So it’s ever onward with you Yuletide Demolition Sale.
Today’s offering features a cat with some kind of rainbow-vision, a plimsoll line and a tiny version of us! It is actually a combination of two previous large scale pieces we had done. The first was our piece done at UPfest 2010 (pic featuring the ‘working’ CCTV camera in the top left) and the second was done on a friend’s wall (link to picture).
It’s a single layer A3 screen print with unique hand finishing. The print also features our little ‘id-iom’ stencil that has been applied on the print just like on the UPfest piece. It’s starting at just 99p and here’s the Ebay link
It’s my party and i’ll cry if i want to (UPfest pizza box)
It’s my party and i’ll cry if i want to (front)
It’s my party and i’ll cry if i want to (interior)
It’s my party and i’ll cry if i want to (back)
It’ll probably get worse before it gets any better (UPfest pizza box)
It’ll probably get worse before it gets any better (front)
It’ll probably get worse before it gets any better (back)
We’ve been working pretty much flat out painting our studio building and juggling a few commissions but when UPfest got in touch to ask if we’d be interested in painting up a couple of pizza boxes for them we jumped at the chance thinking that sometimes a change can be as good as a rest.
There are 50 boxes being produced by different artists and they are to be used as limited edition presentation boxes for the upcoming UPfest book for the first lucky punters. The book celebrates 5 years of UPfest and is a large format book with hundreds of shots from the Bristol festival. The book is released next week and you can order a copy here.
After a wait of a couple of days the boxes arrived and they needed them back by the end of this week so we had to pull something out pretty quickly. After a little inspiration and some fevered design I jumped to work on the screen printing equipment and, predictably, the other half of id-iom sat there gazing into the middle distance with a puzzled look on his face. After again explaining slowly and with small words what was expected of him the cogs eventually started turning and his eyes briefly brightened as some small glimmer of realisation came into his eyes and he sprang (slowly) into action. The rest is history.
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.
It would appear that we have something of a busy weekend ahead of us. And, as usual, we are woefully short of time. On the plus side we seem to work well under pressure so hopefully everything will work itself out…
First up, as long as we can get ourselves out of bed on time, we’ll be attending the Seize Art Fair on Friday to get ourselves involved in some East End fun. It’s something of a 90’s rave arrangement so we get confirmation of the meeting point in the morning then get to head off with some like-minded folk to have some paint related tomfoolery before anyone knows what’s going on. Well, that’s the plan and we’re in.
And then on Saturday morning it’s off to Bristol for the annual knees-up better known as UPfest. We’ve painted there a few times before and as long as the weather holds out it’s a good chance to paint what we like and catch up with whichever cool cats we can find. Now we just need to find a suitable old man to masquerade as us in all the TV interviews that are undoubtedly going to come our way…
Pictures will hopefully follow in due course as long as I can get said pictures before I manage to have too good a time. See you on the other side.
Unfortunately we forgot to get out our video camera out at Freeze festival this year – but fear not as it has all been captured and edited much better than we would have done in the short video above. Our piece gets featured a little and you even get a quick shot of someone having a crafty puff on our extra large art fag. Good times all round…
So it was the time of year for us to strap on our snowboards and go find some big air. I’m only joking as that would undoubtedly end up in a tangled mess of broken limbs.
Instead we opted to pack our art fag, oversize cardboard glasses and some paint and then head to Battersea to find ourselves a little spot to paint in. Thankfully the weather was lovely so we cracked on and had pretty much all the painting done by the end of day one.
With day two having just as good weather it was pretty much plain sailing as all we had to do was install our sunglasses, cardboard hand and id-iom brand art fag (complete with glowing red LED tip) to finish up our first attempt at 3D graffiti. We even managed to fulfil the suggestion to have some ash under the cigarette when we found a sandbag to borrow some makeshift ‘ash’ from. A little grey paint later and ‘hey presto!’ you’ve got yourself some wind-proof ash (cheers for that suggestion Dan!) Once we were all done we then turned our attention to the serious business of having a drink and watching the Streets. All in all a pretty good weekend…
We got back from another succesful UPfest in Bristol last night and were just glad that we managed to get the bulk of our work done on Saturday – when the sun was shining, the crowds were plentiful and the beer was flowing. Sunday turned out to be a different story but at least we managed to get our piece completed and still had time for a good look around.
