RCA Secret 2013

Last year the Royal College of Art in London took a break from holding it's annual RCA Secret Postcard exhibition/sale, much to the dismay of many of the show's hardened fans. But this year it's back, and at can be seen at a new location, south of the river; at the RCA's Dyson Building in Battersea.

Last night I checked out the show at the RCA Secret Artists' Party. I didn't manage to spot many pieces by my favourite regular contributors but it was a very busy event and I ended up chatting to other artists most of the night, so I probably missed loads of the postcards. Every time that I've revisited past RCA Secret shows I've always discovered a few gems that I missed on previous visits so I plan to go back in the daytime and look over the vast selection of work more carefully.

  
For anyone that doesn't know about the RCA Secret here's the basic run down (lifted from the RCA site) -

“The Secret

Ever wondered if you could spot a Paula Rego at 20 paces? How about a David Bailey? Each postcard in RCA Secret is signed only on the back, so collectors won’t know the identity of the artists until they have made their purchases. 

We’re giving you nine days to check out this eclectic collection and then for one day only the cards will be sold to support the RCA Fine Art Student Award Fund. With generous contributions of new work from hundreds of leading international artists and designers, RCA Secret continues to help emerging artists at a formative stage in their careers. So whether you walk away with a famous name or not, you’ll be buying a bit of history and contributing to the future. 

The new RCA Secret 2013 postcards are available to view HERE. 

Each postcard costs £45 and a maximum of four cards may be purchased per person. Postcards are only available to purchase in person at the Sale. You must have an RCA Secret Collector's Number to purchase a card at RCA Secret 2013. Register HERE to get one.” 

As well as Paula Rego and David Bailey, there are plenty of other well known artists contributing to this years show: Maggi Hambling, Bob and Roberta Smith, Pete Fowler, Nick Park, and Billy Childish, to name but a few... 

As I can't show you my three 2013 RCA Secret postcards until after the sale on 23rd March (that would be naughty), here's a few of my contributions from previous years (unfortunately I don't have any images of my postcards from pre-2008) - 

                       
                                                                                                'Tentacle Tower', RCA Secret 2011

                                                                                                 'Werecrow', RCA Secret 2010

                                                                                                      'Love Is', RCA Secret 2009

     
                                                                                     'Spidey Pod Wave', RCA Secret 2008


Royal College of Art Battersea 
Dyson Building 
1 Hester Road 
London SW11 4AN 

Exhibition open: 14-22 March (11AM-6PM daily) 
Late Open: 21 March (until 9PM) 
Sale Open: Saturday 23 March (8AM-6PM)

Last Night's Opening & Zen Entertainment

Thank you to everyone who joined us for yesterday evening's 'Misuse: Creating Alternatives' exhibition opening at The Cass Bank Gallery. And a massive thank you to the London Metropolitan University's MA Curating the Contemporary team for their hard work and for making it all happen. The pieces in the show work well together and I'm pleased to have one of my works (as you can see in this photo) positioned between two of my current favourite artists, Nancy Fouts and Guy Laramee. 

The show was well attended with more than a few of the guests seeming reluctant to leave when the event ended at 9pm. Luckily the White Heart pub is almost directly opposite the gallery so me and my band of friends decanted to that fine establishment to carry on our merry making. One of our group was the photographer/artist/inventor/Zen practitioner, Yoshizen/Kinetorori, who kept us all entertained for the rest of the night with his tongue-in-cheek, yet insightful, palm readings. 

Not only was Yoshi a contributing factor to an already fun night but I'd like to thank him for taking photographs of the show (e.g. this super-wide angled shot of me and my Orifice Tower sculpture) and for undoubtedly the most original review of my work that I've ever come across. If you ever get the chance to chat to Yoshi as him about his bizarre and interesting life – it'd be great source material for a terrific black comedy or indie film. 

