reprint this poster as a limited edition reprint into the Blanka archive [which is actually the first of an ongoing series of classic reprints] and because of this we have been asked by Richard Seabrooke at Candy to try to fire a few questions at them to try and get behind the thought process of what goes on, in the day to day running of a successful design studio. Thank you to Ben Stott for taking the time out of his busy schedule to contribute to this.

This page (left to right). ‘Portrait Now’ cover design, Christian Aid A1 poster design & Casa Decor installation.

This page.

Channel 4 Review design.

This page (left to right).

D&AD designs & ‘Far from China’ poster.

Next page.

NB:Studio for V&A.

This page.

Magazine design for Soho House’s ‘House’ magazine.

For those who dont know your work can you tell us a little about NB:Studio?

Well... I wish it was that easy. Then we would know what to put on our website.

What is your earliest memory of wanting to be an artist/designer?

Copying characters from 2000AD at the weekend whilst eating a bag of cola cubes or when I realised it was a lot easier than doing architecture How was NB:Studio formed, what is your background and how did you all hook up / get to know each other originally?

The three of us met at Pentagram around 92. After 5 years and many lengthy discussions in the pub next door myself and Nick decided to start out on our own in ’97, after buying a flat and a period of freelancing Alan joined us in ’99. From the outset we had no clients and no big plan and the rest as they say is history.

Designers need to be more inventive nowadays and diversify to keep ahead in business, how have you changed from the company which originally formed in 1997?

We are bigger, have newer computers and chairs.

How do you think life has changed for design graduates entering the industry?

It’s tougher, there are more students for the same number of jobs, there needs to be a bit more diversification. But to be honest it’s always gong to be hard, but if you are good you will do well.

Do you have any particular philosophy or ethical approach about your work?

Nothing that is written down or set in stone, but between the three of us there is probably a list of companies and projects we would never do.

Who or what inspires you?

Everything.

From working with you on some of the Blanka projects I love your meticuolous approach to each project, I know the final results you have done for us have always had very minimal and understated beautiful answers but the research and work that goes into every job you do is unbelievably complex, you seem to approach every single projects with 110% passion, how do you manage to achieve this level of consistency and investment of time on projects?

To some degree it is actually the opposite, we try and think of the quickest, simplest solution. it just happens that sometimes this means a huge amount of effort to get to then end result, when the idea took 10 seconds.

How do you keep driving things forward and keep your fresh edge to work is it ever a struggle?

I'd be lying if I said it isn't sometimes a struggle but you just have to try not to worry about what everyone else is doing and be honest in what you do.

We founded Blanka for many reasons but one was purely out of a love of posters, both from collecting them and from a love of designing and creating them, do you find as a studio the poster is on its way to becoming a dead format?

The poster is a straight forward proving ground for an idea, you can't get much more straight forward than a big rectangle. the truth is that beyond the arts and culture sector there are not that many clients that really require a poster, but you only have to look on flickr or ffffound to see endless designers holding up their posters.

From my personal experience as a designer, seeing the final printed item coming off the press for the first time is one the most magical part of the design process. We have just worked together on a re-issue of the Knoll Twenty First century classics poster which revisits a very beautiful and clever piece of design you did originally in 1999. I know the print techniques and paper are a little bit more special for the 2008 reprint but how does this experience change, seeing it coming off the press again?

I want things to be perfect but I'm not that obsessed about seeing a piece come off the press but I do love the smell of fresh ink (in the morning!).

What has the experience of revisiting something from your archive been like?

A little odd, you work on a project and move on, I guess it’s a bit like being asked to play your greatest hits. >>

This page.

Knoll ‘Twenty-First Century Classics’ A0 poster design recently reprinted and available limited edition (280) from Blanka, get one quick at http://www.blanka.co.uk

This page.

Total Content design, Knoll ‘Phonebox’ & Knoll ‘Bus Stop’.

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‘London’s Kerning’ poster (1015mm X 1530mm) available to buy now (2nd edition) at http://www.blanka.co.uk

This page.

Website design for Surface View.

Next page. ‘Requiem for a Dream’ film poster design.

Following page.

Goldsmiths collateral design.

For me personally film posters used to be magnificent examples of design and I think they have in recent years become more cliched or tend to fall into the format of being instantly disposable marketing devices, there are very few examples of great eye catching posters around in the modern cinema. How did you find the experience of working or ‘Requiem for a dream’ film poster as you seem to have broken out of the formulaic mold of film posters?

We were once asked “You don't do film posters do you?”. Our reply was “No, but we do posters”. This conversation seems to sum up the industries approach to design - there are particular companies who design film posters, they follow a bizarre set of rules and restrictions that are rarely questioned. It hasn't always been like this and there is no reason why it can't again.

How did this job come to you?

We had worked on a couple of projects with Universal Film and through this we came to the attention of Momentum pictures who were distributing ‘Requiem for a Dream’ in the UK.

Do you think the process is easier if you are working on an independent films?

Definitely, the attitude is almost that it doesn't matter, there are no big stars or egos involved and of course less money!

Did you work closely with directors or than the film studios?

We only had a brief chat with Darren Aronofsky and worked with head of marketing at Momentum.

After producing something this striking do you find it strange that your skills in this area haven't been exploited more by the industry?

Not really, I don't think anybody wants to do anything different.

We did produce a great poster for a small independent film shortly after, but that is another story.

Was the process of approval on this poster a battle?

Not really, the American poster was boring, but by using the same two images we managed to short cut most of the usual issues. Also Sam at Momentum was a big champion of ours and wanted to push through a good poster.

Do you have a particular client who is a patron of your work or one whom you specifically embrace working with, why?

Not in the patron sense, the team at Knoll at the end of the 90's was great, very supportive and open minded, they trusted our judgement and gave us the confidence to produce work that we were all really proud of.

What do you think have been your finest work achievements what are you most proud of?

Both Knoll and the early work for Tate still hold up. I would like to think most things we work on we could be proud of!

Is there anything you have never designed you would love to have a crack at?

