After digging round in the attic at our family home I came across a box containing some items that belonged to our long lost Uncle Lou. Apparently he was something of a womaniser and a card-sharp and would ever be in search of the next loose woman and dodgy card table. He mysteriously disappeared on a trip to the local butchers one day and all they ever found of him was his rusty sheriff’s badge (which he always wore). He left behind a box of mementos and this is a little something from one of his jaunts around Europe in the late 60’s and looks to be an annotated map of his adventures. It appears it involved lots of women, drink and skiing…
I’ve never actually been to Switzerland myself but I have plenty of friends who have and they all seem to really enjoy the place. I’m pretty sure I would enjoy the skiing and cheese aspect of a visit there but it’s been many years since I wore a timepiece and I’m not a massive fan of chocolate so they couldn’t really impress me on that front. Anyhow I’d still give it a go as apparently ‘It’s more fun in Switzerland!’ and I’d be willing to see if it lives up to the claim.
Working on maps is really rather enjoyable and this piece has been lovingly created on a large vintage motoring map of the region. She features at least 12+ different screen print levels (including our id-iom seal of approval), hand-done red hand-stitching around the Swiss border, many stencils and a load of hand annotation in paint pen (not done by me as my writing isn’t neat enough!) If that wasn’t enough it also features the Transformer Soundwave about to steal a load of ‘energon’ from the Large Hadron Collider on the Swiss border. Naughty Transformer!
For further information about us and what we get up to you can visit our flickr page and we’re also on twitter (@thisisidiom).
So there I was minding my own business and quietly walking down the street when I see an abandoned mattress laying against the park railings. I’m sure it’s not the same for everyone but I have always had a compulsion to write ‘Love don’t live here anymore’ on an abandoned mattress. It just seems so fitting. Abandoned mattresses aren’t the most common item of street furniture but whenever I’ve seen them they are either nowhere near home or I don’t have any paint on me. Until today.
As this was being discussed with the other half of id-iom we came up with the notion that this one is too obvious and must have been done before elsewhere. A quick internet search hasn’t revealed anything but I think I came up with it myself and i’m sticking to that. It is possible however that I have just subconsciously stolen the idea and then passed it off in my brain as my own. Who knows?
You give love a bad name (featuring a very angry robin!)
So it’s Valentine’s Day again and we’ve been busy. This shot has really got it all – something Valentine related, an earworm and even a bit of wildlife. A winning shot if ever I’ve managed to take one. Despite the fact that the robin looks cute he was, in fact, very angry. He didn’t seem to appreciate our work. Everyone’s a critic…
We’ve previously done an earworm and I thought it was about time to give it another go. The success or otherwise of this piece hinges on the fact that just about everyone is familiar with Bon Jovi’s ‘You give love a bad name‘ and so I’ve done my best to try and get it playing unheeded in your brain. For no reason other than I can. It’s difficult to know how successful I’ll be but them’s the breaks.
So we’ve still got them coming in our demoolition sale and, of course, it’s starting at just 99p. Here is the Ebay link
I don’t think the motivation behind this piece is entirely difficult to imagine… If you haven’t worked in an office then you can’t imagine how lucky you are. If, however, you have worked in an office then I’m sure you can appreciate the sentiment behind this piece.
You only really have to spend a day in just about any office to know what i’m on about. In fact, that feeling is probably one of the reasons I love doing art so much. No one (well almost no-one) to answer to or to tell you what to do. And any credit (or otherwise) goes directly to you. No evil boss trying to take the credit (or pass the blame). Ah, the life of an artist…
It’s a 2 level screen print on paper with unique hand finishing. Signed on reverse.
Another piece in the id-iom demolition sale and it’s starting at just 99p. Here is the Ebay link
This piece was inspired by a larger version we painted live at a small show we had a while back . It’s clearly a cat in a tank but her dark motives are obscured behind a cute fluffy visage but don’t be fooled. Surely the fact that she’s in a tank means her intentions aren’t entirely honourable. I for one welcome our new feline overlords…
A unique A3 screen print on paper with hand finishing. Signed on reverse
So there I was innocently posting nonsense on Facebook when I get into a conversation with Mr George A Raggett and we come to the conclusion that an A4 art swap was in order. After further discussion it emerges that I would be very much liking something that was all nice and fluffy whilst George was requiring something as dark as could possibly be. Challenge accepted.
After giving it a little thought a quote that is attributed (but not confirmed) to Ernest Hemmingway sprang to mind. Apparently he won a bet by crafting a short story of under ten words. The story was “For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn”. Now that is pretty dark (and very brief). So I thought I’d work with that and give it a little spin by making it into an actual classified ad and including a few cheeky little zombie reference in there just to add a little spice. Once I’d perfected my vintage paper effect with spraypaint it was on with getting it printed and adding in the extra blood splashes and the red circle to highlight the ad. Challenge completed.