Exhibition Continues: 8th - 22nd March 
Open Monday - Friday 10am - 6pm, Saturday 12pm - 5pm 

Barry Sykes / Artist Talk / 'I Didn't Do it: Various Experiments with Found Objects' Tuesday 12th March / 6.30pm / Room CEI 38 (first floor) / Central House, London Met Uni, E1 7PF

The Cass Bank Gallery,  
Central House, London Metropolitan University,  
59-63 Whitechapel High Street, London, E1 7PF   
(opposite Whitechapel Gallery)

Misuse – Thurs 7th March

This coming week looks like being a pleasantly hectic one, art-wise. On Monday I install some sculptures in the offices of Artfinder, on Tuesday I take down my first solo show, 'Found Memories', at the Nancy Victor Gallery and on Wednesday I install three sculptures in The Cass Bank Gallery, ready for the opening of the group show 'Misuse: Creating Alternatives'. The show is curated by 'MA Curating the Contemporary' at London Metropolitan University in partnership with Whitechapel Gallery. Apart from myself, the artists exhibiting in the show will be Alice Anderson, Blue Curry, Darren Harvey-Regan, Barry Sykes, Nick Gentry, Kyle Bean, Nancy Fouts, Guy Laramee, Elisabeth Lecourt & Kaarina Kaikkonen.

As you can see from the exhibition poster, one of the three pieces that I'll be showing is Orifice Tower which I completed last year. This sculpture started out as a deliberate rebuff to a sneaking trend that my box sculptures had developed for getting smaller and smaller. In this early sketch that I quickly scribble in the back of a 2011 diary (whilst waiting for the speakers at a Jerwood Space art talk to start, I seem to remember) you can see my blatant approach to how to turn small works into big works – as well as my abandonment of the wheeled motif that had become common throughout my box and tower structures. 

When I was initially asked to exhibit in the show the piece that the curation team was most interested in me exhibiting was my sculpture, The City. Unfortunately after lending this piece to Charlie Levine and Minnie Weisz for their wonderful curatorial collaboration, 'Creative Machines, Minimalist Sculpture' (as part of Trove gallery's 'The Event 2011') it was returned to me having first been mysteriously smashed to pieces. 

Reconstruction of The City is going to be a big undertaking, especially if I want to get the new version looking as close as possible to the original. So for now I've cobble together a temporary structure (basically an old wooden box with a few intricate shelves) to house some of the less damaged pieces from The City. Hopefully this will at least give a taster of the original work until I can find the time to remake it in full. 

The third sculpture that I'm exhibiting will be my Nkisi-inspired piece, Nail Box. This is one of my favourite piece – partly because to construct it I spent four years collecting the rusty nails and screws from wherever I could find them (mostly picked up off the ground whilst out walking, both here in the UK and whilst traveling abroad) and because I feel that the work has quite a distinctive, if not cheeky, personality all of its own (probably just me anthropomorphizing again). Whilst working on Nail Box, rather than taking new nails and screws and rusting them artificially, I chose ones that had corroded naturally – through contact with the elements. I thought that this gave the metal an authentic patina and I hoped that the vast number of rusty nails and screws used in the piece would generate a kind of collective resonance. But maybe I'll let you be the judge of that. 

Anyway – enough waffling. The opening night for the show is this Thursday (7th March - 6-9pm) at The Cass Bank Gallery, 59-63 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7PF (directly opposite the Whitechapel Gallery) so I hope that you can join us. But if you can't make it to the private view then the exhibition will be on till the 22nd March.

Exhibition Continues: 8th - 22nd March

Open Monday - Friday 10am - 6pm, Saturday 12pm - 5pm

Barry Sykes / Artist Talk / 'I Didn't Do it: Various Experiments with Found Objects'

Tuesday 12th March / 6.30pm / Room CEI 38 (first floor) / Central House, London Met Uni, E1 7PF /

The Cass Bank Gallery, 

Central House, London Metropolitan University, 

59-63 Whitechapel High Street, London, E1 7PF  

(opposite Whitechapel Gallery)

('Nail Box' photo courtesy of Rosie Mayell)

Fitzrovia Late – Thurs 28th Feb

If you fancy seeing my first solo show, 'Found Memories', at the Nancy Victor Gallery, London but weren't able to make it to the opening night and aren't able to finish work in time to get to the gallery before it closes at 6pm, don't worry. This Thursday the gallery will be staying open till 9pm as part of Fitzrovia Lates, as will all the other galleries in the area.

