If you’re out and about in London tomorrow, you could do worse that taking a trip south of the river to the annual Comica Comiket. A host of familiar friends will be there, and it’ll give you an excuse to check out the exhibition in and out of the Pumphouse while you’re there. Say hello to everyone for me!
After Complex finishes, I have a few things planned as to what I want to follow it with. One of these is the little fellah you can see here above, a story entitled Diesel, which I ran most of in the earlier anthology issues of Strip For Me. I’ll be cleaning them up and finishing the story, finally. It’s interesting to go back and look at the old pages – there are some things that I have forgotten how to do in there, and some things I never should have done in the first place. The new letters are going to help, and that’s the truth.
Look for Diesel in the weeks following Complex’s conclusion, sometime at the end of November.
One of the comics-based things that I’ve been doing recently came to fruition last week, in conjunction with the opening of the Hypercomics exhibition curated by Paul Gravett at the Pumphouse Gallery in Battersea Park.
Hopefully you’re all already aware of that exhibition, which takes place over four floors of the gallery, with artists Warren Pleece, Adam Dant, Dave McKean and me old mucker Daniel Goodbrey taking a floor each to transform it through comics. If you don’t know about it already, then go and have a look at this site, which should fill you in on all the details. It’s well worth a visit.
However, that’s not the only reason you should brave the wilds of London public transport to make your way to Battersea, because the boathouse there has some very lovely art adorning its sides that I had a little hand in.
Spinning off from Mr Goodbrey’s Archivist piece in the main gallery, I was asked to organise something that would feature made-up megastar Hieronymus Pop in a series of short, self-contained strips, all detailing aspects of the fictitious event The Battersea Park Free Festival.
The eight strips that run around the walls of the boathouse are the responses to this brief of myself and a number of other phenomenal artists that I invited to be part of the installation. In the piece we see Pop introducing a new song from the stage, called “The Ghosts of Battersea”, and then follow events for the duration of the song. As the music plays we see that all of history seems to have converged on this event, as roman centurions and Victorian ladies can be glimpsed amongst the crowd, and celebrities of the past, future and present seem to mingle as they dance.
That was the general idea, anyway. You can judge for yourself if you go down and see it in place. I saw it for the first time last Wednesday, and I have to say that I was pleased with the results. Seeing the images blown up to such a gigantic size was pretty great, and I was fascinated by the way some of the rougher linework in my own art came out at that size.
Here’s what it looked like:
Here’s the first strip, courtesy of our old friend, Mr Sean Azzopardi.
Joe Decie provides this beautiful piece. Joe is, for my money, the best of the current crop of autobiographical cartoonists in the UK. Take a look at his site and you’ll soon agree.
This is by me. I like how ugly the main figure is, and I like the dots. My new work is all about dots just now.
This one is by Paul O’Connell, of Sound of Drowning fame, and is fairly jaw-dropping. He’s managed to fit in loads of Battersea references, and manages to capture exactly what I had in my head when I imagined the crowd at the concert. Do go and read more of his comics, they are great.
More wonderful work, this time by Ellen Lindner. Look out for Ellen’s art in the upcoming fifth issue of Whores of MENSA.
Me again. I like the lady who looks like Agnes Varda in the background.
Lovely work by John Cei Douglas. I’m very pleased that I asked John to be part of this, as there are just not enough comics by him in the world. I hope you’ll all encourage him to make more!
The last strip is by me again, and ties the whole thing back to the beginning, so the viewer can find themselves locked in an endless reading cycle, and walk around and around the boathouse until old age catches up with them. Or something.
That’s not quite all, though. There’s a comic containing all the strips (plus a couple more) that is on sale in the gallery shop. It’s the perfect thing if you want something to remind you of the great time you had at the fictitious Battersea Park Free Festival.
So please, go along. Enjoy. Have fun!
Here’s a couple of panels from something I scanned in today. Where it will end up, I don’t yet know. But there’s more of this to come, I’m sure!
