Upfest 2020

We’re a bit late to the party with our announcement but we’re happy to confirm we’ve been given a wall to paint at this year’s UPfest. It’s the first time we’ve managed to snag an actual wall so must finally have enough karma points stacked up. Let’s just hope we manage to nail it…

Cheers

id-iom

@Upfest @poscauk 

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Stay Positive (UPfest 10th anniversary book launch edition)

Do you usually start new projects in a whirl of positivity only to be confounded mere moments later by the nagging ache of negativity?

Do you enjoy putting off til tomorrow what you should probably get done today?

Would you generally prefer to be back in bed?

If you answered yes to any or all of these questions then our new range of demotivational pieces are ideal to give you that extra little nudge you need to justify to yourself whatever decision you’re about to make. It’s that simple! Anyone can use them!

Can be purchased this evening as part of UPfest’s 10th anniversary book launch. There will be a blind auction with art from 50 festival artists.

Cheers

id-iom

Just be your self (id-iom @ UPfest 2018)

For UPfest’s 10th incarnation (and our 9th visit) we thought we’d go for a couple of self portraits combined with an inspirational quote albeit with a little id-iom twist. The main quote says ‘Just be your self. Unless you can be id-iom. In which case be id-iom.’ We even managed to get a cryptic earworm included in morse code in the wallpaper design and shoehorned a Simpson’s reference in there for good measure (as UPfest had partenered The Simpsos for this year’s show).

It should all have been easy enough except we didn’t really count on the weather being quite so inclement. Wrestling huge stencils in the wind and rain is not really to be advised. We managed to get to some state of completion but not before the biggest rainstorm of the day had completely soaked us to the bone. All this after 4 weeks of the UK baking in eternal sunshine. Oh well, c’est la vie.

Cheers

id-iom

Bonum Iaculat Me Babber (id-iom @ UPfest 2017)

So it’s that time of year when we pack the id-iomobile with just about everything we’ve got and head down to Bristol for UPfest. After discarding about a dozen designs we settled on ‘Bonum Iaculat Me Babber’ partly because we both thought it was an impactful design and we could include some 3D sculptural elements but also because it was Wednesday and we were running out of time.

On Saturday the weather was looking a little dicey so we were aiming to get finished by 4 when the rain was predicted. Luckily the rain didn’t come til 6 so despite the fact we actually finished about 5.30 all was well. The translated text says ‘Good shot me babber’ with the first bit being in Latin (as I thought it sounded mysterious and a bit classier) and ‘me babber’ being a Bristolian phrase meaning ‘my friend’ or similar. Adding the arrows, cigarette and monocle gave it that final id-iom touch and once we’d got a shot featuring the tree in the background looking like his hair we were free to quaff some ‘mission completed’ beers. Cheers to all the UPfest crew for having us and putting on such a sterling performance. as usual.

Cheers

id-iom

No not me, never not

No not me, never not

So the UpFest crew has gone and produced another amazing book celebrating eight years of The Urban Paint festival and the hundreds of  related artworks that have been produced by artists from far and wide. To celebrate the launch they will be selling 100 unique hand painted book presses (50 in Bristol & 50 in London) which will house the new book. All book presses will be blind wrapped and randomly sold making each copy a proper surprise! Oooh exciting!!

Anyway we were asked to paint up one of these fellas and this is what we’ve come up with. ‘No not me, never not’ is a common phrase for us to use as one of our general day-to-day rules is to deny our involvement in any given situation. It’s generally safer that way. So we thought we’d share this pearl of advice with it’s new owner. But rather than plaster one of our ugly mugs on something that may well be staring at someone from their bookshelf for eternity we thought it best to combine our rule of thumb with a more photogenic subject. Apparently that’s called marketing and it’s proved to be effective. So let’s hope it’s new owner will heed our advice of never admitting to anything (unless you have to). Here ends the lesson.

 

Cheers

id-iom

 

Skin and Bones – id-iom @ UPfest 2016

Sooooo, I’ve written a zombie book called Skin & Bones that also features some zombie pigs. I’ve yet to do anything with it other than give it to a few friends to read so thought I’d remedy that somewhat by making it the focus of this year’s UPfest wall at our alloted location – the Steam Crane pub. There’s a copy of the book wheatpasted up for part of the background and we even included a little hoopla action for that interactive element. Not a single point was scored with the 20 odd people we played with however. I didn’t think it was going to be that tough to score a measly 10 points… 

Anyway, just in case you’re at all interested in the book here’s a little taster of the kind of thing to expect if it ever gets published:

This morning you woke up feeling a little unwell. You have no appetite, your head is aching, your throat is sore and you think you might have a slight fever. You don’t know it yet, but the zombie virus has already been working away inside you for a week or so and has been busy attacking your immune system. It’s reached the stage where it’s really about make it’s presence known.

Exactly when and where you were infected is unclear as it can take  anything between 21 and 30 days from initial infection to the first proper symptoms. What is more certain is that you are now infectious yourself and have been for a while. Your family, friends and anyone else in close contact with you are all in mortal danger.

The next couple of days will determine if you are one of the lucky few who has some natural resistance and will, at least, survive the infection stage or not. In the highly probable event that you have no resistance then, at some time between 3 and 4 weeks after infection, you can expect the whites of your eyes to turn red, your vomit and diarrhoea will now be charged with infected blood and large blood blisters develop under your skin. You are now at the peak of infectiousness as the virus particles, eager to find their next victim, replicate swiftly inside your body.

