RCA Secret 2017

I can reveal my contribution to this years RCA Secret Exhibition now that the artist's names have been shared with the public. I wanted to create an air of foreboding so I found pictures from airshows and various other small town public spectacles and excised the focal events, leaving crowds of people marvelling at intense skies made with washes of watercolour dye. 

Juvenilia

I stumbled across yet more of my earliest work. I'd characterise it as colourful, yet inexplicable. Creativity was always nurtured growing up however bizarre the product. Art materials were plentiful and we were always working on a project. We made our own paper, experimented with dough craft, carved lino, designed teddy bears and created countless weird drawings of which these examples are only a few. I credit my parents with instilling in my siblings and I the sincerity and enthusiasm necessary to make stuff unfettered by self-doubt and perfectionism. 

The exciting world of Tim Flowers; General Practitioner. Lookin' sharp in a blue check shirt and out of control glasses.

Tree/Mushroom Cloud. Writing the title twice was meant to convince myself of it as much as anyone else.

Again the assertive use of words underlines the goings on of the drawing and leaves no room for it being perceived as some kind of peculiar line dance.

New Journal Pages

I find the earlier pages in my sketchbooks are much more verbose. I now use words and images interchangeably but I used to have difficulty allowing them to intermingle. 

There are repeating motifs that I don't notice until I scan all the pages and patterns emerge. Waxing and waning cycles of imagery. Moons, suns, trees, cities rise and fall endlessly.

I use my sketchbooks to hash out ideas and express fleeting thoughts that I think are worth saving for later. At times I use my sketchbooks and journals as a haven away from unpleasant external reality. I'm most productive trying to mitigate the ordeal of public transport.

Umbra Sumus Print Project

I found an affordable and plentiful source of rubber printing blocks which are beautifully smooth to carve. Typically my prints mean at least one self-gouging in the fleshy part of my hand even with bench hook and hand guard. Thankfully my valuable meat is safe with these.

They are all 4"x 6" and lend themselves well to small vignettes. I've always been preoccupied with 'leaflet people' the unnaturally normal parents, children, first-time homeowners and serene dog walkers living out their lives in stock photography paradise on insurance leaflets in banks and supermarkets. They exist in Kodak moments, too perfect to be real.

They speak to that gulf between faerie glamour figments of advertisement living we fancy for ourselves and reality; the shaky consensus which we down here on earth rarely agree upon. They read like misremembered deathbed recollections. The inability to cope with that dissonance works itself out a thousand different ways on social media, that vast expression of 'Kilroy was here.'

As a print project I felt they'd work as outline, I used carbon paper to transfer them to the blocks and carved away the negative space. When printed they look like inverted ghosts, I wanted to strip away the colour and facial expressions. It forces a step back from the story being sold. Devoid of all the dressing they become unsettling and grotesque, just like life. I chose the name 'Umbra Sumus' which means 'We Are Shadows' in Latin to reflect the use of reductive methods that pare down the image into it's most basic form, as shadows show our merest shape which is all we are.

Early Drawings

I found some of my early drawings. Densely packed with imagery, looking them over is like jumping in a time machine and travelling backwards, becoming the person I was. I had a lot going on in my head, I still do. The difference now is that I've learnt coping mechanisms. I also learnt that in an orchestra not all instruments have to be playing at once. These are maps to my pre-adolescent psyche.

This one is so fragile I had to glue it to a piece of card to stop it disintegrating. It dates from around 2000-2001 when I was twelve going on thirteen.

This one was made when I was fourteen and being homeschooled. 

Source Park Deck Art Show

The Source Park held an art show fundraiser for local charities featuring the work of artists throughout the area. A wide of range of styles and disciplines were on display. The proceeds of the sale of the decks will go to support young people through the Charity for Kids, Respond Academy and Xtrax. I contributed a deck to do my bit.

A small sample of the work on offer.

It wouldn't be my contribution if it wasn't at least a little bit sinister.

Artism Sussex Animation Group

Our animation group is stronger than ever, Open Arts has been renamed Artism Sussex and relocated to the Carlton Hill Resource Centre where we have a lot more room to spread out and take on projects larger in scope.
All participants bring varied interests and talents. Working on group projects or pursuing a unique vision there is no limit to the creativity and enthusiasm at the heart of the Artism Sussex animation group. I never tire of working with such visually bold and adventurous people who all have such a love for the animated image.

Credit for the below film goes to the talented and prolific Peter Hourihan one of our animators.
Intruder Alert! from Artism Sussex Animation on Vimeo.

Mind Invasion

I recently took part in a large scale group collage show which showcased the work of many local and international collagists. The sheer variety of approaches on display was awe inspiring and ranged from the traditional to the bizarre. I found myself drawn to the weirder ones. Most of the Mazhari clan contributed, my mother Bunny and my brother Alex submitted their own collages. It's the closest we've come to having a group show.

Rough Test Animation

Concertina Sketchbook

Open Arts Animation

Open Arts is an amazing organisation. It's; "an art studio upstairs at Brighton Open Market, where we run visual and performing arts courses, gallery exhibitions and a pop-up art shop.

The project is a unique collaboration between Autism Sussex, Grace Eyre and Impetus, designed to bring arts opportunities to people with Asperger’s/ Autism or Learning Disabilities."