I found out just this morning that my parcel arrived safely with George accompanied by the parcel he had sent to me just before Christmas. And there I was imagining the German Postal Service would be efficient…
This was originally done as a t-shirt design many moons ago but in the studio clear out we found that we’d also cut it as a stencil which had somehow managed to get lost in amongst some other stuff and had never been sprayed so we thought we’d best remedy that post haste. The eagle eyed amongst you will, no doubt, spot the obvious mistake which just goes to show the little brain aspect. The fact that the brain is bigger than the heart just goes to show really. In fact thinking about it I’m going to have to have a look and see if i can find my t-shirt as i haven’t seen it in a good long while…
I think the inspiration behind this picture comes from those times when you are trying to help out but try as you might you seem to be more of a hindrance than a help. I’m pretty sure my girlfriend would agree with this as a description of me from time to time.
With 2012 fast becoming nothing more than a memory we thought it best to glance backward before we turn our steely gaze to 2013. So today both members of id-iom are picking our favourite five projects from 2012 to pontificate about in the hope that more people will actually get to see them and appreciate just how amusing we really are…
So, in no particular order here they are:
Stand your ground
This is just one of the many pictures that I was particularly happy with that we did at the now demolished House of Pain(t). It was fantastic to have a space to work in where we could do what we want with no constraints where there were also no financial considerations. I think it just allowed us to work as freely as we liked and that led to some great work. I think this is one of my favourites as we used a stencil we had used once before and gave it a new lease of life. ‘Stand Your Ground’ definitely looked better in the flesh as the thread attached to both the gun and the door frame gave it a three dimensional quality that just doesn’t come across as well in the photograph. Gun crime and gun control are always in the news so this one always seems topical but is now no more than a pile of bricks…
A Groovy Kind of Earworm
For this little bad lad I have to look no further than my own write up:
There was an article on the BBC website the other day which put a name to an experience which i’m sure most people have endured. They are known as earworms (amongst other names) and it is when you get a tune stuck in your head that you just can’t get rid of. Sometimes you really haven’t got a clue how it happens to be bouncing round in your brain but the more you try to suppress it the worse it gets (see this article on the difficulty of killing earworms and the man who had one for five long years).
After thinking about this for a while and realising how mildly annoying earworms can be we thought it our civic duty to respond by trying to create an earworm of our own using the medium of art. And being cheeky little tinkers we thought we’d do our best to get the hugely underrated 80′s megastar Phil Collins back into people’s consciousness by forcing his 1988 version of ‘A Groovy Kind of Love‘ into as many people’s brains as possible! We are not yet experts in the field but we’re hoping that as the hoarding is blue and we mention the word blue (which is written in blue – how cunning!) this will create some kind of cognitive resonance in viewers’ heads whereby a genetically modified supercharged earworm will be created.
Ideally the song will launch automatically and start playing in your head before you can do anything about it – and hopefully be trickier to get rid of than the auto-popup screens you sometimes get when visiting dodgy websites. It’s what advertisers attempt to do every day (but they have a more nefarious agenda) but our only regret is not knowing how well the whole project will work…
The Lady of the Lake
I really thought that ‘The Lady of the Lake’ would really get us some positive attention. Even now I’m proud of all the work I had to go through to get this done. No one will ever know that there were fake jewels stuck to the handle or that I’d made a special concrete filled bucket so the sword would stay upright. Not to mention how cold that water was and the rather strange look I got from the one man watching who was sitting on a bench quietly drinking a can of Special Brew. From my write up:
It is said that when storm clouds gather over England and dark days lay ahead then the Lady of the Lake will rise from her watery resting place bearing Excalibur – to be taken by a pure-hearted champion for the people (or perhaps it’ll just be taken by the council).
Well, with Greece on the blink, Portugal up the swanny and Italy on the ropes it would appear that the time is upon us…Good people of England take cheer for now Excalibur is here it will all be sorted post haste!
My favourite thing about ‘Cliff was visibly upset’ was the video editing. You’ll just have to watch it to see what i mean. After much debate and the consideration of far more serious titles (such as ‘Tears are the noble language of the eyes’) we finally decided that ‘Cliff was visibly upset…’ was the one to go with. As these rock faces are in a position where they are subjected to the worst the weather can offer for many months of the year we thought it a suitable title.
Lord of the Concrete Jungle
‘Lord of the Concrete Jungle’ was the result of us biting of more than we could chew but (thankfully) eventually managing to come good. We blithely agreed to do a 5.5m x 2.6m canvas to adorn an upstairs wall at the Electric Social without quite realising how large that would be and the fact that we didn’t have a space big enough to work on it in. Cue much head-scratching and some fun logistical fixes to get it all done.
Just priming the huge canvas took long enough never mind painting the background, cutting stencils and projecting. Anyway it took a while longer than expected but we finally managed to get it finished and drop it by the club with a feeling of relief. I believe they had a tricky enough time mounting it and getting it up on the wall but I think that was only to be expected with this billboard sized monster…
To tell you the honest truth i had a lot of difficulty picking my favourite stuff from 2012 and that’s not because i didn’t know what i like but because the other half of id-iom truly confused me whilst i was picking them. I thought he was going to group everything that we did at the House of pain(t) together but alas he has not so some pictures that i really liked aren’t on the list. Never mind, maybe you could take a look yourself and see which ones you like best.
