MONIKER ART FAIR.

I was lucky enough to stumble across the Monkiker Art Fair whilst wondering through the streets of wonderful Shoreditch having just left the Nowbrow gallery last weekend. Probably a bad thing as I left wanting to purchase most of the prints on show, all being sold for a fare few pennies indeed. Set in an old Victorian warehouse (the Village Underground) the building alone was pretty amazing.  

                             

Having stopped to watch some graffiti artists (one half of Dabs Myla) make their mark on the side of what looked like an old tube station I noticed a crowd of people walking through a shady looking entrance so I thought I’d follow. At first I thought I’d walked into a private show but then was approached bya women with a programme. Turned out it was the Moniker At Fair, an exhibition first debuting last year that celebrates and promotes the international scope of street art and more. It differed from most shows I’ve seen including both gallery style exhibits and signature project spaces to suit all tastes. I thought it was great to see what I class as more contemporary, less mainstreamy art in an exhibition as there were lots of designers, artists and illustrators displaying their work that I’ve only ever seen in magazines or online. Very cool. 

 

 The fair showed off many international as well as UK based artists including Shepard Fairey, Dabs Myla, Nate Frizzell, D*Face, BLDG with exhibitors such as Scream, The Garage and Stolen Space. All worth looking at.The Dabs Myla space really jumped out to me as being one of the strongest pieces and seemed to engulf the viewer into their world of fun (pictured above). I was reading about the duo in this months Juxtapoz and seeing their work in the flesh really represented how they came across in interview.

Having seen so many alternative artists doing so well its definitely given me a well needed push to get into gear with my own practise. I think I'd always stereotyped that it was only the fine artists that made a living off their work but this group of work has told me otherwise.

 

NOBROW.

Last weekend it was time for one of my trips down to the “big smoke”, which seems to becoming more and more frequent (something I could get used to). I had a digital surf of the interweb to see what treats London had in store for me and stumbled across that Nobrow had a Ben Newman exhibition on beneath the shop. I’ve been a big fan of the Nobrow team for a good while and spoke to John Boam last year concerning my PDP aspect of the uni course so I thought it would only be polite to have a look. And I’m glad I did, even though it was MUCH smaller then I anticipated.

The upstairs section of Nobrow consists of a small shop crammed with zines, Prints, books, plush toys, stickers, tea towels! (Pretty much anything else you can think of that you can stick a print on). I think I was in the shop for a good hour or so browsing book after book when I know it was time to go downstairs when the friendly staff were looking at me as if to say, “Are you going to buy anything?”

The first thing that smacks you in the face you when you go downstairs is the amazing smell of screen-printing ink which I can’t get enough off. I honestly thought the gallery was going to be on a much larger scale but the quaint size of it gives a real feel for the work on show. MASKS is Ben Newman’s solo exhibition consisting of a set of brightly coloured prints as well as wooden mask interpretations. The exhibition is based around how Newman has looked at ceremonial masks in various countries and combined them with his interests in geometric shapes, folklore, strange creatures and colour theory. Newman (with the help of his father Colin) made the three-dimensional masks as a response to the prints and compliment each other really well.

Its not often you seen an artist experiment with dimensions out of their comfort zone but Newman has definitely hit the nail on the head here as they looked amazing.  The prints alone would have worked well as they are a typical example of how Newman manages to fuse bold shapes and bright colours to create his weird and wonderful creatures BUT along side the masks they really came to life. The masks oozed personality and charm, bringing the exhibition to life.

 Having not been to the Nobrow shop/gallery before I can confidently say I’ll definitely be making another visit next time I’m down.  They always seem to have something pretty cool going on so check out the website for events and publications.

Apologies for the bad phone photos.

GRAPHIC GURU EVENT.

Yesterday afternoon the first (I think there’s more to come) Graphic Guru’s even took place in college, where tutors had selected a small number illustrators that had graduated from Stockport that are now working successfully in the professional trade of illustration. This talented bunch of people consisted of Chris Madden, Ben Jones, Liam Bardsley, Natalie Wood, Rose Lloyd and Pete Adlington. They’d been asked to talk to the third years to open our eyes a bit to what we had to come and share their tales of experiences in the real world working with clients and live briefs. If you haven't already seen their work, have a jump over to their sites as they're all amazing at what they do!

It was a really good experience to be able to go around and casually chat to each of them about what they were currently working on, previous work, what they were interested in and their inspirations and motivations. We didn’t really have massive amounts of time but I still gained some good tips when dealing with clients through their own personal experiences with studio visits and art directors. It was nice to hear it face to face from them and that sometimes it doesn’t always run the smoothest but you learn from the little mistakes and build up more confidence as time progresses (not too much though).

After working our way around each of the illustrators we were then separated into smaller groups and assigned to one “Graphic Guru”. I was incredibly lucky to be placed under the watchful eye of Chris Madden, which I’m massively happy about. As well as being  in reality, really talented he’s a genuinely nice, down to earth person that I’ve met a few times before and be full of quality advice along with …. Criticism. The idea of Chris’ role is to act as a sort of mentor over the next coming months that we’re able to contact in relation to our work, I shall try to my hardest not to pester.

I’m really looking forward to the remaining time in third year and feel that with the confidence of having a Guru to aid my pleas it should hopefully work out just nice.