Pick Me Up, the annual festival for the graphic arts, is back at Somerset House for its seventh year. Showcasing illustration, animation, 3-D installations, stationery, and for the first time this year – ceramics, the show is in town until 02 May 2016. confessions of a design geek founding editor, Katie Treggiden, popped in to check it out.
I’ve been a big fan of Alice Bowsher‘s work since she created a fabulous illustration for Issue 03 of our sister publication Fiera Magazine. It was great to see such a selection of her illustrations in one place. Her bold black brush strokes are inspired by everything from Calvin & Hobbes cartoons to the work of Ray and Charles Eames.
I also really enjoyed seeing the creative processes of some of the illustrators showcased alongside their work – excerpts from sketch books and the paraphernalia they collect for inspiration are displayed in glass cabinets, elevating them to the status of museum pieces. Alice brought us all back down to earth, saying of her collection: “I think being daft and goofing off is at the heart of my work. If I’m not working on commissions, I tend to be making silly videos, puppets, books and toys. Making these things keeps me sane.”
Isabel + Helen is a London-based creative partnership, established by Isobel Gibson and Helen Chesner. Together they specialise in set design and interactive installations. Their self-playing musical instruments, inspired by Alexander Calder, caught my eye.
As well as the instruments themselves, the pair has created a series of prints inspired by their own work – I love the way these static two-dimensional images somehow capture the movement and even the sound of their three-dimensional forms.
London-based graphic designer Corin Kennington is showing a selection of typographic prints. “My work explores the journey of creating an image using a combination of old and new processes,” he says, “and developing ways of unifying digital aesthetics and systems with traditional methods of print and execution.”
A new part of Pick Me Up for 2016 is a retrospective exhibition of the work of typographer and printmaker, Alan Kitching. Alan Kitching: A Life in Letterpress includes 100 prints charting his career from apprentice to world-renowned designer.
Alan’s own letterpress is also in-situ at the festival and he will be using it to create a utopian-themed print-series over the course of the festival.
Upstairs, there is plenty of opportunity to get your hands inky. 3rd Rail, a collection of illustrators, designers, printmakers and seamsters providing screen printing and “garment customisation” from their studio in London, were offering visitors the opportunity to pull their own print posters and tote bags in some spectacular neon colourways.
I loved design studio and gallery Made North‘s North South project, which comprises a series of limited edition prints by leading designers such as Anthony Burrill, Tony Brook and Ian Anderson that visualise what being from the North or the South of England means to them.
Hato Press make stationery from the “mistakes, offcuts and tests” left over from the things they make using risograph printing – a high-speed digital printing technique originally developed in Japan for high-volume photocopying and printing. “In this way we are able to help the environment as much as we can, and share with you all the happy accidents that are too good to throw away,” they say.
And finally, ceramic objects make an appearance at Pick Me Up, in the show’s first deviation into three-dimensional design. The Clay Collective, a newly formed group of artists and 24-hour workshop based at Hackney Downs Studios, are showing contemporary ceramics and hosting pottery workshops on coiling and pinch-pot techniques.
Pick Me Up is at Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA until 02 May 2016.
Further reading for the especially geeky:
- interview :: made by michael
- interview :: nordvink
- interview :: james molkenthin
- interview :: juliette bigley