Of course there are some, especially when it is done badly, but there is no point in getting hung up about it.

What’s the most valuable lesson you have learned?

If in doubt reverse it out.

Do you think you will be designing into your old age?

Yes, but as long as someone has the honesty to tell me if it's bad.

Outside of graphic design and your work what else are you passionate about?

Oh god! not that question.

How much do your shoes weigh?

Depends on how old they are.

North or South?

West.

What’s your most prolific / favourite swear word?

Arse or Cunt depending on the time of day.

What question would you like to ask yourself?

When are you going to make a decent living?

This page.

Tate collateral design.

NON FOR MAT.

Previous page.

Letraset ‘Felt-Tip’ poster illustration.

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Bloodstream 12”.

Next page (clockwise from top left).

Prism 12”, Black Devil ‘Disco Club’ cover, Hanne Hukkelberg cover & Milky Globe Friends cover.

Kjell Ekhorn and Jon Forss from Non-Format are very busy today.

In fact, they are very busy everyday, with a client list like theirs including the likes of Domino records, K7, the amazing magazine Varoom, newspapers like New York Times, TV giants Channel 4 stretching right across the board to doing work for Coca-Cola, Nike, Orange, the Venice Biennale and Tate Modern, we could really go on y’know!

The list of characters in their script if there was to be a film made of their work and life would tumble over each other trying to get a minute onscreen.

It’s an endless trail of success, and rightly so. If you try to examine the work objectively [like you could do this in one day] you’re left with the feeling that you get just after you’ve left a very noisy rock gig, there’s ringing in your ears after the bold brash thunderous clatter you’ve just experienced.

The continous brassy herald, frightens the daylights out of you, Non-Format are our favourite band.

Interviewee : Non-Format.

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Official site : http://ww.non-format.com --------------------------------------

Interviewer : Richard Seabrooke.

Non-Format, Stefan Sagmeister and more fly into Dublin June 7th to rock SweetTalk, for more information and tickets check out http://www.candycollective.com and http://www.tickets.ie

When and how did Non-Format come about?

Kjell: We met through a Norwegian friend of mine from St Martins who was working with Jon at a small studio in the Soho area in the late nineties. Jon and I found ourselves discussing design ideas at length and realised that we had a similar approach to design and similar ambitions. We started working together first on some music packaging projects in 1999 and from then on our collaborations became regular. Once we accepted the commission to art direct and design The Wire magazine in 2001 we set up EkhornForss Limited, which later became known as Non-Format.

Although only 2 people you both work in different offices in London and the States. How does this work for you, how do you maintain creative contact? Was it any different when you both worked in London, maybe physical place has less and less to do with working in these days of immediate electronic communication?

Jon: So far the transition has been going surprisingly smoothly as we were expecting far more disruption than we've had. Maybe it's too early to tell but we communicate almost every day via Skype and, when we're chatting and working together it can be just like old times.

I'm six hours behind London so Kjell and I usually have about four hours of overlap in our working days and we can cover a lot of ground in that time. It's nice to start work in the mornings and see that some progress has been made while I've been sleeping and, likewise, I try to make sure there are new things to look at when Kjell starts work in London. We have high speed broadband to thank for making all this possible. How often we will physically need to be at the same place in the future depends on the kind of projects we'll be involved in.

How would you describe your approach to your work, what do you hope to achieve in any new piece you tackle?

Jon: We like to have as much of an overview of what it is we’re trying to achieve before starting the design process so we usually begin every project by discussing it at length in order to discover what makes it tick. We will then start the idea and design process by working individually and swapping files and ideas until we hit on something that we believe might be a good route for the project. Our only hope for every project is that we’ll manage to do it justice.

Who would you consider as inspirations and guiding lights in both your personal and professional lives?

Kjell: People who’ve managed to keep their creative energy burning brightly late in life, like Frank Lloyd Wright or Karl Lagerfeld.

Jon: People who burst into view with something extraordinary.

Finish this statement. Effective memorable communication through design is only achieved by...

Kjell: ...captivating your audience.

Jon: ...making an emotional connection.

Collaboration is something which you seem to thrive on, your print for Hellovon’s show in NYC being one of my recent favourite pieces. What would you consider to be your favourite collaboration so far and why?

Kjell: Every collaboration so far has been very good, interesting and different from each other but the best one is always the next because it's full of possibilities.

The ultimate collaboration you have yet to do?

Kjell: The big one we would never expect to happen.

You were art directors at The Wire magazine for many issues. What did you learn from this process and why did you feel it was necessary to move on?

Kjell: Over the four years we certainly learned to be more focused and inject clarity into the design process. In the beginning we were a running around a bit like headless chickens trying to create different design treatments for every feature story and individual pages but little by little we gained enough confidence to view the whole magazine as one object and allocate one treatment that could run through the whole issue and, as a result, the design became more coherent and the magazine gained a distinct and unique voice.

Jon: After four years we'd come to a point where we felt that either we had to shake up the design of the magazine again, or leave it for someone else to take it in a new direction.

When we first took on the design of the magazine we knew that the previous art director had been there for around five years, which seemed like an insanely long time to us.

Of course, before we knew it we too were knocking on the door of our fifth year so we decided that we'd probably done enough. It was time the magazine got some new blood, so we moved on.

Previous page. ‘Norway 100’ poster.

This page.

Non-Format and Hellovon for Lo Recordings. http://www.l-o-a-f.com/index.php?artist_id=24 Next page.

Magazine design for Varoom. http://www.varoom-mag.com Following page.

Moog Acid cover.

Music plays a huge influence in the work that you do so we couldn’t let this interview go by without asking you the following...

Your 10 favourite albums of all time...

Kjell: Biosphere – Substrata.

The Chap – Mega Breakfast.

David Bowie – Diamond Dogs.

David Bowie – Low. David Bowie – Heroes.

Deathprod – Treetop Drive 1-3.

Radiohead – Ok Computer.

Roxy Music – Roxy Music.