What comes next is straight out of a movie. Your brain heats up and you become more aggressive as your mental faculties begin to deteriorate. At some point you’ll become unconscious and then the next time you open your eyes you will no longer be in control of yourself. You are now constantly hungry for human flesh and have the overriding urge to bite someone. Satisfying your cravings is now all your limited intellect can cope with. Congratulations, you are now a zombie.

Calling you a zombie would probably suffice in a pinch but isn’t quite correct however and the term ‘living dead’ would probably seem a better fit. But you won’t care. The virus has made permanent changes. From the second you were infected the grave is your only and eventual way out. At least by that point you’ll have no knowledge of what you’re doing. Just following some of the baser human instincts that have been modified and enhanced. Your end is nigh. Along with just about everybody else’s…

Cheers

id-iom

The Greenbeard Effect (id-iom @ Upfest 2015)

The Greenbeard Effect (id-iom @UPfest 2015)

Given our proclivity for leaving things to the last minute we were having a brainstorm in the pub on Tuesday for UPfest ideas when we somehow alighted on the idea of pirates as the infamous Blackbeard was allegedly from Bristol. It was a good start but we needed more. We then moved on to Bluebeard (not actually a pirate but an aristocratic murderer from a French fairy tale), then to Redbeard (a pirate plying his trade in the Mediterranean) and finally Greenbeard.

As it turns out there was no such pirate as Greenbeard but we did find out about ‘The Green-beard Effect‘. Which, to paraphrase something that sounds quite complicated when you read up on it, is that people like other people who share observable physical traits like blue eyes or, as in the name of the effect, a hypothetical green beard. With that as a vague plan we then came up with the idea of adding some actual greenery to give him a true green beard and an idea was born.  A quick word with our trusty gardener friend John to secure some foliage later and the whole thing was a go!

Panorama shot of our side of the yard at UPfest 2015.

The original design which I’m only showing for completion’s sake as we didn’t have enough space to get the lettering in.

Cue some feverish design, the standard bickering over the final design and then some swift preparation and hey presto! We’re ready for another road trip. After a good night’s sleep (thanks to Jo & Al for putting us up!) we were down the Tobacco Factory fed, watered and ready to go by 10.30am. It was all going smoothly. Too smoothly. Something had to go wrong. And sure enough we had 10ft less space than we were expecting. Hmmm… What to do? We eventually decided on ditching the ‘Sexual Altruism’ lettering as it was too big. That was a shame but needs must and we went with just the two heads staring at each other to maximise the space to apply the green beard to. After the rain on Friday and the rain on Sunday it turned out that Saturday was a bastion of sunshine and we even have the cheap trucker tans to prove it.

As we were painting a few people asked if it was white Obama that we were painting. Not only would that be a strange concept to begin with he doesn’t have a beard and id-iom doesn’t really do political. Perhaps we should think again. Once we’d just about finished we whacked some LED’s in the eyes and some reflective paint as their laser like stare. I’d love to see if anyone manages to get a decent night shot…

As ever UPfest was a great day out and it’s always nice to put names to faces and chat to all and sundry. Thanks to the UPfest team for having us and Jake in particular for dealing with our whinging.

I think we found us a doppelganger!

Cheers

id-iom

We are all fools for love

So we’re keeping the ebay ball rolling with a new piece:

Here’s the ebay link

It’s been over a year in the making (mainly because we’re so lazy) but we can finally reveal our huge edition of 2 (well 3 if you count the landscape one that is currently being hand finished) of our piece which was originally a large scale piece done at UPfest in 2012. It’s a combination of screen printing, stencils, spraypaint and a little hand finishing. The picture was based on a photo of a friend and I’m glad to say she has seen the piece since it was done and given it her blessing. I think the message is clear enough that no matter how tough we think we are love can make a fool of us all. Amen to that.

Cheers

id-iom

Title: We are all fools for love
Materials: Screen print, stencils, spraypaint and paint pen
Size: A3

We are all fools for love

We are all fools for love – 16ft x 8ft @ UPfest 2012

It’s been over a year in the making (mainly because we’re so lazy) but we can finally reveal our huge edition of 2 (well 3 if you count the landscape one that is currently being hand finished) of our piece which was originally a large scale piece done at UPfest in 2012. They’re a combination of screen printing, stencils, spraypaint and a little hand finishing. The picture was based on a photo of a friend and I’m glad to say she has seen the piece since it was done and given it her blessing. I think the message is clear enough that no matter how tough we think we are love can make a fool of us all. Amen to that.

Cheers

id-iom

Title: We are all fools for love
Materials: Screen print, stencils, spraypaint and paint pen
Size: A3

My brain is not dead enough for this (but my soul certainly is)…

My brain is not dead enough for this (but my soul certainly is)…

It’s been that time of year when as many artists as you’d possibly want in one place gather to show their skills. For UPFest the weather usually seems to be our ‘summer’ standard of grey skies and light rain. I’m not sure quite what we’d done to get good weather this year however we were fully prepared to take advantage of it. So, early on Saturday morning it was time to pack the car and head off on our annual pilgrimage to Bristol.

After arriving fashionably late (not entirely our fault!) we made our way to Bar BS3, which is a new venue for Upfest, where we had a 20 x 8ft wall to paint in the pub’s beer garden (which will hopefully become a semi-permanent feature). After a bold start with the tiniest rollers in the world we finally managed to make some headway then it was time to wrestle with some extra large stencils.

The picture was originally meant to have some words (which we’ve used as the title) but due to unforeseen circumstances we failed to get them completed before embarking on our road trip. As it goes I’m not sure if it needs the words anyway so I’m quite happy with the finished product. After we’d finished it was all merrily downhill with many drinks being quaffed. All good. Bring on next year…

Cheers

id-iom

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