Something from the cellar

I was navigating the aisles of my local supermarket when, due to my girlfriend’s inability to make a quick decision, my eye was drawn to the flowery descriptions of some of their lower end wines. Phrases like ‘warming spice flavours’, ‘smooth finish’ and ‘floral notes’ seemed to litter the florid accounts of the wines’ supposed qualities. Now, it just so happens that wine is firmly on my banned substance list so I certainly wasn’t in the position to put these contrived claims to the test.

Instead I decided to get down with a bit of culture jamming and recreate the descriptions using my overactive imagination as a guide. I think what we’re left with is probably a more honest appraisal of the wine’s true character. I’d like to think these will go unnoticed by the staff until some eagle eyed customer decides to spoil my fun and brings it to their attention. Only time will tell…

Cheers

id-iom

Advertisement

Give me a London girl every time

Give me a London girl every time (front)

Give me a London girl every time (back)

As Chas n Dave sang in their 1983 song ‘London Girls’:

Give me a London girl every time,
I’ve gotta find one I’ve made up my mind

This particular specimen of London female appears to be from somewhere near Kennington and despite the fact she’s green, has grey hair and a red nose you can see she’s got music in her eyes. What more could a man want?

I came across this little beauty during a little tidy up. She was tucked down the side of a portfolio and was actually created a short while ago and we somehow managed to neglect her – until now! It’s on a section of a 1980’s South London bus timetable and was created using the magic of stencils and screen printing. It’s an eminently frameable 15 x 20 cm in size and is now on eBay. It’s even got our id-iom stamp of approval screen printed on the back so you can relax safe in the knowledge it’s an authentic id-iom product.

Give me a London girl every time – ebay link

Cheers

id-iom

Size: 15 x 20cm
Materials: spraypaint, stencils and screen print on 80’s bus timetable. With screen printed id-iom stamp on the back.
Available – now on eBay

Live Free or Die

Now whilst we can’t claim credit for the nice ‘Live free or die’ text I just like how it sits between the dastardly duo of dangerous street artists slinging their paste all over the place. Who knows how long the wheatpastes lasted or whether they are, indeed, still up and visible. Next time we’re in the area we’ll have to check…

Cheers

id-iom

Man the f*ck up!

I’ve had a slightly enigmatic little project on the go for a little while now (as I’m really not sure what to do with it) and needed some fake advertising for the reverse side. Hmmm… What to do, what to do? Then in a  small flash of inspiration it came to me. I would create a drink advertisement for a nice frosty can of ‘Man the fuck up!’ Once I had that much locked in the rest of the design pretty much took care of itself.

I would imagine the drink to be something along the lines of an alcoholic power drink (do they even exist?) to be consumed when life conspires against you. A little something that would definitely separate the men from the boys. The online and TV advertising would feature an accompanying soundtrack of a dubstep version of Billy Ocean’s 1985 hit ‘When the going gets tough’ followed by the tagline of ‘Feeling tired and emotional? Try a can of Man the fuck up!’ read by James Earl Jones. And that would be that.  I just wonder what a can of Man Up would  actually tastes like…

Cheers

id-iom

Go down gambling when you hear the call of the wild

With these dark and depressing days we all need a little something to spice up our life and us artists are no different. There we were wallowing about in our creative filth when the idea struck that we would have a little paint-off using the same base image. The rules were simple; we had to create a complete design using the same image of a friend of ours, we would then paint the background of the image before passing it over to the other to finish off with their foreground design.

After having a small photo shoot we headed off to our respective caves to complete the first step of the mission. We emerged with our canvasses held aloft screaming and taunting one another with ‘How’s about this then?’ or something similar (but with more swear words). We then both looked at each others’ work so far and gave a non-committal shrug before grabbing the offending canvas from the other’s hands and stalking off, looking to cover the others’ inferior work with something a little higher class. What we’re left with is two mashup pictures; one was originally to be called ‘Go down gambling’ and the other ‘Call of the wild’. What exactly they’re called now i’m not so sure. Maybe ‘Go down calling’ and ‘Go wild gambling’? Got any better ideas? If so, just drop us a postcard with your suggestions…

Cheers

id-iom

Title: Go down gambling when you hear the call of the wild
Materials: Paint pen, acrylic, pencil, pastel, spray paint and charcoal
Size: 60 x 60 cm
Please email if interested in either (or both)

Dem Bones

Dem Bones

Dem Bones

It’s said that most people have a skeleton or two in their closet – but I just wasn’t sure what mine were or even where the closet was. Whilst we were out doing some paste ups we came across a piece on Sclater Street by Skeleton Cardboard. After taking a couple of steps past the piece a thought jumped into my tiny mind; ‘That’s a big skeleton. We have something featuring skeletons on it. This seems like an ideal opportunity to get our skeleton out of the clost. Stop! It’s skeleton time!’

