Britain
Made in
A themed exhibition featuring 24 x 24 inch artworks from contemporary artists living and working in the United Kingdom.
September 10th 2010 to October 1st 2010 London Miles Gallery
Br
Made in A themed exhibition featuring
24 x 24 inch artworks from contemporary artists living and working in the United Kingdom.
Britain Exhibiting artists: Studio Diablo Michael Forbes Astrid Foreman Mr Frivolous Mr Penfold Mike Hall Ink Fetish Ben Jensen Nom Kinnear King Thomas Knowles Penny Andrew Rae Carrie Reichardt Claudia Sabe Maddy Sargent Mooselumps
Paul Smith Paul Sontag Alec Strang Rourke Vandal Xue Wang Kevin Wayne Chloe Woodgate Alex Young
Maddy Sargent
www.maddysargent.com
Tent city. Digital Print edition 1/1. 24 x 24 inches. Framed. £490.00 “The British Music Festivals bring together some of the best quirks of the UK and it’s public. From queuing, Wellington boots, traditional Ales & Beers- to the classic wet weather, no other country can match it! “
I grew up in the sunny seaside town of Hastings, and am now currently living and working in West London. I’ve spent many a happy hour trawling local junk shops, searching for curious objects and photos to inspire my artwork. I work in mixed-media and collage, and love to produce both 2D and 3D pieces. My most recent clients include Hodder & Stoughton, Howies, Bella Union Records and The Phoenix Cinema.
nom kinnear king
www.nomchomski.com
Cassandra.. Oil on wood. 24 x 24 inches. £1,000
“The subject of the piece is the character ‘Cassandra Mortmain’ the 17 year old thinker and writer, from the novel ‘I capture the castle,’ written by its author Dodie smith with a great nostalgia for Britain. The book was based on a down and out bohemian family in the 1930’s living in a converted castle. I have combined my idea of Cassandra with the image of a pheasant for my own nostalgia, as it is one of my favourite creatures as they always wander over my flat in Norfolk.”
I studied Fine Art Print and photo media At Norwich school of Art and Design. And have recently returned to Norfolk after living and painting in Brighton, Melbourne and London. My oil paintings and mixed medium drawings are focused on the creation of female characters that live by their daydreams. Using a combination of models and myself with my own possessions and things, which I’d wish for, I sketch to collage together the character and her surroundings, changing reality along the way. I see the world of my characters as a colourful mixture of imagination and folklore from various cultures fact or fiction.
Paul Sontag
www.paul-sontag.com
Francis. 24 x 24 inches. Oil on canvas. £1,100 “I always have to have some sort of a personal relation to my subject I went for a portrait of Bacon as he’s one of my great heroes and I believe one of the more iconic faces in art world.” Paul started painting at 14 and formed somewhat addiction like fascination with it. He finished his Fine Art degree in Cambridge in 2010 and still considers himself self thought.
Michael Forbes
www.michaelforbes.co.uk
I’m Alright Jack. Oil on board. 24 x 24 inches. £2,000 “The title “I’m Alright Jack” is taken from the British film starring Terry Thomas. If you are reading this and YOU are a banker, then please buy this painting and give it to the first stranger you meet, as you are probably paying for it with their money in the first place. Ooooh maybe that’s all a bit serious, …… Hey its a funny man with an ugly dog, lots of pretty colours and it might go with your sofa. Jeez buy it for the frame alone if you only knew how much that cost me. Dog Save the Queen The upper crust cad or dirty rotten bounder was often Terry’s character in his many enjoyable films. As a child I was always excited when one of his films would come on TV, “Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines” or “Mote Carlo or Bust”. Terry would be determined to win at any cost, his character playing rotten tricks or resorting to sabotage to achieve his goals. I loved those films then as I still do today. I used his face for my painting because I saw his character he plays in movies similar to the behaviour of the banking system. Looking out for themselves and doing whatever they liked to come out on top. Playing rotten tricks by lending money to people knowing they could never pay it back, then selling on the debt to unknowing investors, while rubbing their hands. As well as the bounder, Terry in his bowler looking like a banker or someone in the city, I gave him the body of a hooligan a lout, a yobbish chav on an ASBO sticking it up to society and not giving a fuck for anyone but himself. It is often the working class or rather the non working class that is pointed at as the thorn in the side of society. Made out to be nothing but a burden on resources but surely never has any group of people before the Bankers caused such misery and financial damage to our nation and never received a punishment for it. Indeed many are not only still in their jobs but receiving record bonuses. Which is truly sticking it right up ‘em. This for me is an image of our times.” Hailing from the Scottish Highlands, self-taught artist Michael Forbes has evolved from a dark-subject surrealist — whose early paintings containing animals in various anthropomorphic situations landed him an exhibition at Sotheby’s London “Animals in Art” show — into a “pop-surreal” artist whom director Terry Gilliam finds “surreal, mischievous, wryly sweet, and chockablock with wit and wonder,” and whose latest series is featured in this months magazine.
