LoVArts Interview

A couple of Sundays ago I had the pleasure of meeting up with Elizabeth Covello of LoVArts, the promotional and networking platform for visual artists based in London. We met at one of my favourite East London spots, The Gallery Cafe, adjacent to Bethnal Green's Museum of Childhood. And with it being one of those rare Sunny October afternoons we decided to take tea in the garden (all proper and British like – innit). We chatted at length, or rather, Elizabeth asked intelligent and pertinent questions while I just blathered on about why I make the things that I make. Here's the resulting interview and a few pics.

“Wayne Chisnall: Intuition and Interaction 
On a sunny Sunday afternoon, I had the opportunity to meet with Wayne Chisnall, who introduced me to his world, where funky creatures, architecture and sculptures get mingled with childhood memories.
While Wayne started talking to me about his work, I realised that I was talking to a hunter: during his free time, Wayne goes down the Thames to, in his own words, “hunt things” such as teeth, hair, bones, pieces of wood and metal and many other random materials. 

Once he has gathered enough elements, he goes back to his studio which I imagine being a sort of experimental lab. From there, the materials discovered by Wayne will start dictating their future shapes to become vast sculptures ,the artist’s favourite plastic art, where he can explore technics, interact with his material and discover things that were  subconsciously in his mind. 

Wayne Chisnall also reveals that he always had a fascination for the changing process of organic elements, visible with a piece of wood but also ,on a more medical aspect, on a tumour, whose expansion in a body intrigues the artist. The tumour actually inspired Wayne for his “Tattooed Tumour Box”, a vast architectural sculpture  made of wooden boxes and covered with extremely meticulous drawings, obviously reminding us of tattoos, an art form that Wayne knows well. 

Finally, Wayne explains that his work is greatly influenced by his childhood where he used to be obsessed with comics, sci-fi and horror movies. His childhood memories come back to him in his dreams leading to the design of astonishing creatures, such as the Spidey Pod or the Evil Pebble Blue.
Wayne Chisnall is working on a lot of projects and will continue to surprise us! ”

Art and Beer

If, like me, you love beer and you love art then check out Series 5, the latest batch of art labels, lovingly wrapped around bottles of craft beer - produced by the Canadian brewer, Collective Arts Brewing.

And why am I telling you all this? No, I'm not surreptitiously trying to sneak some advertising into my blog. One of my artworks, Winged Torpedo, has been selected to feature in the series. I've not yet received an actual bottle (when it does arrive, resisting the urge to drink it may prove difficult) but here's what it will look like.

To give you a bit more insight into the goings on at Collective Arts here's some info and a video that I lifted from their site -

“Collective Arts Brewing is a grassroots craft brewer based in Ontario that aims to fuse the creativity of craft beer with the inspired talents of emerging artists, musicians and filmmakers. Matt Johnston and Bob Russell founded Collective Arts Brewing on two beliefs: The first that creativity fosters creativity. And the second, that creativity yields delicious pints. 

Each of our beers is a work of art. On the inside, we proudly brew some of the most well-crafted beers with the help of our brewmaster, Ryan Morrow. On the outside, we feature limited-edition works of art by artists and musicians that change every few months. Added bonus? Through the augmented reality technology of our partner Blippar, all labels come to life through the free Blippar mobile phone app. Simply scan the label to hear the music, see the videos and view artist bios.” 



And just in case you are viewing all of this on a tiny, hand-held device, and would like to check out some of the finer detailing in my Winged Torpedo design then here's a closer look at the label, which can also be viewed on my page at the Collective Arts Brewing site.

Half Price Print Sale – September and October

I had planned to continue the tradition (that I started last year – so not really much of a tradition yet, is it?) of having a 50% off sale on the gallery prices of all of my prints on paper, for the month of September – my birthday month. However, because of planning for my trip to this year's Burning Man gathering in the Nevada Desert (which was god damn amazing by the way), and dealing with all the boring admin stuff upon my return, I seem to have not got round to posting about it. So, to make amends I'll simply extend the offer to the end of October.

If you would like to buy any of my prints at the gallery commission-free/mates' rates prices, then my Swirly Skulls (black and white) screen print will now be £60, Swirly Skulls on Pink will be £70, Morphed Components (my personal favourite, and the inspiration behind my recent 'Tattooed Tumour Box' sculpture) will be £70, and the Spidey Pods screen prints will be £100 each.

To purchase a print simply drop me a line at waynechisnall@yahoo.co.uk and I'll swap you a big bit of paper for some smaller ones.

