Wha’ Gwan? uncovered!

Wha’ Gwan?

Today’s offering is a little bit of graffiti archaeology. We have had a few different versions of this ‘Wha Gwan?‘ design up on the blog before but this one I particularly like as over time it had disappeared under layer upon layer of posters for bashment nights, circuses and fairs and local theatre productions but once they had become too numerous they were cleared away and I’m proud to see that our little paste up was still clinging tenaciously to the side of the metal box and looking largely unharmed.

For the uninitiated, the phrase ‘Wha gwan’ (whaa gwaan) means ‘what’s going on?’ in Jamaican Patois. The spelling varies but the meaning does not change. As we live in Brixton this is not an unusual phrase to hear around the place.

Cheers

id-iom

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Because he’s mine and I want to…

Because he’s mine and i want to

I’m somewhat annoyed with myself. I came up with the title for this piece quite easily as it’s obviously emblazoned right across the front of the picture but i’m already thinking that was a trap best avoided. It’s because whenever I see the title an earworm attacks and I can’t help but think of the soul destroying tedium of Billie Piper with her number 1 smash hit ‘Because we want to‘. I’d include a link to it but for some reason you can’t get it on youtube and i’d just be being cruel anyway.

I think the inspiration behind this piece is the idea that some women can get a little possessive over their man and then blame it on a little thing called love. Although the lack of clothing on this particular lady would suggest that she is using her power in an entirely different way…

Cheers

id-iom

id-iom @ Sand, Sea & Spray 2012

To stare at the stars and yet only see the soul

Blackpool rocks

The hidden auditorium of my skull

The hidden auditorium of my skull

I like listening to music when I’m painting and sometimes I also like making up a few ditty’s in my musically-inadequate little brain and then proceed to attempt to hum/whistle/sing them. Luckily for me there aren’t that many people to hear these dire arrangements of mine apart from the other half of id-iom and he probably deserves the torture anyway. Surely he owes penance for something, I know he’s no good Samaritan and that’s for sure.

Anyway, just yesterday there I was getting ready for Sand, Sea and Spray when a wicked little tune popped into my skull making it nigh on impossible to carry on with what i was doing. To carry on cutting the stencil I was working on was just wrong so with this merry song swirling around in my bonce I jumped in to one of the other studio rooms to see if I could get it ‘from pen to paper’ as they say and inflict it on the nearest wall through the medium of paint. As you can probably tell I failed to portray the tune so settled for something that reflected the futility of what I was attempting. Maybe next time I’ll capture the tune and create a whole new field of art…

Cheers

id-iom

Sand, Sea & Spray

We’ll be painting at venue no.4

Another week and another art festival. This time in the sunny climes of the North West – specifically Blackpool! We’ve never been to Sand, Sea & Spray before so we are quite excited to be taking part. And if you add to that the extra excitement of not having been to Blackpool for about 20 odd years you can tell we are good to go for this one. We will be painting at venue 4 and I’m just hoping the weatherman is telling lies like usual…

The last time I went to Blackpool I went to the Pleasure Beach and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I can’t really remember much apart from the Mousetrap and the Grand National. I think my life flashed in front of my eyes that many times whilst riding the Mousetrap when I was a child that I have somehow become desensitised to such frippery unless they are truly rickety and life threatening. Maybe if we have a few minutes I can go and see what all that childhood fuss was about…

Cheers

id-iom

A Hero to Save

A hero to save

Even heroes need some assistance every once in a while and this guy is no different. I’ll admit he doesn’t look like much of a hero but then again who does unless you run around in skin-tight spandex and/or have a magical assortment of wonderful gadgets and gizmos. This fella is more of your everday hero and he saved a cat from a tree last Thursday and didn’t even tell anyone about it. That’s just how he rolls.

It just so happened I was walking past and saw the brave deed taking place in front of my very eyes. I asked if I could take his photo but he politely declined so I had to recreate him from memory and as you can probably guess it was his smile that stood out. No selfless act should go unpublished…

Cheers

id-iom

This is my time to shine

This is my time to shine

After last week’s painting at UPfest we got back to London with part of the extended Jubilee weekend to spare so went about celebrating them getting a little drunk and rolling around the streets of  Brixton for far too long. After we’d peeled ourselves off the streets and gone to our respective beds we got up with sore heads and nothing to do apart from stalk around the studio looking for something to do. We finally decided to attack one of the walls with all the gusto we could muster after the aforementioned weekend.

After blanking out the wall with some nice Laura Ashley Eau de Nil paint that we got off Freecycle we jumped to work with precious little in the way of a plan. As we know ‘the devil makes work for idle hands’ and as we were doing the opposite and actually doing some ‘work’ we thought it best if we incorporated an angel into our picture. Just to be on the safe side. We got down to a bit of  hard work, if you could call it that, as it was more like two zombies throwing paint at a wall but we somehow managed to come up with the picture you see before you. ‘This is my time to shine’. Indeed. The Muse works in mysterious ways…

Cheers

id-iom

Night at the studio

Night at the studio

Night at the studio – Girls Romances

Night at the stuido – Iron Jelloids

After some strange goings-on at the studio the id-iom natural history/paranormal unit moved in to see if they could fathom exactly what was causing things to move around and pictures on the wall to swap places. Whatever was going on seemed to be centred around two newly produced pieces – ‘Iron Jelloids‘ & ‘Girls Romances‘ which were in glass snap frames on the wall – so we concentrated our efforts there.

After setting up some various camera traps and arcane pieces of equipment to see if we could get some hard evidence of whatever was going on all we could do was sit back and wait for some results. Opinion was split on whether it was all due to a mischievous mongoose or perhaps a restless poltergeist. Countless hours of waiting later I’m proud to announce we have some proof of what pictures get up to when left alone.

As far as I can tell both pictures have some kind of resident entities that only come out at night. They pushed the paper down and out of the frame so they could peer over the top to see what was going on. They appear to be unaware of our camera but quite interested in each other. After watching for a while we concluded that they seemed entirely harmless so we decided to leave them in peace after that. I’m not sure exactly what they get up to but everyone deserves a little privacy. Case solved.

Cheers

id-iom

We are all fools for love (id-iom @ UPfest 2012)

We are all fools for love

We are all fools for love (lettering detail)

So it is about that time of year when we grab our gear, jump in the id-iomobile and head to Bristol to take part in UPfest. Despite not having a design until Wednesday we managed to pull our collective finger out and get everything ready in time for an early morning departure on Saturday. After registering we found our spot in grounds of the Tobacco Factory and set to work.

As ever we like to take our time and building up the background took up most of the afternoon. Then, finally, it was time to get the big stencil up to be coloured in and to affix the lettering to the wall. Which is when we had a small crisis due to my complete incompetence at carpentry but after crying for help we eventually managed to get hold of a electric drill/screwdriver and get the lettering fixed to the wall.

This year’s design was based on a picture of a friend (original picture below). She doesn’t know it yet and I hope she likes it as we’ve gone for a looser, sketch style stencil.

 

Upfest 2012 original image

Cheers

id-iom