Tom Waits – Frank’s Wild Years.

Tom Waits – Rain Dogs.

Jon: Biosphere – Substrata.

David Bowie – Hunky Dory.

Deathprod – Treetop Drive 1-3.

Duran Duran – Rio. Ice Cube – Death Certificate.

The Jesus & Mary Chain – Honey’s Dead.

My Bloody Valentine – Loveless.

Roxy Music – Roxy Music.

The Smashing Pumpkins – Gish.

David Sylvian – Secrets Of The Beehive.

And if we're going for some kind of Desert Island Disks theme here then I have to include: John Lill's 1974 performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.5, with the Scottish National Orchestra, conducted by Sir Alexander Gibson.

Actually, a top 20 list would have been easier.

Your 10 favourite tracks...

Kjell: How Soon Is Now – The Smiths.

Hunter – Björk.

Hva Gør Vi Nu, Lille Du – Gasolin.

If There Is Something – Roxy Music.

Kashmir – Led Zeppelin.

Loosing My Edge – LCD Soundsystem.

O Superman – Laurie Anderson.

Open House – Lou Reed / John Cale.

Sound And Vision – David Bowie.

Wives Of Farmers – Grandaddy.

Jon (Top 10 for today): Her Doorbell (Extended Live Version) – Vincent Oliver.

Hong Kong – Gorillaz.

Nude – Radiohead.

Playground Martyrs (reprise) – Steve Jansen (featuring Nina Kinert).

Poor Boy – School Of Language.

Proper Rock – The Chap.

Real Life – Joan As Police Woman.

Supernaut – Black Sabbath.

Tibidim – GaBlé.

Toothpaste Kisses – The Maccabees.

You recently published a book ‘Lovesong’ through Die Gestalten. Why did you feel it was important at this point to produce a monograph, are we about to see Non-Format volume 2, a new direction?

Kjell: We were approached by DGV and asked if we would like to produce the book and we felt it was a good opportunity to sum up our first seven years – especially as we were about to begin the new adventure of transatlantic collaboration. There will only be a Volume 2 if we manage to produce good enough work in the future that'll merit another look-in.

The perfect day off consists of...

Kjell: Home made smoothie for breakfast, sun in the sky and fresh snow on the ground.

Jon: Apple products. Campari. Buying books.

Driving to a movie. Gin & Tonics whilst canoeing. Green & Blacks chocolate. Latest issue of Idea magazine. Lamb Jalfrezi.

Motorbiking in good weather. Nintendo. Netflix deliveries. PG Tips. Pinot Noir. Snow.

Due to a prohibition on creativity you both can no longer do what you do. What would you become if given the choice?

Kjell: Professional speedskater.

Jon: Endurance motorcyclist.

What can we expect from Non-Format in the coming year?

Hopefully something unexpected now and again.

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Non-Format for Nike. http://www.nike.com Next page (left to right).

‘Pompei’ & ‘Danceflaw’ posters.

SEAN HILLEN. Interviewee : Sean Hillen.

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Official site : http://www.seanhillen.com --------------------------------------

Interviewer : Richard Seabrooke.

At first glance Sean Hillen’s work is detailed and minute in the extreme, worlds collide.

He takes great care in the exactness of his approach and although the the subject matters he deals in are very serious the results, treated with Sean’s unique approach and visual sensibilities are often very much the opposite... jovial, surreal, funny even.

There’s a return to a non-digital way from Sean's work, with scalpel and glue he makes his way through the world fantastic voyages along the way. He takes inspiration from his work previously as a photographer, changes his way to render in collage and in doing so opens up and the results are more from the hand through his heart than anything mechanical.

Sean’s work focusses on the essence of what it means to be of Ireland, his many projects question the histories, good and bad, that preceed and ground us but do so in an engaging open way. His earlier work that comprised of representations of “The Situation” are a fine art way of taking stock of the times around us cutting away the parts not needed and retelling the story the way it should be. A true visionary.

Previous page.

‘Who is my enemy?’

This page.

‘Northern Sunsets’.

This page (clockwise from left).

‘Jesus appears in the city’, ‘Londonewry 3’, ‘4 ideas 5’ & ‘Ecstatic Nuns outside the Casino at Powerscourt’.

This page (clockwise from left).

‘4 ideas 7’, ‘Londonewry 2’, ‘Crowds View the Gt. Eruption from The Ruins of Grafton Street’, ‘The virgin of Clohogue’, ‘The Queen of Heaven Appears at Newgrange’ & ‘The Oracle at O'Connell St’.

This page (clockwise from left).

‘Sr. Faustina in Newry’, ‘Londonewry 11’, ‘Goddess Newry’, ‘Londonewry 11’ & ‘Londonewry 6’.

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‘Meeting the dead 2’, ‘Natives in a mystic state’, ‘Gagarin 11’, ‘Trouble in Paradise’, ‘Londonewry 1’, ‘The Rock Close at Pallas Heights’, ‘The Virgin over London’ & ‘An Expedition Discovers Joyce's Tower’.

This page (clockwise from top left).

‘The Professionals 2’, ‘Londonewry 8’, ‘Londonewry 9’, ‘Viewing the Ice Floes from the Cliffs of Moher’, ‘Gagarin’s room’ & ‘Northern Sunsets 1’.

This page.

‘Newry Gagarin over Dublin’.

This page (clockwise from top left).

Postcards from the edge.

‘Saint Christopher in London’, ‘Northern Sunsets 3’, ‘Londonewry 22’, ‘Londonewry 4’, ‘Londonewry 17’ & ‘Londonnewry 19’.

This page (clockwise from top left).

‘The Colosseum of Cork’, ‘Cosmonaut annalong’, ‘The Birthplace of Aphrodite at Slemish Mountain’, ‘Sun, Sand and Cement in Temple Bar’ & ‘Boating on the Liffey’.

How long have you been an artist, has it always been your life or did you feeling a calling a particular time in your life?