Oli Bennet Postcards 2015

I've just realised that I never got round to posting images of the four large postcard-sized works that I did for the Oli Bennett Charitable Trust, that went on sale during the Anonymous Art Fair in June.

In keeping with most of the charity postcard events that I donate to, the work that I made for the Oli Bennett show related to the project that I was working on at the time – namely, my Tattooed Tumour Box sculpture.

As I'd mentioned in previous posts, in the process of working on my Tattooed Tumour Box sculpture I ended up generating lots of sketches. I then reproduced select elements of a few of these, as carbon drawings, to created the Oli Bennett postcards.

Summer Salon Show (23 July - 16 August)

As I mentioned in my previous post, this Friday sees the private view of the Parallax Art Fair in Chelsea, London (RSVP to privateviews@barlowfinedrawings.com by 21st July if you'd like to get on the guest list, or click here for free tickets for Saturday and Sunday entry to the art fair), where I'll be showing some of my recent series of playful mini paintings and drawings.

However, if you'd like to see more of my work from this series then you are welcome to pop along this Thursday to the private view of the Summer Salon exhibition at the Candid Arts Trust in Islington, London (and on Thursday 6th August for the private view of part two of the exhibition - featuring new work by even more artists - as well as myself). There's no need to RSVP to this one – just turn up, and feel free to bring along friends.

Most of the pieces that I will be showing are based upon elements of my sketchbook work. Originally conceived as a limited run of mini artworks for the Rob Pruitt's Flea Market pop-up project which took place during the opening week of this year's Venice Biennale, I've decided to continue the series to offer an affordable entry level for those wishing to buy or start collecting my work.

Whereas the majority of my original artwork (paintings and sculptures) tend to run between the £1000 to £12000 mark, the nine pieces that I'm showing at Summer Salon show are priced around £200. Each of these paintings and drawings are executed on 20 x 15 cm blocks of 1.8 cm thick plywood, and originally designed to hang as wall plaques. However, for the Candid show I've mounted them all in white box frames, which I think looks equally as splendid.


Summer Salon (exhibition part 1)

Candid Arts Trust 3 Torrens Street
Islington
London EC1V 1NQ
First Floor Gallery / Free admission


Private View: Thursday 23 July (6-9pm) 
Exhibition open: 24th July - 2nd August (12-6pm)

Parallax Art Fair - London - 24th-26th July

From Friday 24th - Sunday 26th July I'll be exhibiting a selection of my new wall-plaque paintings and ink drawings at the Parallax Art Fair. The fair takes place at the Chelsea Town Hall, Located on the famous King's Road, London.

Entry to the fair is free (click here for tickets), and if you would like to join us for the private viewing on the Friday (7:30-9:30pm) please RSVP to privateviews@barlowfinedrawings.com by 21st July to get on the guestlist.

Most of the pieces that I will be showing are based upon some of my more playful sketchbook work. Originally conceived as a limited run of mini artworks for the Rob Pruitt's Flea Market pop-up project which took place during the opening week of this year's Venice Biennale, I've decided to continue the series to offer an affordable entry level for those wishing to buy or start collecting my work. Whereas the majority of my original artwork (paintings and sculptures) tend to run between the £1000 to £12000 mark, I will be selling these hand-drawn and hand-painted 'Taster Menu' pieces for around the £100 to £200 price range.

Parallax Art Fair, Chelsea Old Town Hall, King's Rd, London SW3 5EE

Friday 24th July: Private View, 7.30-9.30pm
Saturday 25th July:  11am – 5pm
Sunday 26th October: 11am-5pm.

For Private View RSVP: privateviews@barlowfinedrawings.com by 21st Jul.

Parking and travel info.

Local Bus Routes: 49, 11, 19, 22, 211 319

London Underground: Take the Circle or District line train and alight at Sloane Square. Cross the pedestrian crossing outside the station into King’s Road. Keep walking straight down the King’s Road for approximately 10 minutes; the Chelsea Old Town hall is located on the left hand side opposite Sydney Street.

Tattooed Tumour Box (with working drawings)

There's been quite a gap between this post and my last Tattooed Tumour Box progress report but I'm pleased to say that work on the sculpture/3D drawing is finally complete. I started constructing the piece last year when I planned to build and enter it into the Jerwood Drawing Prize 2014. Although I managed to make all the interconnecting box sections of the piece well in advance of last year's submission deadline, I soon realised that the 'tattooed' element of the piece wasn't going to be fully achievable in time (as hard as I tried).

