So here it is – our finished piece for Islexpo and Year of our Island. We went for a kind of vintage travel poster look in the end with some abstract land, sea and air (I had to get some stripes in there somehow!) and a mysterious looking lady presenting the magical kingdom of Mann to you. A great day all in and even the weather was playing ball. What more could you want?
Cheers
id-iom
For the inaugural Cheltenham Paint Festival we packed up the the id-iomobile and set off with high hopes. The weather for Saturday wasn’t meant to be very good and, for once, the weatherman was bang on the money. It stared off sunny but before long had descended into a maelstrom of wind and rain. Despite battling the somewhat inclement conditions we somehow managed to pull off ‘Our Lady of the Decoration’ before a very vigorous 6pm downpour. We’d had to dry the canvas half a dozen times but working outdoors in the UK in ‘summer’ time can be like that sometimes.
As we were painting just next to the Arts building at the University of Gloucestershire’s Hardwick Campus we thought we’d best try to come up with something classy but colourful and so went with our depiction of the three Muses or ‘Our Lady of the Decoration’ as we’ve decided to call it. The Muses are Aoide (song), Melete (practice) and Mneme (memory). If that doesn’t inspire the arts students then I don’t know what will. The white chevrons have been borrowed from the Uni’s logo so hopefully they’ll be down with it too.
A big thanks to Andy and all the rest of the crew who helped organise. A winning weekend to be sure.
Cheers
id-iom
Sooo, we managed to ruffle some feathers with the original version of this which we did at Sun, Sea and Spray in Blackpool last year. It originally had the text ‘Taking the cure’ which refers to the Victorian pastime of ‘taking the cure’ – being to bathe in the sea for healing/medicinal purposes, which Blackpool used to be famous for. It’s even mentioned on their Wikipedia entry but the Man didn’’t see it that way. Apparently we were making a drugs reference and we needed to adapt it to something less contentious or have the whole thing buffed. Which is where our man on the spot, Chris Fenn and his trusty assistant Hannah Nickson came to our aid and very kindly agreed to modify it for us. So, above is our newly refinished piece complete with entirely inoffensive text. We definitely owe you both a pint or two. And here’s the much maligned original…
Taking the cure (original pic)
Cheers
id-iom
With the somewhat gusty weather we’ve had recently this billboard has managed to peel itself naked. And that, of course, is quite the affront to any self-respecting urban artist. So with our woolen thinking caps pulled down firmly on to our respective heads, we came up with a quick joke on the idea of the advert not being there.
We presumed the matter to be time sensitive as we weren’t sure when the ad man would be back to shove more tasteless shots of half naked women down our gullet so quickly set to work cutting a stencil. This is probably the reason why its so small compared to the actual billboard or at least that’s the story we’re sticking to. It was definitely nothing to do with the fact it was measured ‘by eye’…
Cheers
id-iom
Graffiti small print – ‘Jean Paul Sartre as paraphrased by Cher’
As I’m sure we all know French existential philosopher Jean Paul Sartre once said ‘Words are loaded pistols’. I think we can all appreciate the sentiment behind this statement as surely we’ve all said something we regret every once in a while. And once those words are said the pistol has been fired and there’s no turning back.
Original image of Jean Paul Sartre which our design is based on
This design started life as the image of existential French Jean Paul Sartre’s head with his loaded pistol words alongside but as I love an earworm if I can possibly get away with it I took some inspiration from the world of music to see if I could get Cher’s seminal 1989 hit ‘If I could turn back time‘ playing unheeded in your brain.
In the song Cher utters the immortal words ‘Words are like weapons, they wound sometimes’ and this rang a bell in my brain as it seemed close enough to Sartre’s words to make use of. Hopefully that will strike a chord in your brain and you’ll be singing it all day. Mission accomplished!
Whilst we were painting it some hapless busybody decided to try and let me know that I’d misquoted Sartre but, of course, I hadn’t as she had neglected to read my ‘Jean Paul Sartre as paraphrased by Cher’ small print graffiti. id-iom 1 – random passerby 0. Ha! In your face!
Cheers
id-iom
id-iom x MyDogSighs – Sand, Sea & Spray 2013 – Pic by Neil Tomlin
id-iom x MyDogSighs – Sand, Sea & Spray 2013 – Pic by William Matthews
id-iom x MyDogSighs – Sand, Sea & Spray 2013 – Pic by Alf Myers
id-iom x MyDogSighs – Sand, Sea & Spray 2013 – Pic by Jay Sharples
We’ve already written a post about our time in Blackpool for Sand, Sea & Spray last weekend but we thought we’d do a little update on the piece as we had a little extra work on our piece done on the Saturday when My Dog Sighs popped over and added one of his great looking eyes to our lovely looking lady. He also managed to paint a few other bits and bobs down the same alley so if you’re in the neighbourhood it’s well worth a look.