It's hard to say- I've always been making things that I presume were 'art'- from machinesremember trying to make a little steam engine, that was one of the wonders my Da brought home from the auction rooms he haunted, move itself on a meccano frame around the back yard. (Of course it had little excess energy and got stuck on the tiniest bump in the ground) to pictures (there were a couple of old Kodak '620-folder's in the house and I loved the whole lenses and bellows thing), I also made a badly-plasticene-modelled figure of Rory Gallagher in the back shed, cast in lead from car batteries.. As soon as I got the idea I could escape to art school, that was probably the beginning of a slippery slope.

Usually though it's counted from the day I left the last art school, so.. 1987?

I was probably attracted to the idea of 'being' an artist, if it was going to allow me to do that sort of thing, and then the idea of doing something 'significant' and even getting attention was pretty attractive too.. Think I saw Kirk Douglas in 'Lust For Life' and kinda liked that too..

I can't imagine the point of life if I couldn't do these things, it looks like slavery to me, worse than death.

Starting out who did you consider as your inspirations, influences and heroes?

Well I was a teenage Marxist and my obsession was largely idealistic and political (though of course fairly naïve). I read 1984 quite early and was horrified and electrified by the vision.

Actual heroes were thin on the ground.

Unfortunately the local recent tradition was largely self-sacrificial. Even my first favourite visionary, Oscar, seemed to get that tragically wrong.

In later years I discovered the wonderful philosopher (well that's how I think of him) Robert Anton Wilson and was really wowed by his vision and erudition and utterly moved and enthused by the depth of his humanity. In fact I picked Dublin to move back to because I thought he was still living here. Can't recommend his material enough. Any of it. Inspirations for my montage work would be Heartfield of course and Peter Kennard.

Who do you consider as the villains amongst us, living, dead and those who may be dead but whose influence still affects today?

I was sort of hoping you wouldn't ask anything like that. The miserable fact is that we seem to be under the thumb of a cabal of international banks who control the money system, which largely enslaves humanity, it seems to me, and create wars and depressions to enrich themselves. Then there are there their little helpers of the Bush Senior & Brezsinski generation, real thugs too, who consider most of us 'food for powder'. Then the current crop of greedy monsters. We need to put them in their place. (somewhere they can do no more harm). They're very confused and need help with their addiction to violence. There's not much time left- fascists + high technology doesn't bear thinking about. Zeitgeist the movie has it all.

How would you describe your work?

My work- well, I loved Duchamp's statement that he 'made work to amuse himself and then trusted to posterity..' So as my own first and chief critic I try to make things I want to see, and have never seen before.. I have an oldfashioned belief in the power of art to communicate and to change people and things by its very existence. I love novelty (Alice's exhortation to 'imagine six impossible things before breakfast') vision (Shaw's idea that the Irishman asks 'Why not?') and compassion (Oscar's idea that humans were all made to live the 'beautiful and intellectual life') Is that an answer?

When setting about producing a piece what do you see as you ambitions for it?

Aahh, think I sort of just did that. I'll answer the previous question then: My work is an attempt to add something worthwhile to the World, to make it a tiny bit better than before. I like art that really gives you something, that leaves you feeling different, and I like art that makes you laugh. They're visual and verbal puns, often.

I think it clearly falls into an Irish intellectual tradition of 'serious' comedy from Wilde to Behan and Myles (the funniest writer ever), Milligan to Kevin McAleer (“In one ear, and out the other… like a bullet!”) Of course, the joke is that I'm serious.. (I discovered lately that that's Shaw, too, I think).

Do you have a strict regime you stick to when working on a body of work or do you let it come much more freely, letting the ideas form and gestate in your mind before choosing to venture into the studio to realise them?

Well firstly most of the montage and collage work is produced in bursts when I just feel an irresistible need to do it (I start to feel sort of sick if I don't make art for along time, although that can happen), and have probably been hoarding material I'm excited about. Or, more rarely, I have a deadline for a show.

For most of my life the studio has been home, most of early Irelantis was made in bedsits on my only table with pictures everywhere. Great to wake up to good pictures, horrid to wake up to the occasional failures. There must be gestation going on all the time, but on the very rare occasion (like the 'Ice Floes') that a picture was actually literally sort-of-preconceived, I think it shows.. Also I find it extremely difficult to produce the really good stuff on demand, it just doesn't really happen for me. Which is why though my work is on 15-20 book covers at this point, none were made to order, and though I'd love to do more album covers etc, I'm not sure I can.

I was blessed to have Heaney open the first Irelantis show, and he pointed out (to me as much as any) how they are kind of thoughtexperiments in themselves, as he put it “not posthumous to some idea” So the truth is, they kind of make themselves, that is they grow rather than are made. >>

This page (clockwise from top left).

‘The Triple Goddess Appears at Tara’, ‘Londonewry 5’, ‘4 Ideas 1’, ‘Gagarin 7’ & ‘4 Ideas 4’.

This page.

‘The Lia Fáil of Waterford’ & ‘Gagarin 9’.

This page (clockwise from top left).

‘Gagarin 8’, ‘Gagarin 6’, ‘Gagarin 12’, ‘Gagarin crosses the border’ & ‘Gagarin self portraits’.

Rather than a lot of modern immediate art, collage and street art being just two kinds, your work contains many messages, insights, observations, comments and more besides. Each element, yet immediately apparent, works in such a way to harmonise with the piece while not muting it’s intent. In terms of realising this how do you go about producing a piece from start to finish? How do you know when something is finished?

Thanks, those are really nice things to say and do partly capture the ambitions. One of my 'tricks' is that my collages are of course made of bits of paper which allows you have many (ready-cut) fragments floating around (all over the bloody place usually) for a kind of free-association, but then I can compose using two hands and because I've trained my eyes to align on demand (having toyed a lot with stereoscopic-3D) I can actually fuse two images at will to see how they work overlapped..

Of course, the more you think this way (of multiple sources combined) you get better at it.