chole woodgate
www.bunnylebowski.com
Queen. Oil and mixed media on linen. 24 x 24 inches. £700
‘’Queen’ -My British Icon is part melancholic English rose, part gothic Queen, part Punk. She shows the old and the new, the grimey and the beautiful that I see in London everyday. She is both royalty and rebel youth.” Chloe was born in the UK in 1986, and started taking a strong interest in traditional portraiture in her teens. She went on to a Degree in Fine Art where her portraits evolved to reflect her interest in film, fantasy and the macabre. Using oils and mixed mediums, her work typically depicts isolated females that employ a cinematic stillness and anxiety, the fantasy of the girls contrasting with the reality of the thick, dripping gestural paint. Chloe is currently living and working in London.
Alec Strang
www.alstrang.com
The Delingquent Dandy. Pencil and acrylic on paper. 24 x 24 inches. £420 “The delinquent dandy” Which is a quote from the late Sebastian Horsley. The piece is about the British Dandy incorporating textile patterns in the style of William Morris. It’s a tribute to the iconic “English eccentric” that seems to be unfortunately dying out.” Alec Strang is an illustrator based in London. He was born in Derby and later traveled down to London to start his BA at the London College of Communication where he studied Graphic Media Design specializing in illustration. After graduation he continued working on his personal projects later getting representation through Degree art wherehe sold one off pieces and prints. He has since created artwork for Time out, Don’t Panic, Alfa Romeo and Plan B studio. In addition has had work published in Dazed and Confused, Empty, Elle Girl, IDN and paper magazine.
Astrid Foreman
www.astridforman.com
Girly Wednesday. Oil on canvas. 24 x 24 inches. £300 “Girly Wednesday is a phrase coined by myself and five of my female friends. Every Wednesday we’d meet up at the same cafe, at the same time, and discuss the trivialities of our lives. The painting was inspired by a visit to London we went on together. To me, Britain is defined by the sentimental nature of these trips away with good friends, teamed with an inevitable reel of photographic memories that never fail to reignite the fond recollection of the day’s events.”
Astrid’s paintings are sourced by photography and deal in the exploration of emotion and human nature. Fascinated by the visual transition from photography to painting she combines her perception of human interaction with her passion for the act of using paint to convey a visually representational outcome. Captivated by people and expression, Astrid focuses her attention to painting portraits. She is completely absorbed with exploring through paint, the way in which the slightest changes in facial contours can distinguish not only human recognition but also emotion.
kevin waYne
www.kevinwayne.co.uk
Just what is it that makes our homes so depraved, so appalling. Wood, Card, and Acrylic. 24 x 24 inches. £1,200. “It is my re-working of the famous Richard Hamilton Pop collage ‘Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing? I have attempted to create a dark and surreal window to a view of contemporary British depravity.” I have always been inspired by objects that draw you in with movement, colour and usually flashing lights. Classic pinball machines, museum dioramas and Victorian miniature theatres are the kind of things that really get me going - sad but true. My artistic heroes are too many to mention, but here is a short list of the absolutely essential (in no particular order) Joseph Cornell, Daniel Clowes, Terry Gilliam, Rene Magritte, Peter Blake, William Heath Robinson and Paul McCarthey. I try and use a lot of humour in my work, but I attempt to apply it in such a way that it masks something very sad or sinister. Over the last couple of years two overlapping themes have started to develop, one is to do with social awkwardness and the discomfort of human communication. The other explores the idea of mental and physical overload, and the attempt to escape through intricate and sometimes elaborate constructs of the imagination.