To start my list though i suppose i should do it chronologically and start with my favourite piece from earlier in the year and work back, it is a round up after all, so here goes.
This piece is called ‘We are all fools for love’ and was completed at the Upfest spraypaint festival down in Bristol in around June of 2012. Apart from the fact that we had a lot of feedback from this piece, my main reason for picking it is that it was the start of a looser drawing style that i’m still trying to perfect. That said the 3D lettering adds a certain something to it as well which i really enjoy. Pretty and pink, what more can i say!!
This picture in my opinion is a bobby belter, it just pleases me and i like it even more due to the fact that it was done on a whim whilst i was trying to get ready for Sand, Sea and Spray (more on that in a bit as that involves my next choice). The picture came about because like any artist knows things can sometimes get off track. There i was in the studio trying to get stuff sorted yet the only thing i end up doing is painting a picture that no one will see apart from on the internet. In a weird way that makes me happy as i realise i’m not just painting for others or for money but to entertain myself and that means i picked the right profession.
Now this picture was painted at Sand , Sea and Spray up in Blackpool on what had to be one of the worst weekends to paint outdoors without any shelter. It was absolutely chucking it down but that didn’t stop us from getting this piece finished in between rain clouds. I won’t bore you with our tireless struggle against our implements and the weather but suffice it to say it was tough. Paint was spilled. Stencils were ripped. Words were exchanged. We had to make the best of the situation.
Now for this piece i’m just going to use what we wrote on the original posting of the image as i think it says exactly what i’m trying to say now. I have to say though that although this piece is really quite simple, i think it has an elegance which i really appreciate.
Did you know that a group of tigers is known as a ‘streak’ or ‘ambush’. Which is probably a fitting name for them because by the time you’ve noticed them I reckon they’ve either streaked past or ambushed you. They are the largest of the big cats, the third largest land carnivore (after the polar bear and brown bear) and are surely the epitome of danger and grace. I’m no expert but i’m pretty sure William Blake was thinking similar thoughts when he put pen to paper with his poem, The Tyger:
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Now didn’t William Blake just nail it with that? i think so.
I’ve added this piece because this is a continuation of where the sketchier, looser style that we showed in the Upfest piece has taken us, I love the found wooden board too. Now i just have to make sure that all those hours sketching over the last year don’t go to waste, so expect to see some more stuff in this vein i think.
And i suppose i couldn’t round off 2012 without mentioning this bad boy which took us ages to make in a very cold basement early last year. As we’d never done anything like this before it was definitely a labour of love but i have to say i think its pretty special.
Christmas and New Year have been and gone so I guess our Yuletide Demolition Sale should just become the id-iom Demolition Sale (brought on by the demolition of our studio space – check our blog at http://www.thisisidiom.wordpress.com for some demolition porn soon). Anyway, i digress, we are starting this fantastically amusing piece at £2.99 as we’ve checked and that is the cost to replace the luscious hand made rag paper that this one-of-a-kind screen print is printed on. This is an original 2 layer screen print on some fancy hand dyed (by us) handmade (by somebody else) rag paper. It will look lovely framed so i’m expecting some lively bidding. Here’s the link…
This entirely original document was recovered from an archaeological dig in the American mid-west which just goes to show that email, and by extension, email scams have been around for a lot longer than you’d have thought. I’m guessing since about the 1880′s judging by the carbon dating result on this unique artefact. And if you’ll believe that I can let you have it for the bargain price of one million dollars!
Oh how amusing to think of strong-armed cowboys getting blagged by this simple phishing email attack. If only they had the sophistication of us modern day internet warriors! Then they could never be fooled!
In all seriousness though I am a convert to the world of scam emails. I used to get quite annoyed with the amount of missives I received asking for my assistance in getting millions of dollars out of Africa – but now I just love them. I can’t get enough. I grade them on spelling ability, blag appeal, amount of money offered and various other key indicators then I pick the best for a re-design (although sometimes I can’t help but correct spelling mistakes). I really hope someone likes this enough to buy it so I can be vindicated in my obsession and forge ahead and do more.
Also, it is, of course, taken from a ‘genuine’ scam mail so if you are into scam baiting then feel free to email Mr Mark Aburi (at aburimar777@gmail.com) and see what you can get away with…
I know that love is meant to be blind but it was never really going to work out was it? We have The Girl with the Pelmet Crown and a Care Bear. She’s a frosty and aristocratic human-looking character and he’s a Care Bear. No wonder he’s resorted to drinking to soothe his ragged nerves.
We can only imagine the pain when he exposed his feelings and she ruthlessly snubbed him and crushed his dreams in the process. And now between them they’ve smoked enough cigarettes that the entire room is filled with clouds. Hopefully he’ll get over it some day…