As to when they're finished, well if it's not obvious, then it can be big trouble. Sometimes they (or I) just don't know when to stop, but a picture with good momentum usually resolves itself, rarely one that appears to be going well just won't finish.. It's a horrid feeling, nauseating, but you're stuck with the material you have, and if it just isn't there… One of the features of montage is that when they work, they have that quality that I think Berger described as “looking like marvellous acts of journalism”, which catch all the meaning in one picture. And I think Hausmann described, speaking of Heartfield, his work as “static film”.

Do you work slow or fast or both, what’s the benefit of producing your work with this approach?

Again, some of my best work, well the truth is, some of my most 'valuable' in sales terms have been made several-in-a-night (oh, yes, I have often worked overnight, though as I get older that becomes more tiring, but those wee hours are valuable ones), or I will make a batch of works over several days, and then none for months (or, worse, even longer). A very few of the best hung around for a while half-made before getting finished, so could have taken a few days or even weeks, but that would be unusual.

The whole thing of the night-time work (used to be with a tiny glass of white wine or champers to sip and I confess decent grass sometimes too although a beloved of the time disputes this and may be right) is that it's so peaceful, time drifts by and one drifts into a kind of poetic 'reverie' where you don't think consciously, or at least verbally, at all. That is when some very good creative moments have happened for me.

A lot of your work features references to your homeland of Northern Ireland but very regularly you take it out of context into fantastically surreal compelling new realities which can’t help but to fascinate and inspire. Why is it so important for you to predominantly use these visual references as opposed to current goings on, are you trying to undo some of the many bad things which haunted the north for many years?

Well all the 'troubles' work was made then (between '83 and '93) and more or less there- well, in fact all but the last few were made in London, where I lived, after travelling back-and-forth visiting my family in Newry and taking the photos.

I was fascinated by the fact that the grisly conflict was so near and yet so far from glorious touristy, imperial, shop-till-you-drop London, and I was trying to project the British viewer back into that situation and my shoes, and they seemed to get it completely. Of course too this was mostly in the '80's when we were being promised the joys of the 'leisure economy' (where did THAT go?), and I thought to contrast colonial conflict with space travel etc. to obvious effect. Part of the message was that “we're all better, and deserve better, than this”…

Do you think art can change the world through engaging with people, one on one, with a solid creative idea which provokes a conversation first, a debate after that and maybe a movement after that? Maybe I’m putting too much trust in it or naïve to the fact that there are bigger wheels aturning?

I'd love to think that and have believed it in various forms but am not entirely sure at the moment.. Well, I do believe completely in it as communication between one human and another. In fact I was hugely affected by reading Suzi Gablik in the early '90's where she really emphasises that possibility rather than the delusion of fame and stardom for artists. I do think that human liberation can only happen one person at a time.

The perfect day for you would be...

It would probably involve making some art, a walk in nature, with the beloved one would be best.

Previous page.

‘The Executioners’.

This page.

‘Trouble with The Glacier on Henry St.’.

Speaking of utopia your project ‘Irelantis’ imagines the great sites of Ireland in fantastical scenarios. Can you explain this project to us, what’s been your motivations in producing this exceptional series of pieces?

Irelantis, I used to say, started off as a little 'pot-boiler' when I moved back to Ireland from London, and had decided I was finished with the 'troubles' stuff, and as a kind of joke, called “Ancient Monuments. In Ireland” where I was actually taking the monuments from elsewhere, overtly as a gag about whether Ireland was really so 'civilised'. But that does disingenuously talk down the ambition I think I always had for it to trigger recognition of the delusion that passes for most peoples' reality.

I got that from R.A.W. of course, who got it I believe from Alfred Korzybski (definitely worth looking up too), the notion of 'reality tunnels', that you can only really perceive that which you already believe in, or that your belief system allows. Also I was wowed to hear Van The Man once speak of his own spiritual journey, he said he searched for 'IT' for a long time, then it (excuse bad East Belfast accent) “hit him like a baseball bat” that he “was already IT”.

The whole point being that we are already 'IT', the whole bloody world is already as magical and wonderful as we want it to be, you only have to SEE it.

You also won a project recently to commerate the victims of the terrible Omagh bombing. Can you tell us what you have in mind to realise and why this project meant so much to you to be part of?

The Omagh design is a response to a very complicated and demanding brief, the most difficult perhaps is the physical one; that the work has to be divided between the actual bomb site on a busy wee street and a memorial garden 300 m away around a corner, and you have to connect the two. On the bomb site we (I'm working with landscape architect, Desmond Fitzgerald) want to put a 4.5m solid glass pillar inside of which near the top appears to float a cut-glass-crystal heart shape. This site is mostly in the shade and Omagh, as it happens, gets the least sunshine in Ireland.

Back down in the garden we will put a number of computercontrolled sun-tracking mirrors, and the sunlight, when its does shine, will be bounced off 31 little mirrors on poles, one for each of the fatalities, and back up the street and around the corner down onto the heart in the pillar. It should look amazing.

I really wanted to give them something really special, and dug very deep inside myself for the design. I've been working like a crazy man on it, and will be until August when it should be unveiled. It's a huge challenge in the face of many difficulties, including a very small budget, but I hope we'll pull it off.

It's one of the first major memorial projects in the North and I have strong feelings about memorials and public art in general, that it could and should be better done. So now I have the chance to prove it. Of course the ego, the pride of an artist is awakened by the huge challenge and I really wanted the job- but I have since been telling students: “be careful what you wish for..”

Of course the aftermath of the troubles is still only being reckoned, like any conflict much of the damage is personal and emotional and largely invisible except in a huge public mental health and suicide issue. I love the idea of helping even in only a tiny way.

Your highlight (so far) as Sean Hillen, artist?

Heaney turning up to open the Irelantis show, when no-one else would, because I was associated with the don't-mention-the-war 'troubles', and making a speech where he said he admired them so much, he “wanted to sign S.H. under them, but it had been done already” will be hard to beat.

If you weren’t an artist what would you be?

I used to think I'd like to design useful machines, maybe manufacturing machinery, or maybe repair very old clocks, but now I think I'd like to look after a forest.