Mr. Frivolous
Skin Girls Run Peckham. Felt tip pen, pencil, watercolour, posch, and acrylic. 24 x 24 inches. ÂŁ390 The piece I am working on will be based on the skinhead movement. It something that has kind of scared me a little in the past, because of the lack of knowledge of what skins were really about. The first thing that would probably spring to mind would be the obvious image of the shaven head male, but I have chosen to focus more on the skin girl.
www.mrfrivolous.com
Mr. Frivolous is an artist from London in desperate need of a haircut. The majority of his work is deliberately depicted in felt tip pens due to the fact that he knows he can get a double pack of 24 for a pound at Pound land. Some of his artistic influences include Gustav Klimt, David Bray, Aubrey Beardsley, Jack Kirby, Audrey Kawasaki, Mike Allred, and Pat Butcher! He likes to create iconic and beautiful images but feels that the real meaning lies in ramblings of self-reflection written around some of his portraits. After 15 years Mr. Frivolous is still a Smashing Pumpkins fan and is seeking help for purchasing every single season of The OC DVD box set.
vandal rourke
www.vandalart.co.uk
Lie back and think of England. Mixed media collage. 24 x 24 inches. ÂŁ3,600. I built up minute pieces of newspaper and magazines in a way you would paint, to create depth and texture, sometimes cut into fine strips, small dots, diced but mainly ripped. This gave me the look and texture I needed, and also subtly injected the element of everyday British Life to the piece in the form of local and national newspaper stories.Then I enhanced and picked out the detail of the picture by using fine layered paintwork with acrylic, and some small areas with spraypaint, pen and pencil. The primary source for collectable works by UK artist and designer Rourke Van Dal. He was born with a wooden spoon in his gob on a council estate in Bradford, Northern England. The concrete kingdom and rundown warehouses were his playground, in a decade of Punk Rock Skins, Doc martins and skateboards. A totally self taught artist with no qualifications he nurtured his creative talents by decorating walls with a marker pen Most of His work is a reflection of his life & influences.
Ben Jensen
www.handsomedevilart.co.uk
What about Magna Carta, dis she die in vain? Mixed media on wood. 24 x 24 inches. £350 “Within this painting I’ve drawn upon my own nostalgic reflections of Britain, I have vivid memories as a child of the Duke of Wellington pub that was just down the road from where I lived, seeing the likes of Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks wrestling on Saturday afternoons round my Nans and running to the local Happy Shopper for sweets and stuff that would eventually rot my teeth, Watching Hancock’s half hour on repeat with my dad and occasionally staying up late and seeing the creepy game of noughts & crosses on the test card and its constant tone. These and other images vivid and vague seem to flicker on and off, fading in and out of my mind lived or inherited through time thats past and places I’ve been, be it 1960’s Shepherd’s Bush high rise flats my Nan lived in or Edwardian workers flicking the V. Being British to me is embracing the past and present of our nation because those two things are entwined together to forge the future.”
Paul Smith
I was made in England. Mixed medium/technique, stencil/spraypaint/paint/pen/berol/finger. 24 x 24 inches. £500. “The image is of me being knighted or poked by the Queen, its up to the audience on this one to decide, I have a watermark of the ‘Queens Tears’ image in the background, to tie in that I made/ created this image in the UK and I am from the UK ‘I was made in England’ - also, giving it a little spin as in I have been made (Mafia Don) or made into a knight/ sir (very unlikely and far fetched but for this reason thought it would be nice to create fiction)”
www.flickriver.com/photos/donlondon
I started out in ‘84’. I’d been bought up in Borneo and when I came back to England felt the confines of the concrete jungle around me. But it was to be a blessing. I looked at the stone and concrete walls in a different light, I saw them as vast spaces ready to be painted and moving spaces were even better, trains ... like cheetahs in the wild, were fast, got everywhere, but most importantly, were always ‘spotted’. I quickly learnt that a jungle kid could fast settle into his new pack when he earnt himself respect from his name and ‘got up’. I was just 12. Old habits die hard and as important to me as it was then, it is now.