I'll be there from 6 till 9pm (then off to the pub next door) so please feel free to pop along for a chat or just have a browse. And if you want to know about any of the pieces in the exhibition just come up and ask me – I rarely bite.

If anyone is unsure of how to find the gallery it is in Charlotte Place, the third turning on the left (just after Charlotte Street) as you walk West along Goodge Street, having come from the Tottenham Court Road end. The nearest tube station is Goodge Street - a couple of minutes walk away from the gallery. Here's a map.

 
Fitzrovia Late View - Thursday 28th Feb (6-9pm)

Be My Valentine!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Channel 4's 'Four Rooms'

I was recently contacted by a researcher from a production company that makes the Four Rooms program for Channel 4. He told me that his producer had seen my 'And When I'm a Man' sculpture and wondered if I'd be interested in bringing it along to the show and seeing if I could sell it to one of their 'dealers'. 

Okay, I admit that I do dip into a bit of on-line telly (English English (UK speak) for TV) now and again but because of its addictive qualities I decided to throw my television set away years ago. Consequently, I'm a bit out of touch with a lot of the new programmes – Four Rooms being one of them. So I looked on Channel 4's site and Four Rooms appears to be something of a cross between Dragons Den and the Antiques Road Show. The basic premise seems to be that contestants come onto the show with an item of interest (previous examples being things like Winston Churchill's gold dentures, Napoleon's death mask, a Marilyn Monroe self-portrait etc.) and haggle over their items with the show's four dealers. They choose the order that they meet the dealers and if they don't like the first dealer's offer they say no and move onto the next one, and so on until they finally accept or decline an offers. The hook of the program is that once the contestant has moved onto another dealer they can't accept a previous dealer's offer even if that was the better one. 

Anyway – I told the researcher that I no-longer owned the sculpture but I did put them in touch with Andrew Dawood who has it on display at his practice, Dawood and Tanner, in Marylebone, West London. Andrew agreed to go on the show so when the day of the shoot came along I helped him to transport the sculpture over to the studio. As the owner of the sculpture, Andrew got to do all the nerve-racking in front of the camera stuff while I spent the day sat in the green room eating cakes, drinking tea and chatting to the other contestants (sometimes it's a hard life being an artist). Having previously worked on Channel 4's Embarrassing Bodies programmes, I'm sure that Andrew was fine being filmed so I'm looking forward to checking out the show when it airs some time in the next couple of months or so. As soon as I find out when that is, I'll let you know.

Nancy Victor Gallery – Opening Party

Thank you to everyone that managed to make it last night to the opening party for my first solo show, 'Found Memories', at the Nancy Victor Gallery in Fitzrovia, London. The turn out was fantastic and it was lovely to see so many familiar faces (some that I'd not seen for years) and to get to meet and chat to loads of new ones. 

I'd also like to thank the staff of Nancy Victor, especially Rachael Hill for her hard work in organising the show - and photographer, Rosie Mayell, for taking all these great photos on the night. Okay I'll leave it at that before it starts to sound like an Academy Awards acceptance speech. 

In the exhibition I'm showing twenty sculptures (ranging in size from around 25 cm to 2 metres tall) and one new screen print, 'Morphed Components'. 

And to give a bit of an insight into the thought processes that go into the creation of my sculptures I've collaged a section of one of the gallery walls with scans of pages from some of my sketchbooks.

A lot of the work in the show has either been made in the last 12 months (with one of them having been completed three days before the opening) or were created a few years ago but not been exhibited before. So for anyone that's familiar with my work there should be something new to look at. 