After approving of this train of thought we pulled up, located our skeleton wheatpaste and slapped it on the wall. Now there’s a few skeletons and they’re all out of the closet. In fact they are all very charming, chatty and willing to talk for as many hours as you’d engage them on just about any subject from the current state of the music industry (which somehow they seemed very clued up on) to the implications of harnessing solar energy for future missions to the edge of the galaxy (their knowledge on this subject left a little to be desired).

Cheers

id-iom

The Kiss of Death

The ‘kiss of death’ is generally considered to be an action or event that may appear innocuous but that actually brings about ruin and failure. It was also the name of a single shot gun concealed in a lipstick which was designed (and assumably used) by the KGB during the Cold War years.

With that in mind I can’t look at this picture and think of the title ‘Kiss of Death’ without imagining it as the opening of a James Bond film complete with saucy title sequence and musical accompaniment. I’ve even got the first scene worked out. Cut to a high ranking British diplomat having dinner with some foxy young lady. They then go back to a hotel room and she pulls her lipstick and shoots him in the liver with it and smiles a predatory smile. Cut to title sequence with Shirley Bassey belting out ‘Kiss of Death’ and you’re off.

Cheers

id-iom

Title: The Kiss of Death
Materials: Acrylic paint, spray paint, stencils, paint pen and varnish. Oh, and glitter. Don’t forget the glitter!
Size: 60 x 60 cm
Available – Please email if interested

Ladette to Lady. Maybe.

Ladette to Lady. Maybe.

Here’s another of our wheat pastes from the last time we went out pasting and again we have to thank baddogwhiskas for letting us use his photo.

I was flicking through television channels before deciding whether to go to bed the other night and something caught my attention. It was about 1am and one of the shows on offer was ‘Aussie Ladette to Lady’ which, if you have never had the misfortune to catch it, is certainly something to behold. It features a load of troublesome Australian tomboy girls who compete to become ladies at an English finishing school. So far, so ITV2 you might think. But what caught my attention was the fact that they had a sign language interpreter for this show. Just think about it. How often do you see the interpreters? Not very often. And out of all the shows you could choose to add sign language to you go and do it for Ladette to Lady? at 1am? Just weird. I’m sure it’s part of some wider conspiracy. You mark my words…

Anyway, I’m getting away from the point of today’s post. Back to more important things. What we have here is a girl of a thousand sins who, apart from the fact she’s not Australian, could easily feature on Ladette to Lady. She’s rough, rude and raucous. You can just tell from the tar black pits for eyes that most of those sins have been racked up doing things you’d rather not know about. With people you’re better off not knowing. I’m hoping it’s just a phase and she’ll be best of getting it all out of her system so she can then focus on work, education and the finer things in life. Only time will tell but i’m not holding my breath…

Cheers

id-iom

Time to straighten up your act on the street

Time to straighten up your act on the street

So here’s another of our wheat pastes that baddogwhiskas managed to grab of a picture for us. It would seem that both of us here at id-iom need to go back to photography 101 and learn it all again, not that we ever even learned it in the first place that is. Maybe it’s time again for a night course or two…

This lady had an attitude problem, a carefree attitude problem one might say. She was continuously having torrid affairs, taking enough drugs to make rock stars look like schoolchildren and drinking enough that if you cut her she would bleed pretty much 100 proof vodka. Now although this may be acceptable for someone in their teens or early 20’s, it becomes a trifle too much for a lady who is the wrong side of 30.

Now she thinks its time to straighten up her act and this picture is a reminder of the bad old days and her outlandish nights out, so that she’ll remember who she was and who it is she’s trying to become. Personally, I think it’s pretty useless as just the other day I saw her in an apron trying to cook some fairy cakes but she was using cocaine instead of icing sugar. Oh well, old habits die hard i guess…

Cheers

id-iom

Little Eskimo

So, our good friends put a picture of their new baby girl up on Facebook with a caption along the lines of ‘finally our little eskimo has arrived’. A few people thought that she was actually named Eskimo and much hilarity ensued (most of it along the lines of ‘have you really thought this through? Won’t she get grief at school?’).

At this point the muse demanded that I create a little Eskimo themed piece for them using one of their pictures of her as the basis. After some design and a bit of computer jiggery-pokery we have a little Eskimo girl outside her igloo on the frozen snowscape waiting patiently for her parents to come back with some tasty seal or arctic fox for her lunch. Now they just need to get it printed and framed and they have a nice memento of their first baby related internet gaffe. Oh how they’ll laugh in years to come…

edit: Since doing a little research after writing the post it would seem that perhaps Eskimo is a perjorative word. So, apologies to any Inuit-Yupik’s out there but the story just wouldn’t be the same if I changed it…

Cheers

id-iom