In love as in death

Skull with lillies, acrylic paint on A3 paper, available on Big Cartel

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Sod it Rick! Not again!

It’s time to check up on an old piece and see how it’s getting on. The first time we saw black sphere 004 he was shiny and new and this is what we said:

Today’s sphere is out living life in the real world. It’s watched one too many episodes of Rick and Morty and has decided to go on an inter-dimensional trip of its own. It has chosen our world. Quite why it is examining a moss covered wall is anyone’s guess. What Black Sphere 004 will make of it would also be well beyond our range of reckoning. Perhaps it will declare war. Perhaps it will stop for a picnic. Only time will tell…

Now though we can see that time hasn’t been kind to black sphere 004. He obviously decided he liked what he saw and stayed a while, a little too long maybe. Maybe this is what happens to sphere’s when they decide to hang around on earth…

Cheers

id-iom

The death of black gold

With BP and the other big petroleum conglomerates saying that we’ve reached peak oil consumption, that would seem like a good thing for all. For years petroleum oil has been known as black gold due the price it gets if you can just get it out of the ground. But as we now all know the use of petroleum in everything from plastic to petrol has been choking the planet for years.

Now with green energy coming to the forefront it seems to be the death knell for the industry and that can only be a good thing. Hopefully we as a population will lean in to renewable energy, along with changing our attitudes to things like fast fashion, cycling and eating less meat. We can only hope…

It is A5 in size and made using triblend markers, fine line pen and paint pen

Cheers

id-iom

It’s not a dove

‘It’s not a dove, so don’t forget it, it’s just an aspirin with a bird scratched on’ (sung to 10cc’s ‘I’m not in love’). It was all Doona could do was to repeat the line over and over again to try and quell the anxiety storming around her brain. She had just dropped her first ecstasy tablet and she wasn’t sure exactly what was going to happen to her. She’d read everything she could on the interweb and spoken with friends but she knew the actual experience she was going to have would be tricky to verbalise. Suddenly the first bars of The Streets ‘Blinded By The Lights’ were dropped by the DJ and she began to float…

Created using the magic of acrylic, oil pastel, paint pen and imagination on classy A2 Bockingford paper. Get in touch if you’d like to give her a new home… 

Cheers

id-iom

Your guess is as good as mine…

Well, there’s a reason not to leave stencils in the ‘studio’. I’m not even entirely sure what’s happened to it. Other than it’s dead.

Love

id-iom

The Danse Macabre

The Danse Macabre

You’re at the ball, you look absolutely stunning, you’re dancing with the most charming partner ever and then suddenly he whispers in to your ear ‘We come from dust; we return to dust.’ and you suddenly realise this is your last dance. The sudden realisation brings images layered upon reality, your partners hands start to deform, his face suddenly showing the sallow bags of decay under his eyes. You’re freaking out, realising the end is so very close but all of a sudden a calmness enters your body and you decide to take death out on the floor for one last dance. The reason for this calmness was a film from the late 80’s that pops in to your head – Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.  The line “You might be a king or a little street sweeper, but sooner or later you dance with the reaper.” calms your soul leaving you to enjoy the last dance of you life.

 

Cheers

id-iom

Je l’aime a mourir

Je l’aime a mourir

Being the social media savvy types we undoubtedly are we thought we’d jump on the Valentines bandwagon with a little contribution of our own – but being given to a more cynical and pernicious state of mind we’ve given it a slightly darker nuance and then hidden that nuance behind an almost impenetrable wall of langue Francaise – as the French would say. From there it’s up to you to work it out.

Cheers

id-iom

Stormbird (Dave’s remix)

Storm Bird

Hmmmm. How to explain Stormbird. I’m not really sure if any explanation I can give can adequately describe our thought processes when creating this stop-motion epic. The ‘storyline’ just kind of suggested itself. It’s probably easier to explain it’s conception than how we developed such a monster. It came about when we had id-iom’s good friend Dave over from LA for a while. He’s known for doing a bit of video production/editing so after consumption of a few beers down at the studio we (stupidly) decided that a short stop-motion video might be a good idea. It wasn’t. After over 2600 shots over the best part of a week in the freezing cold basement making just one tiny adjustment after another we were close to death by exposure but were finally able to call it a wrap.

There is plenty of footage which ended up on the cutting room floor that will hopefully never see the light of day as it’s more than a little weird and would probably emotionally scar any viewer for life. And all that took long hours of standing around in the cold that i’ll never get back. I bet the Aardman animation studios are all cosy and warm. If i’m ever to attempt anything like this again I’ll be making sure it’s warm outside or we have such mod cons as central heating…

Anyway, once principal photography was finished we realised we needed some musical accompaniment befitting of such a creation so we put out the call and came up with 3 very different soundtracks. The first version will probably not play in certain countries on youtube as The Man probably has certain copyright issues as it features tracks that are already out there but that’s where our other versions come in as both feature an original score which should play internationally no problem. The other video’s will follow this in short order and we’d really love some feedback on which one people prefer (so watch this space)…

What else can we say about the video apart from the fact that it features anthropomorphic spray cans, the Graffiti Removal Squad (first featured here), sharks (one of which is gay but we had a hard time portraying that!), Tom Selleck (although I like to think he’s in his Thomas Magnum persona), a fireball (from Streetfigher 2 obviously) and, of course, the plucky little robin a.k.a the storm bird in Norse mythology.

Finally, whilst I like to think our video has a certain naive rustic charm there are those who treat the subject with a little more professionalism. So for those who haven’t seen it here’s a little link to a much more polished creation featuring light stencils by our good man Pahnl.

Cheers

id-iom

F*@k this for a game of soldiers

War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Say it again! – so sang Edwin Starr in 1970 on the anti-Vietnam song ‘War’ (which, i was interested to learn was originally recorded by The Temptations but not released as they didn’t want to alienate their more conservative fans). Whilst i have a lot of respect for our armed forces and the work they do it is generally political forces which dictate what they do and when – and this can sometimes lead to questionable decisions being made regarding their deployment. That’s all i really want to say on the issue as i think this piece largely speaks for itself…

Cheers

id-iom

Title: F*@k this for a game of soldiers

Media: Screenprint, acrylic, acrylic and spraypaint

Size: 46 x 30 cm

Available from our Big Cartel store for £150

You can trust me. I’m a police officer…

Having just read the oh-so-scandalous news that the policeman who pushed over Ian Tomlinson during the G20 riots will not face charges over his death I thought it a good time to put forward a couple of bits of our work which reflect my current feelings on the matter. The fact that he is an ‘elite‘ officer apparently trained for public order containment should surely stand for something but obviously not. No wonder this hardly makes me feel safer…

Cheers

id-iom

Opaque ID tape (front)

Opaque ID tape (back)

For Police Use Only