Claudia sabe
www.claudiasabe.com
The Lady of Shalott. Mixed media on watercolour paper. 24 x 24 inches. £1,100 “It’s homage to the Pre-Raphaelites and to their loved ballad by Alfred Lord Tennyson.” I was born in Italy in 1980. After an art school diploma and a degree in English pre-cinema shows, I decided it was time to focus on those less traditional art forms that were already a major part of my life: tattooing and graffiti. I always was fascinated by their unconventional and antisocial essence. It was graffiti that took my work out of my private world and got me quickly sharing experiences with amazingly talented people. From painting enormous walls with hundreds of people to organizing little art shows I was part of a great and safe environment that lead me into experimenting freely. So, from paper, canvas and walls I went into skin and that’s when my strongest passion of all started and took me far from home and all over the world: tattooing. It was 2004 and since then I daily put 100% effort into it. I now successfully work full time as a tattooist in London, but I found myself back were I first started: painting at home, and it feels nice, refreshing and liberating being a little bit private again.
xue wang
www.xuewang.blogspot.com
High Tea. Oil on cardboard. 24 x 24 inches. £2.500 “My inspiration for this piece started from the magical Tudor style houses seen in Britain. The texture of old oak timbers, warped with age and the bulging walls of these buildings are to my foreign eye, the quintessence of ‘Englishness’. I also find the monochrome contrast of black wood and white plaster visually powerful. These elements I have incorporated in this painting. The sombre interior is given relief from the rear window light. The main figure is engaged in a very British ritual (tea time). She is chastened by her doll who holds the key to her liberation. Although trapped inside her darkened room, her dream reality permits her to enjoy the exterior freedom of her doll’s house.”
thomas knowles
www.thomasknowlesart.com
Abourne. Oil on wooden cylinder. 24 tall by 40 wide. £1,500 “My piece will be a 3 dimensional oil painting set on a wooden cylinder. It will be a playful and optimistic portrayal of British youth, set against a traditional British landscape, with a mythical and fantastical narrative.” Born in Lancashire, England, in 1988, I have been interested in art for as long as I can remember and recently graduated from Newcastle University with an honours degree in Fine Art. As a child I made my own toys and figurines, allowing me to play directly from my imagination with ultimate authenticity. I see this as the foundation to the production of my current work. Through my work I create simplistic, earthly and fragile narratives with an ambiguous content. I work with real issues, scenarios and contexts, and process them within a playful and fictitious method, applying flares of fantasy, melancholy and myth. Having grown up surrounded by nature, my narratives are often set in woodland, a place where my imagination is always at its most active. I try to mirror this landscape both in my paintings and in the installation of my work. Currently I paint in miniature onto wooden cylinders. Each cylinder has its own personality, depending on its shape, size and surface, and reflects the organic, often random character of nature.
mike hall
www.thisismikehall.com
Deptford wives No. 3. Glicee print on fine art paper. 24 x 24 inches. £490 “The city as a source for diverse characters and environments is a constant inspiration for me to create new images. Lately I have begun to create a series of digitally-coloured drawings, derived from location photography, that have been inspired by the ordinary, everyday people who I see locally around me in Deptford, south east London - an ongoing project which I have entitled ‘Deptford Wives’ (pun intended). This portrayal of a woman with three children - all of who she may be the mother of, or maybe not - is the latest in this series to be completed. I chose this specific image as my take on the theme ‘Made In Britain’ as I think it makes a very straightforward representation of who could be identified as ‘British’ today, in a way that is particular to my neighbourhood; and also because the phrase ‘made in’ alludes to something that is a product or creation, or in this case, the bearing and upbringing of children. In short, the subjects have been made in Britain.” Mike Hall was born in Essex, UK in 1986 and has lived and worked in London since 2005. In 2008 he graduated from the University of Westminster with a First degree in Illustration. In 2005 my satirical cartoon of the musician Pete Doherty won the Cartoon Arts Trust annual Young Cartoonist of the Year prize - the judges in this national competition included newspaper cartoonists Martin Rowson, Peter Brookes and Steve Bell. He currently lives and works in south London, UK as a freelance illustrator, photographer, cartoonist and graphic designer.