I've been co-running the animation course there with Rosy Marshall. Our students have had great fun coming up with ideas and playing around with creative techniques to make them stand out.

Animation with Rosy Marshall & Lucy Mazhari

Day: Tuesdays

Time: 10am – 12pm

Course dates: Tuesday 2^nd June – Tuesday 7^th July

Cost: £30 for 6 weeks or £5 per session

To book online, click here

Animation by Alex at Open Arts

"Come and make your own animated film. Animation is about choosing a story to tell and then turning that story into a film. You don’t need any special skills. You will be given a visual diary that is yours to take home and fill with ideas. Bring it back each week and use the course to bring your stories to life. This is your opportunity to experiment and have fun with cut outs or ready-made objects; to draw; to do some model making or even animate yourself! We will help you express your ideas and show you how to turn those ideas into a film. At the end of the course you will leave with a CD of your finished work."

The summer courses have begun but spaces are still available, check out the rest of the courses here.

Collage Mug

I made a transfer for this mug using a mixture of collage and hand drawings. The broken handle is care of my butterfingers sister.

Skullface dude with granite jawed comic book professor type

Random 1950's teenagers with leopard print.

Superman just chillin'

Credit Card Imprinting Press

With minimal intervention I've modified a Datacard Addressograph credit card imprinter to be able to print very small linocuts and etchings. The initial idea came from an article by the artist Sarah Whorf but the result was far better than I expected. It's portable and convenient so I can make prints on the train (barring public outcry.)

I've improvised a stop to prevent slippage with mount board and split pins. I plan to pack the baseboard to even out the print.

At the moment instead of my usual caligo safewash oil based printng inks, I've been using Versafine oil based inkpads which work beautifully.

Rumpelstiltskin Concertina Book

This is the result of a brief for the visual narrative project in which we had to retell the Rumpelstiltskin fairytale and interpret the story using our own visual style.

For the cover I cut out the lettering by hand and glued it to a prepared gold coloured board.

I used a mixture of print and collage inside. I wanted to simplify the sequence by using a consistent medium and chose to not use text to elucidate the narrative events. I wanted there to be room for personal interpretation.

I find the concertina format allows me sufficient freedom to continue an ongoing story allowing the viewer the choice of focusing on a single panel or the entire sequence.

I assumed the viewer's prior knowledge of Rumpelstiltskin for the story to be recognisable as that particular fairytale.

Ceramic Work

12" x 12" Ceramic floor tiles sprayed with glaze and collaged with ceramic transfers.

Animation Experiment

I've worked primarily with cut out animation techniques but have recently been experimenting with 3D plasticine figures.

Heinrich the dirty naked caveman with malformed hands and feet.

I started by making rudimentary person shapes out of pipecleaners and milliput plumbers putty. I overlayed the basic skeleton with plasticine 'flesh' and googly eyes.

 

I made this short film with objects I had to hand to get a feel for the process. Heinrich's left leg fell apart, his genitalia was fatally squashed by a gorilla and he had difficulty standing unaided. Needless to say Heinrich requires extensive rehabilitation.

RCA Secret History

This is a selection of my many submissions for the annual RCA Secret exhibition which I've taken part in for over a decade.
 

2008

2010

2011

2013

2015

Andrew Foster Labour of Love

I finally got to see the work of Andrew Foster up close at the Camden Image Gallery. On display were drawings, paintings, sculptural pieces and in the corner played the unnervingly quiet recording of children's voices. His work is caught between the desire to convey personal information overtly, the exacting demands of commercial illustration and a strong fine art sensibility. I love that it straddles different visual worlds outside of easy categorisation. It's a rare quality that can be hard to find in an industry that relies on ready demographics and styles that are provably populist.

His scroll is longer in person, spread across four walls. It tells the story of miscarriage and the ensuing unfulfilled dreams of fatherhood, the toys, birthdays and summers that won't happen. Fantastical imaginings of the silent milestones never to pass. Foster employs scale and vivid colour deftly, creating a panorama of cheerfully sad scenes of unspent life in which those lost live on forever.
Of the sculptural pieces I enjoyed the pleasantly grotesque pool inflatables, their shiny smooth surfaces made sinister with glued on hair. They had a tactile appeal despite their looks and joined two inevitable facets of life, a meeting of childish and adult concerns.

Andrew 'Foz' Foster gave a short artist's talk about his methods and inspirations. I particularly enjoyed his sketchbook filled with beautifully detailed drawings of the growth patterns of pubic hair. Each individual strand is rendered with reverence. It's a meditation on pubes which is not something I ever thought I'd find so moving.

I was inspired by the passion and control evident in Foster's work. It is innovative, meaningful and beautiful. It is executed with mastery. Foster gave a talk at Brighton in which he played a clip of the All Blacks performing the haka at a Rugby match. He used it as an example of passion that's channelled, honed into a precision rather than a blunt instrument and I find that idea so relevant and useful to my own work.

Heart Etching

I made this etching by mentally reversing an image of a human heart which was a lot harder than I envisaged. After etching the lines I overlayed it with several gradations of aquatint.

I worked texture into the shadow of the heart.

The final print.