After an early start on Saturday morning (following some feverish last minute preparations) we managed to make it to the Tobacco Factory for about 11.30 and then onto the Spotted Cow for a midday start. As we were a little late in arriving we got no choice in which boards we got but i think that eventually worked out to our advantage. Once we’d got disco-bag set up we got off to a quick start as we had plenty of work to be getting on with. By about 8pm we were pretty much done for the day so packed our stuff up and headed out for a few (more) beers. Whoever thought of putting us within such easy reach of alcohol in a pub garden certainly has a lot to answer for…
After a night on the town and a very rainy start to the day we return to the Spotted Cow to finish up to find that that some rogue decorators had obviously taken umbrage at our piece and had decided to show us a taste of our own medicine by wallpapering over the whole lot of it! It would also appear that the Grey Ghost Guards were around in the area (possibly in collusion with the rogue decorators) and looking to have our piece cleaned off the wall. Luckily we have some security footage so all will be revealed once we’ve had a chance to examine it and identify the perpatrators…
Anyway we did our best to remove the wallpaper and expose our image underneath resulting in a decayed and battered looking wall with the legend ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’. I’ll get those pesky Daily Mail reading rogue decorators and Grey Ghost Guard critters if it’s the last thing i do…
For larger versions of any of the images please visit our flickr page.
It’s that time of year again when we pack our kit and take a roadtrip to Bristol for the annual paintstravaganza that is UPfest. I have also just had something of a morale boost as I’ve checked the weather and it’s looking lovely on both Saturday and Sunday – which is definitely good as we’ve given ourselves a fairly experimental design to go for which will require us to be working on both days – if we manage to get it all finished in time!
This is certainly a weekend to be looking foward to especially with good weather predicted and plenty of friends to catch up with. We’ll be painting at the Spotted Cow pub (a pub? like that’s a good idea!) – and hope to see you there…
We’ve also got an idea for a video to go with this one which, if we manage to get all the footage we need to, should be top shelf all the way. Watch this space…
Like some overblown Hollywood epic this newest video has been a long time in the making (well, we originally did the piece in November last year so it’s been a fair while).
We were asked to take part in creating some work for the Freeze festival which is held annually in the shadow of Battersea power station. As it was a snowboarding/skiing themed event we thought we’d come up with a little something keeping in line with the general snow theme. After a little deliberation we settled upon the face of the girl with the legend ‘I grew up dreaming of snow!’ and after cutting some big stencils we headed down to get to work. Thankfully on the day the weather stayed nice despite big rain clouds looming for a while in the afternoon.
A big shout out to our fellow artists who it is always a pleasure to work alongside – Ian Phenna, SPQR and Asone (whose work you see fleetingly when the camera pans around towards the end of video).
Cheers
id-iom
Title: I grew up dreaming of snow!
Media: Spraypaint, masonry paint and paint pen
Size: 11 x 8 Feet
For the first graffiti road trip of the year we headed up to Southport for the weekend to do a little painting at UpNorthFest. As seems to happen with alarming regularity we only managed to come up with a design at pretty much the last minute. Our final design features a huge version of Hugo’s head with Southport pier reflected in his sunglasses and the text ‘Hey la, it ain’t ‘alf pretty up north’ in the background. Our lackadaisical approach to planning left precious little time to cut it and get ready but we somehow managed to get it all done in time for departure.
Once we were all set up and disco bag was happily pumping out some tunes we got down to the messy business of creating the background. After we’d let the paint dry properly (a lesson learned the hard way) it was time to get the lettering and face up. Thankfully the weather remained good all day – or else our piece wouldn’t have made all that much sense! But you can’t let things like that worry you in advance… The reflection of Southport pier in his glasses seemed to go down well with the locals and I just like any excuse to get the chrome out!
On top of all that we had the extra bonus of catching up with old friends in the sunshine so all in all it was well worth the effort. Hopefully there will be the same again next year!
Cheers
id-iom
Stage 1 – getting the background done
Stage 2 – text
Stage 3 – Final pic with model posing next to it (he even has the same hat on!)
Stage 4 – Final – (You can see what a nice day it was!)
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