ELCAF- The Festival Review

Last Sunday, I paid a visit to ELCAF, the very first East London Comics and Arts festival. The brain child of uber cool graphic novels publishers Nobrow, the festival took place at the Village Underground in the heart of Shoreditch.

Which was a good thing! When I arrived at the venue at 4pm, the queue outside was really gigantic and not moving fast at all! I decided to go to Brick Lane and the market and come back later. I found out later a few of my fellow comics enthusiasts were put off by the crowds and did not go back. But I did, at about 6 pm. It turns out the queue had vanished and it was not a problem walking in. That said, it was still quite busy inside!

I am really pleased to see quality comics taking off in the UK. Being from France,  I have for a long time despaired at the quasi non-existent comic book scene here in England. Of course, the likes of Paul Gravett and Becky Barnicoat (whom I interviewed for Amelia's magazine a while back) have fronted the resistance and championed home-grown graphic artists' books for a while but much of what has always been selling here has been either from the US or the mainland. Or ir's been low quality fanzines and some good stuff. But that seems to be changing significantly now.

I was really pleased to see my friends the Fancy Butcher and Lord Hurk selling at the festival. You will be able to see them again the International Alternative Press fair. This is where we met last year, when collaborated on murals at the Sassoon gallery.

I bought a few goodies from Self-Made heroes and discovered a few new bookshops and artists. Plus there were the usual suspects at these sort of things. The evening finished with a free concert from the Dead Pirates and my photograph above does not do justice to their amazing animation!

Visions of the Walworth Jumpers at Sassoon gallery

On Sunday the 5th of June, I completed the mural I had been working on for a few days at the Sassoon gallery. Titled "Holy Shit!:Visions of the Walworth Jumpers", the show was a gathering of four graphic artists under the arches of Peckham Rye.

The lovely Peter Lally, organizer of the International Alternative Press Fair. 

We were four artists committed to rebeautifying the gallery and were given just a week to do so. I started the mural quite late in the week. These 7 days were quite challenging because I was in the middle of marking/doing assessments for my 3rd year Illustration students at the university of East London and also being engaged with other smaller assignements.

The lovely daughter of the Sassoon gallery managers.

Is it a lighthouse, a candle or a...penis?!

One strand of my work is about subverting imagery taken from established mainstream strands of culture. Here the religious brief, inspired from Mary Ann Girling really suited me perfectly because I had an opportunity to play with classical iconography and apply my own modern twist on it. The arches where the gallery is situated was the location for many wacky sects in the Victorian era and to this day, the area is peppered with churches of all denominations. Philip Hoare's book on the New Forest Shakers was of particular inspiration.

Pink eyes? Is it a classical painting? They must be positively alien!

I revisited Michelangelo's sistine chapel paintings, William Blake's prints and Gustav Doré's bible woodcut engravings.

Lord Hurk's painting. one of the other three artists doing work for the show.

The Krah came in and crafted this in one day with the help of an assistant. A well oiled and  impressive business!

Kevin Ward's pastoral/ voodoo dance.

I like this little guy!

There was an advantage to having started last and using colour last also. After a little chat with the gallery owner, I decided it would serve the show and my work best to try and tie in all the other disparate murals together by taking one colour from each mural and using it in my own.

I borrowed the grey from The Krah's, the orange from Hurk and the pink form Kevin's.

I am very happy with the final result. One reason I like doing murals so much is that you can't be too precious about the process and the result. It allows you to be bold and unattached to the work as these murals are not permanent.

The Sunday zine fair and Start your Own Cult workshop in full swing.

The Editions of You stand.

Kevin Ward at work under the watchful eyes of my demoness/ priestess!

BBC Radio 5 political correspondant John Pienaar came down to interview the team behing the fair. I have to say I was not aware of the political connection when I took on this assignement and was quite surprised when I saw Pienaar come down to the gallery. So folks, any political connection here made is the fair's and not my own. I prefer to be in control of the political tags I put onto my work, if and when I chose to.  And so far, I am more interested in forms of social commentary.

That said, the interview was pretty funny!

The Argument

 

 Image courtesy of Valerie Pezeron 2010.  No reproductions allowed without permission.