What’s on your stereo at the moment, what’s making you laugh, dance, relax and cry?

Mr Kelly (John Kelly) has delighted and educated my ears for years now, and the wonderful thing is you can listen anytime through the web (just google jkensemble), otherwise it's the ZEN (oh, an Archos recently) and I do the shuffle shuffle…

The future for Sean Hillen is...

I have a new body of a dozen collages on the subject of 9-11 and all of that, so if I can make another dozen or so, and hold my nerve, and someone will show them somewhere they'll get seen, well I'm very keen about that.

I have some designs too for sculptures I want to make. Then I have a few ideas for products I'd like to patent, mostly toys - I was once an inventor for a while, won prizes and made money then lost it all again, want to have another go so I could have those ideal days you mentioned..

Finally, where can people buy your incredible work?

Yes, I actually have quite a lot of original collages from the 'troubles' era, which I had agreed to sell to the Imperial War Museum in London, (they own a few already) actually nearly four years ago but they've just been refused the money again, even though they spent a lot of time this year developing an education programme to go with them, so I'm going to break them up for a few different collections. There are also a few of the first Irelantis series, and then most of the new 9-11 ones, though I have sold two of those already.

I'm now lucky to live and work in a beautiful studio by the brilliant Irish architect Tom DePaor, and you can come see the work there, by appointment of course.

Of course you can buy inexpensive but editioned prints of any of them, and you can get original works directly from me, or through my art dealer Damien Matthews, and the prints from me or the Original Print Gallery, Temple Bar.

Previous page.

‘Collecting Meteorites at Knowth’.

This page (clockwise from top left).

‘The Four Courts from the Temple of Apollo’, ‘The Old Town of Narrowater’, ‘The Great Pyramids of Carlingford Lough’, ‘The Launch Pad at O'Connell St.’ & ‘The New Road, Finglas’.

This page (clockwise from top left).

‘The Goddess of Temple Bar’, ‘The Island of Newgrange’, ‘The Great Cliffs of Collage Green’, ‘The Gt. Eruption viewed from The Liffey’ & ‘Uniform Fragments of Coarse Rock in The Mountains of Co.Mayo’.

This page (clockwise from top left).

‘Dartford Virgin’, ‘The Professionals 4’, ‘The Professionals 5’, ‘The Professionals 3’ & ‘Pat Jennings in Bolton’.

Last page.

‘4 Ideas 3’.

SERGIO MORO.

Sergio's work is alive with absurd whimsy, his compositions are full of striking and eccentric images. They are flamboyant and playful and done with a flair for colour that is grounded only by the sophisication of the draughtmanship. I think it's fair to say I LOVE IT!

Previous page. ‘Flayer Mundo canibal. Version Magritte’.

Interviewee : Sergio Moro.

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Official site : http://www.sergiomora.com This page.

Illustrationworld characters & portrait.

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Interviewer : BrenB.

This page.

‘Child tattoos’.

Next page.

‘Arianna's Dream’.

Did your parents have an influence in you becoming an artist? Can you remember your first drawing where someone told you it was good?

I have no brothers. I am the only son, so I suppose that the biggest influence of my parents was their decision not to have any more children.

Because the fact of not having brothers did that I was a solitary and shy boy. And that made my imagination develop more, I invented things to keep me from getting bored. I was amusing myself drawing and looking at comics. A brother of my father was always giving me comics and painters' books… at the age of 9 he gave me a suitcase of oils and I started painting pictures.

I do not remember the first drawing but if I remember that when I was a child they all were saying to me “You are an artist” so I suppose that that's why today I devote myself to this…

Speaking of influences, what books and comics did you read as a kid? Does this filter into your work today?

When I was a child my favourite comic was a very famous comic in Spain that was called ‘Mortadelo y Filemón’ by Ibáñez, and also I was loving Leonardo da Vinci, I was copying his drawings to learn.

When you are inspired does it come to you in visions, where your body and mind are transformed to another plane of existence? Or are you a lateral thinker, where meticulous research and craft is the path to enlightenment?

In other words, are you a doodler or do you use references?

There are two parts, a conscious part and a subconscious.

Sometimes I draw and draw without thinking as in a trance without doing any sketches, and sometimes the idea worked very much, other times I do thousands of sketches, it depends on the work and of the moment… I believe in the inspiration and also I believe in the work… the two things seem to me of equal validity. >>

This page (clockwise from left).

‘El peque o gigante’, ‘Domador’, ‘Iluminacion’ & ‘Portada Semilla Piloto’.

This page (clockwise from top left).

‘La Fiera’, ‘Adonde me llevas’.

‘La Pantera Rosa’, ‘Amo, ama, amor, amar’, ‘Portada disco LUVE’ & ‘La petit Mort’.

This page (clockwise from top left).

‘I will count until 1000’, ‘Disco Marc Parrot. Portada’, ‘Treasures of scrap’, ‘Portada Tretze vents. Nieve’ ‘I play with fire’ & ‘Gros’.

Do you have any obsessions that try to drag you away from drawing and painting?

The obsessions appear alone and they disappear with work. At times I am not capable of reading the messages that I have created, and is when I relate to other people that have other readings of my own work and helps me to know me and to grow.

I am legally (well not legally it’s probably more socially) classed as blind, due to my thick glasses. Do you struggle against daily injustice and prejudice?

I try to act in a just way with my nearby environment and to defend myself when my environment is unjust with me.

I believe that the way of changing the world is that every person takes care of our most nearby environment.

If each one worries in improving his intimacy, its own life…

I believe that would improve society.

For those readers unlucky enough not to live in Barcelona, can you describe the art & design scene as you experience it?

The truth is that I am a little disconnected of a lot of what happens in Barcelona.

I go to very little to openings, am usually at home with my fiancée, and when I go out always go to the same bars with the same friends. But if there is greatly movement now in Barcelona it is of Fashion!

