Live Hazard Collective Illustrated Concert 2

I am posting here the rest of the photos from the illustrated concert that followed the private view of the Sanctuaries exhibition at Rich Mix London on the 6th of February 2014.

The illustrated concert was well received with a good crowd attending the event. There was a nice chilled athmosphere on the night, with many friends and colleagues dropping by to show their support!.

We had organised a set list for the event to go smoothly. Each pairing of visual artists with musicians were to go on the stage for a maximum of 20 mns each.

Ben Baal-Bowdler started with Gary Embury drawing live. Gary had prrepared some textures, images and collages in advance to then play with and draw on during the set. See Gary's Reportager blog entry about the event here. That contrast of Ben's athmospheric electronic music with Gary's textured visual language was, I thought, a good mix to start the event with as Guy and I aimed with our curation to bring a good contrast of visual and oral sounds. 

Members of First Hand collective (above Phoebe Halstead and Sophia O'Connor)  drew live and built a wall that was set up as part of the exhibition upstairs.

At the same time, members of Reportager's Topolski residents did some live drawings, the results of which are on the Live Hazard website here and here.

What I liked about the artists we invited to draw live is that they all brought very diffrent drawing styles to the event. Artist Rachel Gannon drew live on several transparancy layers, creating a rich visual piece. 

While the event went on, we still had a private view updtairs of the Sanctuaries exhibition. It was pretty busy and dynamic!

While Rachel was busy drawing, Jo Thomas was doing the lectronic set she has become so reknown for.

Then Mikey Georgeson's action man showed up! That was fun!

Mikey was paired with Yumi Hara Cawkwell and Guy Harries's Sonic Rituals set. There again a nice contrast and balance.

All the while people were drinking, chatting and watching the illustrated concert, and reportage artists were busy drawing upstairs, downstairs...

It was all pretty energetic and mysterious on that set! With a nice cheeky sense of  humour.

Below we have Mr Guy Harries deep in thought. And so he should be! we now had Times artist Tim Vyner in the house! And wow, what Tim did with the Ipad was amazing!

Tim uses Brushes app to make digital images normally. And used his deep knowledge of Ipad drawings to do something which was part illustration, part animation.

 Tim took us on a visual journey that fit perfectly with Illi Adato and Yoni Silver's classical sound.

 
Among the art savvy audience, we had Derek Brazell of the Association of Illustrators come and pay us a visit.

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!