 

For those of you that wanted to come but couldn't make it, don't worry as we'll be having another late opening (till 9pm) on Thursday 28th Feb as part of the Fitzrovia Lates. As it's the last Thursday of the month most of the other art galleries in the area will also be opening their doors late so if you're around on the 28th please feel free to pop along and join us for a cheeky after work drink and chin-wag.

'Found Memories'  
Nancy Victor Gallery 
6 Charlotte Place (off Goodge St.)  
Fitzrovia  London W1T 1SG (map) 

8th Feb - 4th March 2013  
Fitzrovia Late - Thursday 28th Feb (till 9pm)

'Found Memories' (Solo Show - Nancy Victor Gallery)

It's been a busy few weeks but everything seems to be coming together in time for my first solo show, 'Found Memories', at the Nancy Victor Gallery, which opens in a couple of days. The show officially opens on Friday 8th February but we are having an opening party on Thursday 7th between 6:30 and 8:30 pm so if you are in the area why not pop by and join us for a drink and a chat. 

For the last couple of weeks I've been working on this piece; working title – 'Church of the Crab Doll' (I know - not exactly snappy). I finished it a couple of days ago so it is my newest and first sculpture of the year. 

The majority of work that I'll be exhibiting at Found Memories will be made up of new sculptures (finished in the last 12 months) and older pieces that I've not previously shown.

'Found Memories' 
Nancy Victor Gallery
6 Charlotte Place (off Goodge St.) 
Fitzrovia 
London W1T 1SG

8th Feb - 4th March 2013 
Private view - Thursday 7th Feb (6:30-8:30pm)

Find Me on Artfinder

I am happy to say that I've now joined the Artfinder stable of artists and am feeling in very fine company indeed. As well as offering a wide selection of editioned art prints, the site allows the viewer to brows through each artists' individual page and check out original pieces at affordable prices. As I've just joined I only have a small selection of work on my ArtFinder page but more will be added very soon.

This photo of me (courtesy of Mike Saunders) looking a little unkempt was taken Thursday night when Yplan hosted a private SofarSounds evening in the Artfinder office! If, like me, you'd not heard of Sofar Sounds before and you like unconventional live music experiences then I seriously suggest you check them out. Sofar have “created a movement which brings music lovers together in secret living room locations to hear some of the world's most cutting edge artists.” To date they have held these pop-up gigs in around 20 cities worldwide.

Unfortunately I only managed to catch the name of one of the four amazing acts (Maria Byrne) at Thursday's gig so if anyone can furnish me with the rest I'd be very grateful. The three guys who made up the last act were especially funny.

This is Artfinder's Facebook page.

Nunhead Cemetery Recon

Highgate Cemetery might be the final resting place of some of the big hitters on the necro-celeb list but, for me, Nunhead is still the finest cemetery in London. Okay, it's not as overgrown and wild as once was but it's still a great place to go exploring, or take a Sunday stroll. It is full of beautifully weathered monuments and grave stones and its 52 acres is just about big enough to get yourself lost in.

So, as you can imagine, I was delighted when artist and curator, Jolanta Jagiello, invited me to take part in the 'Vignetted Windows Foretold' project - the start of which coincides with the cemetery's open house weekend (23rd/24th September). For this semi-outdoor art exhibition (the building has no roof), myself and ten other artists will each create an individual, made-to-measure artwork which will be hung in the glassless windows of the Restored Anglican Chapel. This beautifully imposing building is visible from the cemetery's Linden Grove entrance.

In this photo from a recent reconnaissance trip to Nunhead you can see the daunting size of the windows that we went to measure up. For my part I plan to build and install two narrow but 235cm tall, frame sculptures. I'll be taking a little inspiration from my current work (see my previous blog post) and plan to incorporate an array of doll parts.

Other participating artists include Debora Mo, Ahmed Farooqui, Anna Whyatt, Jill Rock, Abilene, Sally Buchanan, Elizabetha Chojak, Richard Tilby, Robert Aldous and Jolanta Jagiello.