carrie reichardt
www.carriereichardt.co.uk
No Gods, No Maters. Ceramics tiles, decals. 24 x 24inches. ÂŁ550. “Using a mosaic Union Jack at its base, this piece gives an anarchist take to the Metropolitan Police Badge and includes decal vintage photos of the police running away during the Notting Hill Riots in 1976.â€? Carrie Reichardt aka The Baroness was born in 1966. Her title, used ironically, has a connection with the last Tsar of Russia, who made her grandfather an honorary general for helping the allied forces in WW1. After completing her foundation at Kingston Uni in 1988 she went on to study fine art at Leeds Metropolitan University. Much to the horror of her tutors she was awarded a First by the external examiners. Her work at this time was informed and influenced by the themes of body modification, fetishism, scientific research and animal cloning. The Baroness considers herself to be a craftivist and passionately believe that art is the most powerful tool we have to bring about social unity and positive change. She has just collaborated again with the artist Nick Reynolds on a mutated mosaic elephant for the London Elephant Parade, and will be working with him on a second one shortly for the Copenhagen Elephant parade. She is currently in Buenos Aires in Argentina, working along 39 International artists invited to mosaic the front of the new Government building for art and culture.
mr. penfold
2 Sugars Please. Acrylic and indelible ink in wooden panel. 24 x 24 inches. £600. “ 2 sugars please is a depiction of the most English thing I could think of, a posh chap sipping on a cup of earl grey.”
www.mrpenfold.blogspot.com
Mr Penfold lives and works in Cambridge, England. He is an artist who makes paintings, installations, prints and drawings. The paintings have strong linear elements. These are gracefully drawn outlines that work both with (and against) the ground. Much of the work features people he has observed in bars and pubs. He uses screen prints, woodcuts and etching to make his prints. This is a natural extension of the work he does in a professional printmaking studio where he works with many well-known artists.
Studio diablo
www.studiodiablo.com
Tuesday 27th July. I awoke early, washed, ate, packed my camera, bought a travel card and headed into The Big Smoke. My task was to capture, package and illustrate a day with the British public. I had decided on a destination which offered some of modern Britains’ finest foods, markets, bars, clubs and creativity. A place which is made up of old and new ideals, contemporary and traditional values and has a diversity of people and cultures. Over 24 hours I was out to capture an average day in the life of British people on Brick Lane. I had no idea who I was going to meet or what kind of experience I was going to have. Fear crept in and I had a preconception it was going to be difficult. What was the public going to think about being stopped in the street by a complete stranger and being Society. Digital print on canvas. 24 x 24 inches. £450 asked for a photograph for an ‘art project.’ Excited and nervous, I stopped random strangers and introduced myself. I told them about the ‘Made In Britain’ exhibition, showed them an example of my illustration style and asked if they would like to donate their image and become immortalised in some artwork. The result is what you see before you. Everyone featured in this picture I met on Brick lane that day . It was very inspirational meeting so many different characters and vibrant personalities including Sammy - the propeiter of Brick lane’s famous bakery, the Beigel Bake, The Fabulous Flirtinis! - two burlesque dancers from Brighton, Chu-i - a London based dj playing a set the Verve bar, Ashleigh - an artist from Sheffield, casually sitting outside his exhibiton at the East Galley trimming his nails, Sunny - a local restaurateur on a cigarette break, the lady in her cat hat, the street cleaner with all the facial piercings, the Vibe bar crowd and the beigel eaters to name but a few. The publics’ response made up a wonderful feeling of community spirit. Everyone was so willing to help and be a part of of the project. Infact over the course of the day I only had two people turn me down. One was an elderly man who seemed in a hurry and didn’t want to speak to me and the other was the actor who plays Gavin in the Tv Show Gavin and Stacy.
