Things

Date
31 March 2012

She’s a fair thing she is, our Lady of Things. She is sweet of cheek and rosy of voice, but she’ll get her dancing shoes on and her disco scunchie out when the occasion calls. This weekend she brings you a world of woodcuts, illustrious illustration, fabulous photographs and not one, not three, but two audio/visual hybrids! Can you say, wiggidy what!?

Lewis Chaplin/Alex F. Webb: Fourteen-Nineteen

“Vision Quests” were often undertaken by Native Americans as a means of finding one’s purpose in life. Well Alex F. Webb and Lewis Chaplin have undertaken a visual quest (get it? get it!?) that involves providing a platform on which to engage with the next generation of contemporary photographers. So, if brilliant brand new imagery is your bag (and it’s definitely ours), then Fourteen-Nineteen might just bring a bit more purpose to your passion. Enjoy it’s big, clean pages full of clear skies and open water.
www.fourteen-nineteen.com

Bryan Nash Gill: Woodcut

Almost as lovely as the objects within it’s pages, this book is a weighty beaut that commands the space around it like a lumberjack commands his axe. Connecticut-based artist Bryan Nash Gill likes to create large scale relief prints from the cross section of trees, “revealing the sublime power locked inside their arboreal rings,” as he puts it. Flipping through these pages makes you feel small and insignificant when faced with the endless tale of life told by each trees innumerable rings. And then you forget all that philosophical nonsense and just enjoy what pretty, pretty pictures they do make.
www.bryannashgill.com
www.papress.com

Orlando Weeks/Robert Hunter: Young Colossus

Everyone’s been talking about this new release from Young Colossus and fair dues – it’s the kind of item that dares to take on two disciplines at once – neither an easy field to stand out in – and manages to knock both out of the park. This six song soundtrack plus illustrated story couple like a bee and honey; with Weeks’ watery melodies, trembling harmonies and thoughtful lyrics placing themselves artfully between the pages of Hunter’s non-verbal narrative. Oh joy of joys, to flip through a picture book whilst listening to such tunes! Highly recommended.
www.youngcolossus.com

Jeremie Fischer: La Royaume Quo

We love anything that tells stories in bright coloured pencils – it’s even better when those stories are about monsters and mustachioed Frenchmen. Jeremie Fisher’s newest French-language comic ticks all the boxes. Recently release by Nobrow, it’s a sure handed set of drawings that gives us everything, i.e. page after page of pleasing primary colours and strange story telling that carries on brillianty where Fischer’s single standing illustrations leave off.
www.jeremiefischer.com
www.nobrow.net

Willis Earl Beal: Acousmatic Sorcery

He begins with a simple introduction. “Hello people, my name is Willis Earl Beal”. We’re already listening. He continues on to explain that life may not have always been kind to him, but he’s proof that anybody can do anything. Strong words, but we’d expect nothing less from the man who blew our minds with this performance. Beal’s first album comes complete with a book of illustrated short stories that he writes and draws just like he sings – in harried, heartfelt sentences that snap up thoughts right at the moment they pour out of his head.
www.willisearlbeal.com

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