New Work In Progress

In preparation for my up-coming solo show, 'Found Memories', at the Nancy Victor gallery in February I've been working on a new sculpture. Well, I say new – the inner section (made up of an old, cracked, porcelain doll's head and several crab legs) was something that I put together some time ago and then left on a shelf to gather dust because I couldn't decide what I wanted to do with it. This isn't the way I usually work. Usually I have an idea for a sculpture – refine the idea with a few preliminary drawings and then build the thing. But every so often I'll tinker with a few bits and pieces/materials and come up with one of my 'components' – something that I don't feel is strong enough to hold its own as a sculpture but which I might one day become part of one.

 
One of the reasons that I hadn't, until now, taken this particular component piece any further was that my original ideas for displaying it didn't quite sit right in my head. It wasn't until I'd made my tall Orifice Tower sculpture that I hit on how the component piece (which I'd just been calling Crab Doll Head – not a snappy title, I know) should progress. I wanted to encase Crab Doll Head in a protective structure that would hold the fragile piece in place but which, unlike my previous lens-fronted cabinets/boxes, would also allow more light to hit it and also give a 360° view. And the scaffold-like framework approach that I used when making Orifice Tower seems perfect for this. It's a very enjoyable and organic (even though the structure is itself geometric in construction) way to work and I almost feel as if the framework is suggesting its own path as much as I am directing it. At the moment, the sculpture is starting to look oddly shrine or chapel-like. Maybe I should call it the Little Church of Lost Innocence (or maybe not).

Cringe-worthy Christmas!

A few hears ago when I was working for a well known London gallery, a colleague asked me if I knew of anyone that would be interested in earning a bit of extra cash over the festive season doing caricatures at a Christmas party in The City (London) for some big corporation. The job was very well paid, involved a couple of hours of work drawing caricatures of the company's employees - and more free food and drink than any poor starving artist could wish for.

Well... what could I say but 'look no further - here's your man!'

I got the job and being overly confident in the fact that I'd always been pretty good at caricatures at school (they'd got me in and out of trouble with both pupils and teachers alike on more than one occasion) I did no more preparation than buying myself a new set of Tomboy brush pens and turning up at the venue.

At first, everything seemed to be going well. I was introduced to a hip-looking young man and woman who handed me my wages for the night (good start). They both looked super stylish. She had a cool bob (similar to Uma Thurman's in Pulp Fiction) and he was slightly camp and incredibly well turned out. So when they asked to be the first couple to be drawn I had no problems. I quickly rendered them in a minimal, sharp cartoon style that suited their look and everyone was happy.

Then everything seemed to go down hill from that point onwards. Unfortunately the next subject wasn't so aesthetically well rounded and feeling that their true essence wouldn't be captured using the previous style, I changed tack. Instead of creating a fun stylised cartoon version of my new subject I honed in on, and exaggerated, my hapless victim worst features. It wasn't an intentional act of malice. I had merely focused on the most prominent features and run with them – not thinking how the eventual image may turn out. Needless to say, it didn't turn out well – at least not for the subject. They weren't too pleased. I'd even go as far as saying that they may have been a little upset.

I quickly realised my mistake. I had failed to fix on one style, practice it beforehand and stick with it regardless.

By this point I was starting to feel a bit uncomfortable – which didn't help when it came to the next subject. Desperate to salvage the situation I tried yet another style but the only problem with this was that unless I stuck with my tried and tested methods there was the chance that the drawing would pay little resemblance to the person in front of me so I soon reverted back to knocking out grotesque renderings from the now large line of people forming next to me.

It was a very strange experience. I seemed to be upsetting an ever-growing number of people yet more of them were queuing up to be humiliated. And the more I tried to alter my style of drawing the worse these sketched monsters turned out (this may have been something to do with the vast number of drinks people were plying me with – which I was eager to consume in an attempt to dull the anxiety).