You are sailing down a stream when you come across a seriously injured dolphin. You approach this beautiful and intelligent creature to see if it’s still breathing and if there is any way to help. As you lean towards its face its whispers through the pain, “To save me you must never draw pictures again!” What would you choose as an alternative?

I would sign up to a school of Cinema, I would make movies. Or I would make sculptures, or I would learn to play the guitar and compose songs, or I would write…

Apart from mine (obviously), whose work is really exciting you at the moment?

Yesterday, for example, I bought a book by the Illustrator Sara Fanelli, I love her work! >>

This page (clockwise from top left).

‘Conecta desconecta (Magicomora & Lusesita)’, ‘Mi camino (Magicomora & Lusesita)’, ‘Mi espacio (Magicomora & Lusesita)’.

Mis rasces (Magicomora & Lusesita), Retrofutura postcard illustration, Veneno de amor (Magicomora & Lusesita), Mi tiempo (Magicomora & Lusesita) & ‘Surfperficial (Magicomora & Lusesita)’.

This page (left to right).

‘Cartel ONCE. Quijote’, ‘Comidaparatualma’, ‘Detector divino’ & ‘Cielo’.

Thanks for taking part Sergio, we’ll just finish now with our trademark quick fire round…

Favourite bar?

Bodega Saltó in Barcelona Do you play any musical or non-musical instruments?

I played the drums when I was a teenager, I played for about 10 years, but not anymore.

This page (left to right).

‘Electro-salvaje’ painting, ‘La garras de la mariposa’, ‘La Casa del Señor’ & ‘Ama del laberinto’.

Name a dance move you have perfected?

I dance very few times … but when I dance I am spectacular, I dance in a spasmodic form, like Iggy Pop, or David Byrne .. very anarchic!

What have you successfully shoplifted?

Once I stole a comic at a Comics Fair because I was looking at it and suddenly many people appeared and it was to 3 meters to the counter… I am very bad at stealing, I become too nervous.

Best method for staying awake all night?

Spontaneous brainstorming.

This page (clockwise from left).

‘Disco Marc Parrot. Mañana’, ‘Mientras duermo’, ‘Vida’, ‘Invierno’ & ‘amor naãf’.

GO AHEAD PUNKS, LET SYNTH EASTWOOD MAKE YOUR DAY...

Interviewee : Synth Eastwood.

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Official site : http://www.syntheastwood.com -------------------------------------------

Interviewer : Richard Seabrooke.

There are a couple of interesting ways of making new friends.

The internet is great for this, all sorts of people are on there trying their damnest hardest to get your attention, and when you think about it for a minute, they only want to be your friend.

Synth Eastwood [no relation to Flint], have a novel and new way of gathering people into areas and entertaining them to the hilt.

You become their best mates and during the course you learn about them and learn about yourself.

They ask you to be creative, they give you an idea and ask you to submit a piece of work, whether it be artwork, audio, or even an installation type thing. With the combined results they hope to seduce your senses with music and booze at very special exhibitions.

They've done these little events all over the city and have just come back from Berlin with 9 disposable cameras of evidence.

Sooner rather than later Synthy will be asking the question again, “Who's gonna be my friend� and you better be ready with the right answer, choose your colours carefully.

For more information about how you can get involved check out http://www.syntheastwood.com For more on Flint check http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnVe8TovbdE

Who are the people behind Synth Eastwood?

Synth Eastwood is Al Kennington, Karl Toomey, Charlie Doran, Dave Darcy, Jon Averill and Simon Cullen. Plus the inumerable artists, bands & djs that have helped us over the last year and made the whole thing so enjoyable. Without the support of so many great people we just couldn't do it.

When and how did it come about?

A friend actually came up with the name and we liked it so much we had to use it for something! All of us have a healthy (and in some cases unhealthy) interest in music, art and design. We knew so many talented people that didn't have any platform to show their work. Likewise we also felt that there were an audience out their who wouldn't normally visit galleries and exhibitions, partially due to the perceived 'stuffiness' of the arts scene. So in 2006 we thought we'd try and strike a common ground... a kind of hybrid of exhibition, gig and nightclub.

What to you hope to achieve through the project?

We'd like to expose as many people as possible to what's going on creatively in Dublin and beyond, meet like minded people and have a lot of fun doing it.

One of the real great things about SE is that anyone anywhere can collaborate and get involved. What do you see as the most difficult challenges facing anyone wanting to get their work seen outside of projects like your own, maybe there are no problems?

Getting your work out there usually involves setting up a website or holding an exhibition. For many reasons, such as time and money, this is not always possible for people to take on. This is where we hope we can help out as much as possible.

What nuggets of advice have you garnered from your experiences, both through SE and your day-to-days, that would help anyone starting out in the creative game?

1. Jump in! Don't be afraid or intimidated by anything. You learn from every endeavor be it positive or negative.

2. Ask for help. Sometimes it's easy to forget that people are sound. Our show simply could not happen were it not for our amazing friends and peers.

3. Pool your resources. You do the design, Declan will book the venue and Maureen will take care of the music.

4. Know where you want to go & have a definite plan.

5. Look around at what else is going on. If you're thinking of starting a new night and you find there are other groups doing the same thing it is better to join forces rather than to compete. Dublin especially is small... there's only so much crowd to go round. >>

Aswell as the print based pieces which are submitted from all over the world there's also motion and music too so with that in mind can you tell us your YouTube Music Favourites?

Max Hattler - Collision

And your YouTube fun clips?

Hugh Cooney Accesorize, Accesorize, Accesorize.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9mV5uQw54k

Limmy - Birthday Card

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-tlqP1BPbE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-3vSTiHLq4

Minilogue - Hitchhikers choice - short version http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u46eaeAfeqw

Holy Moly crazy dude on the bike http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcShjuOG_l8

While your events have happened in Dublin up to now do you have any plans to bring it anywhere else?

Yep, right now we're collaborating with local musicians and artists in Berlin to put on our first international Synth Eastwood show. It's taking place in February and will be a slightly scaled down version of our normal show.

Hopefully we'll learn a bit about foreign audiences, German beer and Schnitzel.