As with most of my artistic projects, I underestimated just how long the drawing side of the work would take. There are several reasons for this. One being the fact that all the drawings are quite intricate and time consuming to develop from scratch, especially since I planned for all the elements to have their own unique qualities whilst still looking like they could coexist in the same universe. Couple this with the fact that, put together, all the forty four separate planes of the sculpture's components add up to a much larger surface area than one might expect, I now clearly see why the piece took so long to complete – although, admittedly, once I missed last year's deadline, work on the piece slowed down for a while whilst I worked on other projects.

Another reason that the drawing process took so long is that each sketch had to be done four separate times – firstly worked out as a pencil sketch in one of my sketchbooks, then traced in ink onto tracing paper, thirdly, transferred onto the sculpture using carbon paper and drawing over the image on the tracing paper, and finally there would be the time consuming task of inking in the carbon ghost image on the sculpture's wooden surface.

Initially, I started off the drawing process by rendering elements of miscellaneous found objects, and morphing them together but once I got into the flow of it, and started to really develop a feel for the world that my drawings evolved from, I mostly abandoned the use of existing source materials, and opted for the freedom of simply making it all up.

To give you a little insight into the multiple processes that I lovingly went through (often whilst working through the night, till five or six the next morning) constructing Tattooed Tumour Box this last year, here are a few of the pencil sketches, tracings, and inked-in sections of the sculpture's surface.

Incidentally, the sculpture is made up of cut-up pieces of antique packing crates, sourced from the Victoria and Albert Museum where I work part-time. You can even see sections of old labels, stencilled numbers, and part of the lettering of “V. & A. M.”, branded into the wood in a charming early twentieth century typography.

There are lots of drawn elements of the piece that I've especially enjoyed creating, and one of them is the underside of the base section of the sculpture, and therefore probably the part that is least likely to be seen. So I thought that I'd give it an airing here. As the circular hole in the centre is for the insertion of the pole that makes up part of the work's metal stand, I thought that I'd make it a feature of the overall design, and incorporated a sphincter element to the drawing. The sigils which appear within to outer ring reference occult interests as well as being a tribute to the flamboyantly entertaining comic book writer, Grant Morrison.

To see a larger selection of the drawings that I made in the creation of Tattooed Tumour Box please feel free to check out my Oodles of Doodles blog. 

Secret Postcard Season

It seems that the trend for secret postcard shows in aid of worthy causes (as popularised by the Royal College of Art's RCA Secret) has been going from strength to strength. Already this year I've done a 'lodda work for charidee' (apologies to those too young to remember, or not British enough to get the Smashie and Nicey reference) and taken part in a few secret postcard exhibitions.

The latest one, that I've just made four large postcard-sized works for is the Oli Bennett Charitable Trust, whose Anonymous Art Fair, this year, takes place on Thursday 18th June. For full details on how to buy a work from the sale click here. As the work on sale is supposed to be anonymous, I can't yet show you what I created, so here's one of my pencil drawn postcards from a previous Oli Bennett show.

This year, for the first time, the Royal College of Art held two RCA Secrets; one at their Dyson exhibition space in Battersea, London, and a second one in Dubai, during Art Dubai, the leading international art fair in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. Unfortunately I wasn't able check out RCA Secret Dubai myself but I did manage to lift an image of part of it from the Artslant article by Danna Lorch. Almost the same as going there – right? As the artists invited to take part in this year's RCA Secret were given the usual three postcards for the London show, and just one for the exhibition in Dubai, I'm guessing that the latter was a little smaller. Although, the chap who bought my Dubai piece (a bit of a 3D postcard this year – as you can see) emailed me to say that unlike the London show, where some people camp out days, if not weeks, beforehand, there didn't seem to be much of a queue when he arrived half an hour before the start of the sale. So, maybe if you're one of those RCA Secret regulars, desperate for a piece by one of your favourite artists, you should consider a Dubai holiday next year – one that coincides with Art Dubai. Just a thought!

Like the works that I did for both of this year's RCA Secret shows, the postcard that I made for the Welling School Secret Postcard Show (image below) was also based upon one of the many drawings that I developed to cover the surface of my latest sculpture, Tattooed Tumour Box; a piece that I've been working on for the best part of a year (on and off), and which I finally finished today. As soon as I get some descent photos of it I'll put them up on the blog.

Art Flea Market & The Love Guru of Venice

Photo by A+A Gallery.

For me, the fun and frolics of the Venice Biennale are over as I'm now back in my London studio, working on my next project. But I'd like to thank everyone involved in the Rob Pruitt's Flea Market (the students of the “22nd Course in Curatorial Practices and Contemporary Arts” at The School for Curatorial Studies Venice, curator Tommaso Speretta, everyone from A plus A Gallery, the artists taking part, everyone who came along, and Rob Pruitt himself) for making it such a fun event to be part of.