Not only was there a long queue of people waiting to be sketched but a large group had formed of slightly drunk folks who were obviously enjoying their fellow employees' visual assassinations (at this point I honestly no longer felt in control of what my hands were producing) - so much so that splinter groups were now breaking off from the main mob in search of juicier victims. A couple of them dragged over a lady who must have been the fattest person in the whole company. I think that the alarm in my eyes must have mirrored that in hers. My mind was screaming 'please – not her!' but my fingers showed no mercy. One poor chap, after I handed him my rendition of him, simply looked at me with such devastation in his eyes and said 'I'm gonna go home now and hang myself'. I truly believe he didn't really mean it and it was just the drink talking but it obviously didn't ease my conscience.

After two of the longest hours of my life I apologised to the long line of people still waiting to be drawn (I should really have apologised to the ones I'd already sketched) and made my escape. I tell you – once outside of that building, London's air had never before smelt so fresh and the sense of relief never so palpable. I probably won't be doing that again - probably!

Art Review: It’s A Wonderful Life @ Nancy Victor

By Tabish Khan · December 13, 2012

A group show is an opportunity for a gallery to assemble a set of complementary works by emerging artists who may not have the recognition or number of works to front a solo show.

They are often an eclectic mix of works created in varied styles and can be hit or miss. The latest exhibition at Nancy Victor is a group show that packs in 27 works by 13 artists, ranging from colourful beetles painted on pages from novels to ceramic snowflakes. They are all linked together by the fact they are made from recycled materials, exploring the value that can be had from other people’s junk.

Chris Agnew is an artist we first spotted at a group show a few months ago at ArtEco, here he presents a drawing of a Romanian tower block that owes much to M. C. Escher but only hints at the surreal while remaining rooted in reality.

Another highlight of this exhibition are the works of Wayne Chisnall. We particularly liked his 90 degree periscope that looks back out into the gallery through a web of thorns and his model of a heart that is difficult to make out as it’s been penetrated by dozens of nails.

Our favourite work of the show is the tower by Lesley Hilling which dominates the gallery. It’s made up of items as diverse as wooden blocks, lenses and snooker balls. It has the look of a Victorian-era invention and we enjoyed circling the structure trying to identify all the components.
This exhibition features some talented artists taking their work in an interesting and appealing direction.

It’s a Wonderful Life is on display at Nancy Victor Gallery, 6 Charlotte Place, W1T 1SG until 3 January. Entrance is free.

It's a Wonderful Life

I know that we're now fast approaching the Christmas party season but if you are free between 6-8 pm on Wednesday 12th December then feel free to come and join us for an evening of drinks, mince pies and affordable art. The special occasion is the opening night of It's a Wonderful Life, the new group show at the Nancy Victor gallery in Fitzrovia, West London.

In the show I will be exhibiting three brand new mini sculptures and my new print (see the previous blog post). One of the sculptures will be 'Mutant Nail Heart', the third piece in my new series of Nail Heart sculptures.

And the other two sculptures are mini, wall mounted spin-offs from a larger piece that I'm currently working on. But whereas the larger, ongoing work is constructed as a mass of periscopes the two on show at Nancy Victor will each be single periscopes, all be it, with a little extra something inside – as seen here in this detail from 'Despairoscope'.

The other artist in the exhibition are Chris Agnew, Mary Dalton, Charlotte Dredge, Lesley Hilling, Suzanne Jamieson, Tony Lee, Louis Masai, Joana Mires, Chisel & Mouse, Cliona O'Neil, Jackie Palmer, Sam Shendi and David Shillinglaw.

Private View: Wednesday 12th December (6-8pm) 
Show: 12th December - 3rd January (closed 24th Dec - 2nd Jan)
Open: Monday to Friday 10am – 6pm / Saturdays by appointment

Nancy Victor Gallery
6 Charlotte Place
Fitzrovia
London W1T 1SG

www.nancyvictor.com

New Screen Prints

Looking for the ideal arty Christmas gift for that special someone in your life? Then look no further than my new, one size fits all, 'Morphed Components' screen prints – printed on special Christmasy, snow-coloured paper (i.e. white).