There's over 50 of us heading over so far so it promises to be luxurious. We all have our tricolours ready and have been practicing our Olé, Olé, Olé's.

In the meantime where can people get their hands on copies of the print work, they're for sale right?

Everything is up on our site right now. If people want to contact us about a piece they like we can arrange a reprint with the artist and shipment. We hope to set up an online shop where all the prints, music tracks and visuals will be available soon.

For anyone who hasn't been to one of the shows can you give a rough overview of what they can expect to do, see, etc...

Folks can expect to experience great work from artists & musicians that has been specifically created for the night. All the work follows a set theme so its really interesting to see what people come up with. Later in the night the emphasis shifts slightly to audience interactivity, where patrons get a chance to control the music and visuals being played. Shortly after this our musical guests then bring another element to show and the atmosphere becomes more like that of a gig or crazy dance club.

Any other plans for Synth Eastwood in 2008 that you can let us into?

Apart from our regular Synth Eastwood shows we're going to be involved in numerous side projects this year. We're teaming up with Down Town Sounds to put on a day long show/ exhibition on Good Friday. Other plans include an exciting project with Marvel Comics and hopefully we're going to bring SE on tour to colleges around the country. More details about all of this will be posted on our site very soon. Our brief for Show Four will also be released soon. To keep up to date with all of this join our mailing list!

Blu - Fantoche [Stop Motion Wall Animation] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRICoxHqQ9I

Tim & Eric Christmas Song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwnejAJixMo

Andy Mckee - Guitar - Drifting http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddn4MGaS3N4

Rambo 4 trailer

Have you any plans to publish the work which has been submitted to the project?

We've 3 shows worth of great work under our belt so far so publishing a book is definitely on the cards... hopefully after the next few shows.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M1KiXWWTxg

Mr. W http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mTLO2F_ERY

2 Girls 1 Cup http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-bsP04dyjY

Banned Commercial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nojWJ6-XmeQ&feature=related

Beastie Boys - Infomercial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gDSwZhvu_c

Big Train - Jockeys http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6fmBwSgso4

Dave Goes Boo! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QoJcXWhc_4

Roddick vs Pong http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UfGpt-0ncc

RatMonster http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TMTZvIQJ2k

All Through The Night - Escort Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqRDct1IDI8

mailinglist@syntheastwood.com

WK INTERACT.

With street art going through a time of incredible interest from art critics and investors alike, you only have to look at the prices being paid at auction for the likes of Banksy, Faile, Nick Walker, etc., you’d be forgiven for believing that the artists within have sold out in favour of the pay-off. Not so, the artists rarely see any benefit in the resale market and also, as people like WK Interact are testament to to, you can still produce exceptional, challenging work which sells strongly without having to compromise your intent or ambition for the work that you make.

In the business of bringing visual masterpieces to the streets around us his work is impressive in photos but overwhelming in reality. We caught up with him just after his recent show ‘The Trail’ at NYC’s Espeis Gallery run by Commonwealth.

The following pages feature images from that show along with other work which he’s been up to since his last feature in Candy.

Interviewee : WK Interact.

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Official site : http://www.wkinteract.com ---------------------------------------

Interviewer : Richard Seabrooke.

So, how are things with you since we last had you in the magazine, how’s NYC treating you since?

No complaints, lots of work, lots of shows. I enjoy being occupied.

You recently had a show ‘The Trail’ as Espeis in NYC run by the amazing Zoe and David at Commonwealth. What was your inspiration behind the show?

The concept behind it was a 'Trail' of evidence, of works, leading up to a moment of impact.

Of course there was emphasis on motion throughout the process and the encounters along the 'Trail' were transformed into a body of evidence, a sort of mini retrospective.

How long did it take to bring the entire show together, did you face any particular challenges in realising your vision?

Some of the larger pieces had been with me for a number of years, self-portraits that changed and evolved as my experiences did.

Other pieces were done specifically with the concept in mind so altogether its a little difficult to pinpoint a time frame.

Last year you collaborated with Shepard Fairey / Obey for a show ‘east/west propaganda project’ which showed in Tokyo and then Paris for Agnés B. How did that come about?

Shepard and I have been friends for a number of years, brothers in arms (paper and glue), so it was only natural for us to eventually work together on a show.

How did it all go, how did yourself and Shepard get on with creating such a big show?

We designed the entire setup ourselves and because it was on such a grand scale, it took quite a few days complete the larger pieces which were done on the spot and we still had time to go bombing the street.

What were the themes you both visualised with this show, any plans to bring it anywhere else?

It was titled East West Propaganda, with me representing the East Coast and Shepard representing the West Coast.... but the title also functioned as a global representation of us coming from the West (US) to the East (Paris and Tokyo) to exhibit.

Agnes B did not make any plans that I know of to take the show anywhere else.

I’m always amazed by your art, both in its quality and in the many mediums you utilise to produce it. Firstly, how do you ensure quality is never compromised...

Thanks, I guess I just would not show anything I am not satisfied is up to my own standards.

Secondly, what determines the approach and final medium of application used, be it paper, street, film, installation, found image, objects, clothing, etc.? Maybe you determine the item first and then work onto that?

Found objects and surfaces tend to have a direction of their own dictating, I do what they want me to and search for what already works with the concept rather force my ideas upon it.

What do you hope your work achieves when it makes it out of your studio and out into the real world, whether that’s into a gallery, into someone’s home or onto the street?

It is amazing to take an object I have found on the street and give it a new life and purpose. I am satisfied evoking merely an emotion from the viewer but I am truly pleased when the piece has caused the viewer to think.

Your work is becoming more and more sought after so just in case anyone hasn’t spent their Christmas money or has come into a little inheritance where can they buy your work, originals and prints?

Espeis Gallery. http://www.espeis.nu/?section=bios&id=7 Maxalot http://www.maxalot.com Any more shows upcoming in 2008 that we need to book flights for?

London.

NEXT ISSUES OUT SUMMER 2008.

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