Cheers
id-iom
Comments Off on Taking the Cure – id-iom x My Dog Sighs collaboration
Filed under art, Billboard, Collaboration, Graffiti, Painting, stencil, street art
Taking the Cure – Sand, Sea & Spray 2013 Blackpool
Taking the Cure – Sand, Sea & Spray 2013 Blackpool
Taking the Cure – Sand, Sea & Spray 2013 Blackpool
Taking the Cure – Sand, Sea & Spray 2013 Blackpool
Taking the Cure – Sand, Sea & Spray 2013 Blackpool
Taking the Cure – Sand, Sea & Spray 2013 Blackpool
Last year when we went to Blackpool for Sand, Sea & Spray we had to work in the driving rain all day (but still managed to get a couple of pieces done) and despite the weatherman’s warnings that this year was going to be pretty similar we set off from London with hope in our hearts. This being the UK however our dreams were soon to be shattered. Despite waking to sunshine it soon became clear that was not going to be the order of the day and so after finding our billboard spot on the Winter Gardens we set to work in a steady drizzle. Soon this escalated to full blown torrential rain that stopped play for a while as we were forced to wait it out in a doorway. From there on in for the rest of the day it was a cycle of rain, a snatch of sunshine and then more rain. We had to get finished in a day however as we had a wedding to attend on Saturday otherwise a strategic retreat to the nearest hostelry would have been in order.
During the afternoon My Dog Sighs turned up and we all agreed that the addition of some of his eyes on our lady would definitely be a good thing so he added them on Saturday (in glorious sunshine i hasten to add) – and surely she looks good with her one real looking eye and one of our eyes? The title and text of ‘Taking the cure’ refers to the Victorian pastime of coming to Blackpool to bathe in the sea as it supposedly had healing qualities.
Photos Courtesy of Jay Sharples
Once we’d finished and dried off a little we went to have a quick beer, see what the Q&A session was like and catch up with whoever was about. All in all a good day out and we’d just like to extend our thanks to the S,S&S team who were all very helpful and accommodating.
Cheers
id-iom
Lord of the Concrete Jungle (in situ)
Lord of the Concrete Jungle
We were commissioned by the Electric Social (who we’ve worked for before) and Tiger Beer to design a picture that would adorn a large wall upstairs at the Brixton bar/club. Once we had a design finalised we measured up and went off to buy some canvas. At this point I didn’t realise quite how bit a 5.5m x 2.6m canvas would actually be…
It’s always fun to go big but we almost bit of more than we can chew with this one as the canvas was far bigger than any room we had to work on it so we had to come up with some fun logistical fixes to get it all done. Just priming the huge canvas took long enough never mind painting the background and cutting stencils. 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. At least they liked it and first impressions from customers have apparently been good so, thankfully, that’s another job done.
Cheers
id-iom
Filed under art, Billboard, Commissions, Graffiti, Painting, stencil, street art
A Groovy Kind of Earworm
Phil Collins '88
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…
Cheers
id-iom
‘I can remember when all this was fields’ sounds pretty much like something you would expect your grandad to say as you drive past the newest and most monstrous of shopping centres doesn’t it? With the seemingly endless stream of development around London town and the proliferation of advertising messages on just about every conceivable surface which are forced into our brain (without our permission) on a daily basis it’s sometimes nice to strike back with a simple message to bring a bit of levity to an otherwise tedious day.
To think there was a time (not that long ago) when there was a little more greenery about and that every single scrap of land wasn’t pounced on for yet another massive advertising hoarding (or completely uninspired housing development.) But then again, perhaps i’m just being a little sentimental.
Anyway, after doing a little reading into billboards I came across this interesting thread on a Brixton forum about illegal billboards. It seems that billboards are sometimes set up without planning permission whilst the companies doing it know they can make more than enough in advertising revenue to remove the boards or pay the fine when the council finally get round to identifying the culprit and doing something about it. Now, whilst the billboard we went on is probably entirely legal it was covered in blue paper which is definitely fair game in my eyes. And i’m sure i’ve suffered enough at their hands over time to make this the mildest form of payback.
Cheers
id-iom
id-iom Title: I can remember when all this was fields Media: Stencil and spraypaint Size: Approx. 1.5m x 1m on billboard
thisisidiom.wordpress.com 
You must be logged in to post a comment.