The prints are based upon one of my pencil drawings in which I morphed together elements of different found objects and materials that I'd been collecting for use in my sculptures. Unlike my recent speed drawings this one harks back to the draughtsmanship style I used when I first started out as a technical illustrator for one of the big Japanese companies. I found it interesting using the same precise and clinical rendering that I used back then, on something that is personal to what I do now. Some people have said that they find the drawing a bit disturbing but I find it quite relaxing to stare at (the original hangs on the wall at the foot of my bed).

In order to give the prints a subtle pencily (that's not a real word is it?) quality the screen prints were hand-pulled using an ink made with graphite powder. As with all my other screen prints, these are also printed on archival quality paper and each one is signed and editioned. The paper dimensions are 54 x 52 cm and the print run is an edition of 60 plus five artists prints. Each print is available for £100 each.

There will soon be a one-off graphite screen print version on grey paper (editioned 1 of 1) and a one-off digital print (also editioned 1 of 1). Both of these will be available at £200 each. The digital print is a fraction smaller than its screen printed cousins but has a truer likeness to the original pencil drawing as it is printed to a very high resolution and manages to pick up more of the finer detailing.

Along with three new mini sculptures, my new prints will be available at the Nancy Victor gallery's It's a Wonderful Life group show which opens on Wednesday 12th December. But if you can't wait that long and want to get your hands on one of the prints now (at the direct from the artist price) then please feel free to get in touch at waynechisnall@yahoo.co.uk and we can arrange to get one to you post haste.

No RCA Secret This Year

Alas, there is to be no RCA Secret this year but fear not as next year's show has been moved forward from its usual November spot to March the 14th. I've already started work on my pieces for 2013 but as its a secret I guess I'll have to keep schtum for now. All I can say is that they should stand out from the rest of the work on show - oops! I've said too much already.

Here's one of my cards from last year's show but to see all of my entries feel free to check out my Oodles of Doodles blog post.

 
For anyone that doesn't know what the RCA Secret is, it's an annual (apart from this year, obviously) exhibition of postcards at the Royal College of Art in London. And on the last day of the show (next year's is Saturday 23rd March) all of the postcards are available to the public at very reasonable price - especially considering that some of the artists contributing would normally be selling their work for thousands of pounds. But here's the secret bit - each postcard in the exhibition is signed only on the back, so collectors won’t know the identity of the artists until they had made their purchases. For one day only, all the cards are sold to the public to support the RCA Fine Art Student Award Fund. With generous contributions of new work from hundreds of leading international artists and designers, RCA Secret continues to help hundreds of emerging artists at a formative stage in their careers.

But a word of warning - if you fancy buying a postcard do your research beforehand (spend a good few hours looking round the show and make a long list of your favourite pieces) and be prepared to get in the queue very early as hundreds of people turn up every year. Some people even camp out days or weeks beforehand to get a good spot in the queue. Alternatively, you can always enter the raffle for a chance to win one of the first few places in the queue. But even if you don't win a place and can't get to the show at ridiculous O'clock in the morning it has been known for work by very well known artists to still be available for sale quite late in the day so don't worry, just make a very long list of your favourites.

As well as taking a year out the next RCA Secret has a change of location, moving across the river to the Royal College of Art’s landmark development, the Dyson Building, off Battersea Bridge Road, SW11 4AS.

 For the best hints and tips on becoming an RCA Secret collector or to find out what it's all about I suggest listening to the fans themselves. Here's the RCA Secret blog. And if, by any chance, you haven't had enough of my waffling on then here is my interview that appeared on their blog last year.

FACK#1 – Artists Talk – Tues 9th October

Thank you to everyone who made it along to the opening night of FACK's first group exhibition yesterday at the Kensington and Chelsea College's gallery space. The show looked fantastic and I was proud to be exhibiting my Orifice Tower sculpture amongst such high calibre work. It was great seeing so many familiar faces at the show and getting to meet even more new ones.

I only manages to chat to a few of the exhibiting artists last night so I'm looking forward to returning to the gallery this Tuesday for the artists' talks from 6:30 onwards (although the actual talking bit probably won't start till 7 pm). On the night most of the participating artists (me included – yikes!) will each talk for about five minutes about their work.
So, if you couldn't make it to the opening night but would still like to see the exhibition then please feel free to pop along this Tuesday evening – where you'll also be able to hear, first hand, the stories and reasoning behind the work. And you at the back - no heckling!

