The Other Art Fair

My friend Rohan was an exhibitor at The Other Art Fair, a new show next to The OXO Tower in Southbank.
The websites description: 'London's newest art fair that provides a fresh, open platform to connect art buyers of all tastes and experience directly with young, emerging artists before they are signed.'


The exhibition was nuts! I went along to help him out for a day, it was more inspirational than I could have imagined and I met some wicked artists and saw some brilliant work, here I've included photographs of the stuff which I found most attractive and pretty or conceptually interesting. This post would be ridiculously long if I stuck in all 200 odd images...


I have included the link to the website although it is no longer on. 
http://www.theotherartfair.com/

   

Tahnee Lonsdale

She was one of my favourites, her use of colour and marks combined with her abstract distinctive style really amazed me! I fell in love with her paintings...

Lyndsay Martin

Delphine Lebourgeois 

The wonderful spectacular Rohan Samuel

(...to be updated)

work in progress

I've been working on layout ideas and exploring imagery through drawing for the fairy tale book. I want to capture a dark atmosphere with a particular pace that can be followed in a way that sets the scene and has the sense of being followed, watched and deceived. Which is exactly what happens to the character, Little Red Riding Hood in the story...

Here's some shiz...

Towards the end of the book where the wolf munches down on the girl and is happily fed for days on end from his grand feast...(need to scan in better quality images and remove the bits that look rubbish)

Pen and Ink

Poster for University of Westminster Creative Writing Society

Little Red Riding Hood

I will definitely include this known tale, it has been adapted constantly and the most recognised version is most probably by German brothers, The Brothers Grimm. They made a collection of fairy tales for children called 'Children's and Household Tales' which is now more commonly known as 'Grimm's fairy tales' - Wikipedia.

In their version, Little red Riding Hood and the grandma get eaten by the wolf and a woodcutter bloke comes and hacks the wolf open (still pretty dark not gonna lie) and saves the day, they all go home happily before the wolf wakes up. In the classic version, the wolf in fact munches down Little Red and granny and lays in the grandmothers bed happily after having his belly filled. Nice. So where is the happily-ever-after here? That's right, there never was one, originally anyway...

Here are some rough ideas for pages and layouts:

Characters:

Little Red Riding Hood

Exhibition - V and A Museum of Childhood

We went to somewhere or another in London to see two current shows at the museum of childhood which are very beneficial to my project. One was called 'The Stuff of Nightmares' which was about the dark and creepy aspects of fairy tales - it explores this dark side as opposed to the innocent happily-ever-after that people seem to associate with them.
The display was spectacular! Even more so because the majority of it - a forest of evil creatures, strange characters and happenings (the ideal setting for a whimsical trip into a fairy tale), were created by children who worked alongside artists for the project.

I really felt like I had stepped into one of The Brothers Grimm's or Perraults narratives. It was very atmospheric and impressive.
Here is the link for this show: http://www.vam.ac.uk/moc/whats_on/exhibitions_and_displays/the_stuff_of_nightmares/index.html

The camera used was on my effing blackberry so I need to go back at some point with a decent camera and take some decent photographs!

Various other bits and bobs from The Stuff of Nightmares

(Creepy as hell itself)

The other show we saw was 'Magic Worlds', this was a wonderful collection of dreams, fantasy and fairy tales. It took you on a journey of narrative and history surrounding classic fairy tales and literature. It was full of books, illustrations, sculptures, puppets and toys. It had a traditional feel which I loved for it being so nostalgic. 

Link to this exhibition: http://www.vam.ac.uk/moc/whats_on/exhibitions_and_displays/magic_worlds/index.html

Photographs from 'Magic Worlds'

Cinderella

Lord of the rings

Alice in Wonderland

Hansel and Gretel

Snow White and The seven Dwarves