Vigo

In the summer of 2008 I returned to Galicia to visit Vigo. A Coruña had felt like a place people went on holiday, but Vigo felt like a place where people worked. It is primarily a commercial and fishing port located in the Rías Baixas region of Galicia, famous for Albariño, Ribeiro and oysters. (click images to enlarge)

Developing Ideas 03: Lithography

I am lucky enough to work at Camberwell College of Arts and as a result have access to one of the best-equipped traditional printmaking studios in the country. I therefore took at short trip upstairs and talked to Master Lithographer Simon Burbidge to see how the medium that Ravilious used might work for COMPRA. (click images to enlarge)

Developing Ideas 02: Buildings

The graphic designer in me then began to look at the structure of the shops and the buildings that house them in an attempt to create images that were a bit more iconic. (click images to enlarge)

Developing Ideas 01: People

Using reference from photographs and sketchbooks I started to draw. Initially I focused on the social interaction on which Spanish communities are built, working quickly in an attempt to capture the energy I had observed in markets and shops. (click images to enlarge)

Emory Douglas

 “As minister of Culture of the Black Panther Party, Emory Douglas visualised the party’s ideology and used art to educate and inspire people to action. Douglas art is part of a long tradition of activist protest graphics. His critiques of racism, inequality, capitalism, and imperialism are still relevant. In forty years since Emory’s first appeared, racism poverty, and illegal wars continue, and his art remains a powerful weapon against social injustice.” Carol A Wells, Centre for the Study of political Graphics, Los Angeles.

Douglas created images of a way of life that had very little visual record at that time and I imagine that seeing a graphic image of themselves in print must have been extremely empowering for the children of the ghetto in the late nineteen sixties.

Eric Ravilious HIGH STREET

In 1938 Ravilious created a set of 24 autolithographs of shops, which were found on the British High Street of that time, for Country Life books. These prints formed a book for children printed by the Curwen Press. Unfortunately, only 2000 books were printed because it’s printing plates were destroyed during the blitz but as a result High St has become one of the most highly sought after artists books of the time. For me it’s value lies in the intimate record it makes of a world that no longer exists. Drawings of everyday things communicate the detail of social history in a really unique way. Artists are often not concerned with the mundane and ordinary and as a result he work of those that do enables a special resonance.  

Why COMPRA? 01

On my return from Galicia, I started to realize that I had to do something with all the material I had generated. Thoughts around the importance of buying and selling, the damage of consumerism, the social significance of small owner occupied businesses and need to preserve the visual diversity of the High Street began to crystallize into an argument that I felt needed to be made. The question was how to make it? I have always believed that to draw something you need to respect it. This is different to taking a photograph, you spend more time with your subject and as a result somehow the act imparts value to it. With this in mind I looked at the work of Emory Douglas and Eric Ravilious. Two very different artists working with very different subject matter, but both managed to produce images that force us to respect this subject matter.