ink fetish
English Rose. Acrylic on canvas. 24 x 24 inches. £500. “My painting depicts my take on the iconic ‘English Rose’ figure.”
www.inkfetish.co.uk
Tom ‘Inkfetish’ Blackford was born in London 1981, where he currently lives and works as a freelance artist, working as an illustrator, painter and muralist throughout the London area and beyond. His work fuses together a number of his interests, from his involvement in the graffiti and street art scene to his background in self-publishing comics and passion for Japanese history and pop imagery and it’s merging with Western culture and aesthetic sensibilities.
moose lumps
www.mooselumps.com
A Grand Cavalade of Brew House streamer a la mode. Gouache, emulsion, spraypaint, silkscreen. 24 x 24 inches. £600. “My characters have gone back in time for this piece. A historical England, a merry go round of bygone periods, wigs, Elizabeth II who is now a horse (quite fitting I think) This wasn’t the England I grew up in but it’s the one I’d like to visit (I think)”
Moose Lumps Artists bio- 1990-92 BTEC diploma in multidisciplinary design, mid Warwickshire College, 1992- 95 years degree at Manchester university studying surface pattern design. 1995-98 worked freelance in fashion textiles. 1998- freelance illustration, worked for various magazines, charities, club nights, record labels. Ran a stall in Camden for 8 years selling purely my own self initiated artwork.
andrew rae
www.peepshow.org.uk
Great White Hunter. Enamels, Indian Ink and varnish on plywood. 24 x 24 inches. ÂŁ300 “This image was inspired by a Penguin book called Great Indian Hunting Stories which includes authors such as Corbett, Kipling, Orwell and Saki. The Great White Hunter is a British icon that perfectly captures my ambivalent views on British Colonialism, Sportsmanship and Heroism. Andrew Rae is an Illustrator and founding member of the Illustration Collective Peepshow. He has worked with many clients in advertising, publishing, print and animation. Clients include Time Magazine, The New York Times, Swallow Magazine, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, Die Zeit, Cancer Research.
penny
www.onepennypiece.com
‘Beaten Britain’ was originally a street piece painted on a broken garage door in a run down area in Hackney. The halftone image depicts a boxer taking a blow to the face, which interacts with the heavily dented substrate. The relationship between the image and the environment amplifies it’s meaning and has been recreated on sheet aluminum with the addition of the symbolic Union flag, specifically for this exhibition.”
Beaten Britain. Hand-cut stencil, high gloss enamel paint/spray paint on sheet aluminum. 24 x 24 inches. £800.00 Penny is a London based stencil artist who spends lots of time hand-cutting holes in paper. It is through these holes that he sprays exquisite colours to produce images that pour pleasure into your peepers. His images depict a subtly subverted vision of reality, achieved through vivid colours, distorted scale and combining organic and industrial elements. His work is well recognized by those who have seen it and has featured in many leading publications including ‘Let’s get Crafting’ and ‘Unintended Outdoor Living’. Penny joined ranks with the hugely influential urban art outlet Picturesonwalls in 2008 and has since enjoyed very successful sell out print releases. He has exhibited and sold his work around the world including London, Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and New York.
Britain
Made in
To reserve, purchase or if you have any questions regarding the artwork featured in this catalog, please contact: Sales@londonmiles.com The Made in Britain Exhibition is on show until October 1st 2010 at London Miles Gallery.
London Miles Gallery 242 Acklam Road. Westbourne Studios. London. W10 5JJ. www.londonmiles.com / (44) 020 3170 8618.
www.londonmiles.com
Copyright London Miles Gallery. 2010 Catalog designed by Tina Ziegler.