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!

New Designs in my Etsy shop!

My Etsy shop is again up and running with new listings added this week!
Two illustrations are now available to purchase, framed or unframed.

"Written by men, Blame it on God"

Drawing courtesy of Valerie Pezeron. Copyright Valoche Designs 2011. Do not reproduce without permission

Drawing courtesy of Valerie Pezeron. Copyright Valoche Designs 2011. Do not reproduce without permission

 and "José Bové and the Mac Monster"

Drawing courtesy of Valerie Pezeron. Copyright Valoche Designs 2011. Do not reproduce without permission

Mokita at Pick Me Up Somerset House

 

Last Tuesday I attended Mokita at the Pick Me Up art fair at Somerset House. The brainchild of reputed academics Roderick Mills, Darryl Clifton and Geoff Grandfield, this all day symposium had for ambition to take an in-depth critical look at illustration today. The all-mighty Adrian Shaughnessy was chair of the proceedings for the day. I understand Shaughnessy cofounded Varoom magazine and that it might be in this capacity that he was there on the day, but I still found his presence puzzling yet perhaps revealing about the status of illustration today? Could it be that the industry is still struggling with a widespread perception of it being an offshoot of graphic design? Surely there are illustrators of the status of Shaughnessy out there that would do just as much justice to the role of mediator for the talks?

On the programme were three questions; the first one “Is commerce the only real context for illustration?” was discussed by James Jarvis and Darryl Clifton. I found that particular exchange the most enlightening of the three, not least because of the well constructed Powerpoint presentation of Jarvis. “Illustrator as Author, new paradigm of the disciploine?” and “Do we need a theory of Illustration?” were respectively discussed by Luke Best with Roderick Mills and Sam Arthur and Geoff Grandfield. 

At £70, this event was a naughty treat that I thoroughly enjoyed. I guess Somerset House does not come cheap but my wish is for Mokita 2 to be more democratic and accessible to a wider audience. After all, the overriding thought of the day was for illustration to raise its profile and be on a par with photography in the mainstream British culture the way it is for the French. That said I enjoyed seeing some familiar faces there such as Gary Powell and Richard Harris, a former tutor of mine at Kingston University. 

Where were the girls? I am told Simone Lia dropped out. Why not replace her with another woman? It was a bit of a sausage fest on the day and one of the participants heckled: "It all looks rather 19th century to me!" After all, if the conference is to be a true window of the recent seismic changes within the industry, then it is only just to shed a light onto the vast amount of ladies working as illustrators. Geoff Granfield mentioned an agent told him 90% of illustration buyers are male... I’d love to meet that gentlemen and find out where he got his “facts”.