FACK#1 – Opening Party – Tues 2nd Oct

On Tuesday 2nd October (6:30-9pm) we will be having an opening party for FACK#1 – the first art exhibition to feature work by the ever expanding FACK visual art community. The exhibition takes place at the Kensington and Chelsea College's new gallery space in Hortensia Road, London SW10 0QS and if you are reading this blog then you are more than welcome to come along.
The show runs from 3rd - 11th October and features an artists' seminar on Tuesday 9th October, from 7 -9 pm.

As part of the show I will be exhibiting my recently completed Orifice Tower sculpture along with work by 13 other artists - Joanna Sands, Yuko Shibata, Eve Wright, Clare Burnett, Susan Forsyth, Jens Marott, Vaclav Bajer, C. Morey de Morand, Vinita Khanna, Denise Bryan, Leigh Glover, Almuth Tebbenhoff and Ed Jones.

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Private View on Tuesday 2nd October from 6.30 to 9pm.

Kensington and Chelsea College. Hortensia Road, London SW10 0QS
Open Monday to Thursday 10.00 to 18.00 and Friday 10.00 to 16.00.

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Morphed Components Print

Today I popped over to East Ham in East London to visit the chaps at Mula Printing and to see how my new prints are coming along. These guys work with some of the big names in Street Art so whenever I go round to their print studio it's always interesting to see what they've got in the pipeline.

The set of screen prints that they are producing for me are based upon my Morphed Components drawing. In the screen printing process they are using a special ink that is combined with graphite powder and which, when pushed through the mesh of the printing screen, will produce an image that closely resembles the original pencil drawing.
The purpose of my visit today was to check out the shade of the ink (and I must say that being the pros that they are, they got it spot on) and to work out where we need to crop the paper – hence my scribbly lines that you can see on the test print, in the photo.
 The prints are going to be available from the end of next week and will be in a signed and numbered edition of 50, on sheets of 54 x 52 cm archival paper. If you would like to reserve one then please feel free to drop me a line at waynechisnall@yahoo.co.uk .

Bye Bye Greeny

It's fourteen years since I first made my life-sized pre-assembly model kit sculpture (cast from my own body parts in twelve sections) and now I've had to say good bye to my Green Man as it has found a new home in the heart of London's medical district. The official, full title of the piece is 'And When I'm a Man (I'll Think as a Man)' but in conversation I always end up calling it the Green Man for short.

 Anyway, here it is – installed in its new and rather salubrious surroundings at Dawood and Tanner's specialist dental practice in Marylebone. As dental practices go, Dawood and Tanner are truly something special. Not only do they seem to be leading the way in the use of 3D scanning and rapid prototyping techniques in the medical field (check out the interesting cabinet of fabricated skull sections in their lobby) but Andrew Dawood is a talented artist himself, putting this fascinating technology to good use in his own sculptures - some of which are also on display at the practice.

Glofone Characters

For the past few months I've been working a new project, developing some cartoon characters for a new children's product. It's early days yet so it's probably best not to give away too many details but for a little more info and to see how some of my designs have been colourised and digitised you can check out Go With The Glo on Twitter – although, being a Twitter page, it also full of some rather randomness so you will have to sift through to find the relevant images.

The initial brief for the project called for the development of a few characters that were loosely based upon insects (to see the full set of early working drawings and how the characters developed check out my doodle blog) but they soon evolved into something a little more chimeric. The first character to break from the insect formula was a green chappy called Fugley. Here's a small model that I made of him.

And this picy shows him just before he got his green make-over; in a shade of ghastly green that some may recall from my And When I'm a Man sculpture. See – it all ties in (and who said my work was too diverse).

Here are a some pages of more recent character ideas but as I said, you can see all the working drawings and evolution of the characters in my doodle blog.