As is the case with all of the Rob Pruitt's Flea Markets, wherever in the World they happen to take place, each one is its own, unique beast – an amalgam of the various artists taking part, at a particular location and time. This incarnation of the RPFM brought together music, food, performance, parties, interactive events, and artists selling their wares. Amongst the artworks on offer were paintings, books, portraits, bags, sculpture, photographs, badges, and bizarre miscellaneous items. For my part, I was selling prints, paintings, drawings, and screen printed tote bags.

Me next to RPFMV poster. Photo by Holly Howe.

Here's my 'inner-selfie' with one of my favourite characters from the RPFMV - Guru Jimmy, introduced to me by the talented artist, James Ostrer.

Bye, bye Rob Pruitt's Flea Market, Venice. Photo by A+A Gallery.

Rob Pruitt's Flea Market, Venice
'A plus A Gallery', San Marco 3073
E press@aplusa.it
T 00 39 041 277 04 66
www.aplusa.it

Rob Pruitt's Flea Market, Venice – New Work

In a few hours I fly off to Venice for the preview week of the 2015 Venice Biennale. As mentioned in my previous post - I'm taking part in the Rob Pruitt's Flea Market.

And as I also mentioned, I was hoping to produce a set of cotton tote bags, screen printed with an Italian-themed design (my tentacled version of Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man) in time for RPFMV.

Well, I'm glad to say that they arrived from the printers in plenty of time, and I'm happy with how they turned out. The colour range for the totes is quite impressive so I've had my design printed up on a set of 17 different coloured bags – including natural, bright red, graphite grey, black, olive green, bottle green, pink, classic red, cornflower blue, cranberry, French navy, Kelly green, lime green, royal blue, purple, sky blue, and white.

In the short time since my last blog post I've been working on a few new drawings and paintings, for sale at RPFMV. So here are a few of them.

So if you happen to be in Venice for the Biennale's preview week, pop along and say hi. And if you'd like to see more of the work that I've created for the event then please feel free to check out my Oodles of Doodles blog.

Rob Pruitt's Flea Market,
Venice 'A plus A Gallery', San Marco 3073
5th - 8th May 2015 (open 12-8pm – free entry)

E press@aplusa.it
T 00 39 041 277 04 66
www.aplusa.it

The project is organized by the students of the “22nd Course in Curatorial Practices and Contemporary Arts” at The School for Curatorial Studies Venice, and curated by Tommaso Speretta.

Rob Pruitt's Flea Market – Venice Biennale

To say that I've been looking forward to the opening of this year's Venice Biennale (and the party/private view week that precedes it) is a bit of an understatement, but now I have even more reason to be excited about it – even if it does mean that I won't be running around and checking out as quite many events as much as I'd like.

Coinciding with the preview week of this year's Biennale, the A plus A Gallery will be hosting the Rob Pruitt's Flea Market, Venice. And I will be taking part. In fact, I've pretty much been spending the last two weeks, working all through the night on new pieces for the event. I've been creating wooden wall plaque paintings and drawings, mostly based upon my sketchbook work – all of which will be for sale at the RPFM. Sticking with the Italian theme, I'm also having some tote bags, featuring my DaVinciPuss design (my take on Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man drawing), printed up especially for the event. They should be arriving from the screen printers any day now, so I'll post an image of one of them as soon as I get my mitts on them.

The first time that I became aware of the American artist, Rob Pruitt, and his internationally-travelling flea market project was in 2009 when he did a Christmas Flea Market at the Tate Modern in London. It was loads of fun and featured stalls by well known artists such as Tracey Emin and YBA, Gavin Turk, as well as those by lesser known artists. I bought a few pieces of artwork, including a couple of sweet, David Shrigleyesque drawings on blocks of wood (yes, that's where I stole the idea. Of drawing on bits of wood – not the drawings themselves. What do you take me for) by Jimp.

So here we have a few of the pieces that I've already created for the RPFMV, but if you'd like to see more then please feel free to check out my Oodles of Doodles blog.

Rob Pruitt's Flea Market, Venice
'A plus A Gallery', San Marco 3073
5th - 8th May 2015 (open 12-8pm – free entry)
E: press@aplusa.it
T: 00 39 041 277 04 66
www.aplusa.it

The project is organized by the students of the “22nd Course in Curatorial Practices and Contemporary Arts” at The School for Curatorial Studies Venice, and curated by Tommaso Speretta.