Vote For Me (please)

If anyone is feeling generous enough to spend a minute or two to vote for my piece in the Saatchi On-line Showdown I would be a very happy bunny. I have entered my giant green model kit sculpture, And When I'm a Man. Unfortunately you have to sign up first (although you don't have to give any more details other than a name and your email address) and then come back to this link to find my work – but at least then you get to check out all the great artwork by thousands of other artists and decide which ones you think should make it into the next round. If you fancy taking part then hear's the link. Cheers.

Screen Prints For Sale

Because to the large amount of traffic that my blog has been getting the last few weeks (largely due to the sudden on-line popularity of my life-size model kit sculpture, And When I'm a Man) I thought I'd take advantage and give my screen prints another mention.

If the first one looks strangely familiar then you might remember the postcard-sized single skull versions that I made and handed out free to the folks queuing for last year’s RCA Secret show. I have been promising to bring out this larger, 9 skull version for over a year now but due to a prolonged bought of slackness, I’ve only just got round to it.

These new hand-pulled, screen prints are in a limited edition of 50 - a much smaller edition than my Spidey Pods prints and each one is signed, titled, dated and editioned. I’m currently in the process of cropping the prints down from the 70 x 50 cm paper, on which they were printed, to 60 x 45 cm as this size works best with the image. However, I may keep a couple back, un-cropped, just in case anyone would like to frame them in a larger frame with a wide mount. I know that Ikea do a nice 70 x 50 cm plain black or white wood frame, with a mount, for about £20 but I’ve not tried a print in one of these frames yet so can’t comment on how they look.

As the Swirly Skulls prints are new they have only just started to appear in the London galleries and shops but if you would like to get your hands on one at my special, commission-free price (usually 30-50% less than in shops and galleries) feel free to get in touch. I'm selling them for £50 each. So if you fancy buying one just drop me a line at waynechisnall@yahoo.co.uk.

However, for those of you who love skulls but also like a little bit of colour - here’s my new, 2 colour, ‘Swirly Skulls on Pink’ screen prints. They come in a strictly limited edition of 50 and each print is signed, titled, editioned and dated. The paper dimensions are 70 x 50 cm (larger than the new, single colour, ‘Swirly Skulls’ prints which are 60 x 45 cm). And as with the new, one colour, Swirly Skull prints, these are also available for a super low, commission-free price (£60 each if bought directly from my good self). If you would like one just drop me an email at waynechisnall@yahoo.co.uk .

But if you fancy something with even more colour then how about one of my Spidey Pods prints? The most famous person, so far, to own one of these prints is the actor Andrew Garfield, who will be playing Peter Parker/Spiderman in the new Spiderman movie. Now if that’s not a good endorsement I don’t know what is.

The prints are all hand pulled, 3 colour, screen prints on acid-free, archival paper. The paper size is 58.6 cm x 54.2 cm (image 38.7 x 39.4 cm). Every print is signed and numbered (being from a maximum edition of 300). And if you would like to get your hands on one, my ‘commission-free’ price is £100 (around 33-50%off the usual gallery and shop price), just get in touch at waynechisnall@yahoo.co.uk.

To find out about the inspiration behind the print check out the original Spidey Pods sketch further down the blog.

States of Reverie – Opening Night

I'd like to say a big thank you to everyone that made it to the opening night of the States Of Reverie exhibition at Scream on Thursday 13th (I should really have posted this over a week ago but it's been a busy couple of weeks). The turn out was amazing and it was only afterwards when a friend emailed my this wireimage link that I realised how many famous faces were present. After checking out the link it seemed that the place had been full of actors, designers, musicians and models. Needless to say, I didn't see a single one of them – I must have been wondering around in my own little bubble again.

Glen Matlock (of the Sex Pistols) and Jo Wood were amongst the guests...

along with actor, Sean Pertwee - seen here with Scream's very own press officer, Lee Sharrock.

And here's a picture of me looking a little drunk (although I promise I wasn't at this point. However, what condition I ended up in at the after-party at China White's is another matter entirely) in front of my giant model kit sculpture. Incidentally, I was totally blown away by how fast and by how many sites my model kit sculpture, And When I'm a Man, appeared on after an image of it appeared in my last post. I think that Laughing Squid might have been the first to feature it but it also soon appeared in the Huffington Post and on Boing Boing, as well as dozens of other sites. So thanks everybody.

'States of Reverie' exhibition at Scream

This Thursday sees to opening of States of Reverie at the Scream Gallery in Mayfair, London - where I will be exhibiting three of my sculptures (And When I’m a Man, Magnet and Book Tower II). The other six artists in the show are Clare Chapman, Chinwook Kim, Ann-Marie James, Malgosia Stepnik, LG White and Guillermo de Zamacona.

‘And When I’m a Man’ which is basically a life-size version of myself as a 12 piece, pre-assembly, model kit will be hanging on the gallery’s office wall for the duration of the show. 
As well as being a self-portrait, the piece engages with my interest in nostalgia and childhood perceptions of adulthood (and the role that toys play in this). One important aspect of the piece is its colour. When constructing the sculpture I tried to find the same colour as the green plastic soldiers that he used to play with as a child. But rather than go back and find examples of these toys to get an accurate match, I chose a colour that matched my memory of it – recognising that the passage of time would have altered and exaggerated the memory and produced something far more lurid.

And When I’m a Man was produced in 1998 but apart from appearing in a couple of small shows around that time and a brief appearance in the film Scratch directed by Jakob Rørvik, it has sat in storage at Candid Arts in Islington – until now that is.

I created ‘Book Tower II (Nostalgia For a Childhood That Wasn’t Mine)’ (also see Book Tower) last year for a show at a gallery in Redchurch Street, East London. Although I was wasn’t 100% happy with its proportions and thought it looked a bit stubby, so last week I added two more books to raise it to just the right height. So the image you see here is slightly different than the one you will see in the gallery from Thursday onwards.
Apart from the base section, none of the books are glued together – instead they all have cut away sections and are then slotted together. The construction process for the piece started of relatively straight forward enough. However, as the piece grew and got taller the construction processes dictated that the structure had to be regularly dismantled and reassembled in order to enable the addition of more sections. And the bigger it got the more difficult it got to remember how everything fitted together – especially since all the dust covers had to be removed and then cut to size and reapplied at the final stage.

Out of all of my sculptures ‘Magnet’ has had one of the most interesting lives so far. Originally titled Toy Tower it was changed to Magnet after its first showing when it became evident that its powers of attraction seemed to work on children and adults in equal measure. On the first day of Magnet’s first exhibition the person invigilating told me that they had looked over to where my sculpture should have been, only to find that it had disappeared. Apparently four little boys had managed to sneak the piece out into the street before being chased off by the invigilator, who wheeled the sculpture back into the gallery again.
Although originally constructed quite some time ago Magnet has had to be rebuilt several times as, over the years, the temptations of numerous collectors and souvenir hunters have obviously got the better of them. After almost every show I would find that pieces of the sculpture were missing. But as the toys in the sculpture date from the 60's to present day it's probably not that surprising. I sometimes wonder though, whether renaming it Magnet was just tempting fate.

States of Reverie
13 January – 20 February 2011
Scream gallery, 34 Bruton Street, London W1J 6QX
+ 44 (0) 20 7493 7388
Opening times: Mon-Fri 10am-6pm; Sat-Sun 11am-5pm