John O’Reilly
Guest Posting 17 – 21 October 2011
Varoom! is an illustration specific magazine – the latest issue of which boasts a cover by the inimitable George Hardie as well as contributions from the likes of Marian Bantjes and Mimi Leung – with questions posed and answered about the importance of illustration by experts, practitioners and critics. It’s editor and former music journalist, John O’Reilly is guest posting this week as issue #16 is launched…
How do you explain what you do to your parents?
“Mum and Dad, I’ve something to tell you. I’m editor of Varoom illustration magazine. It’s from the wrong side of the tracks – animation, illustration for smartphone apps, children’s books. Dammit, the new issue has a 1,500 word feature on speech bubbles! I know you imagined me with a glossy uptown art mag, but Ma I love her! Varoom is smart, bright, good-looking, and at £5, is a really cheap date.”
Who do you look like?
At Bug, the music promo night a few years ago, I met the host Adam Buxton outside having a drink. My kids and I loved his XFM show, so I asked him for an autograph. Instead of an autograph, he spent 10 minutes chatting and drawing this sketch of how he imagined my son, with a really funny note. Hero. Adam’s version of my son bears an uncanny resemblance to myself.
Did your education count?
Yes, philosophy is the degree that keeps on giving. I did a doctorate, lectured, then got involved in magazines. I got to learn journalism and visual thinking on the page, as an editor and copywriter, working with some great designers, creative directors, photographers and illustrators – people who think in pictures. My brief time at Colors which gave me the taste for working with designers using images, began a new education.
What’s the best mistake you have ever made?
Being an art critic, despite zero experience. In the 1990s I wrote a column – Art for Bart’s Sake – for The Modern Review, and started writing for the broadsheets. In the YBA decade, I could write under the radar about the likes of Martin Creed, Jeremy Deller, and got to play in a band at events with Creed’s Owada, Matthew Collings’ Interspecies Lovechild and Patrick Brill’s Ken Ardley Playboys. So instead, I became a music critic.
When did you realise that this is what you were good at?
I was 16 and we did a magazine in our school in Dublin. And we got into trouble for it. I met up with the co-editor last year, an old friend, and he brought along a copy of the magazine. We saw ourselves as an Irish version of Woodward and Bernstein – Jedward and Bernstein? It’s from 1980 and it’s a little bit political. Some of it still stands up, one particular guy, was a word-playing Joycean genius. If James Joyce did gags. The back page is in the slideshow above.
What rules do you live by?
1. When working on a team, keep a lid on your inner asshole.
2. Better to feel like an idiot than never try things out. Paul Davis, who does a regular column for Varoom is a model of someone who every time he puts pen to paper puts himself out there. His creativity is fearless.
What makes your day?
As an editor it’s when a writer nails it, like the 3,000 word feature in Varoom 14 by William John Hewitt around The Pogues. Now lecturing at Manchester Metropolitan, John toured with The Pogues in the 80s doing reportage drawing, with photographer Steve Pyke, and journalist Sean O’Hagan from The Face. John’s exploration of the band’s relationship to photography and drawing has the narrative, ideas and analysis that you’d expect see in The New Yorker.
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Dublin was a grey place in the late 70s and early 80s, I wanted to escape into my imagination, be a visitor to more exotic places, something futuristic, someone from the future, a non-specific desire to be ‘creative’, to be out of time like Thomas Newton in The Man Who Fell To Earth or Phil Okey on Travelogue. So, like every Dubliner before and since, I became a philosopher…
What one thing would you like to be remembered by/for?
Commissioning a 21st Century Zodiac in Varoom 13. Paul Morley wrote it, and 12 great illustrators visualised. We thought the old one needed upgrading. At this moment I am under The Sign of Andy Warhol’s 15 Minutes.
What’s your favourite combination?
Image-makers that like to play with the rules, with your expectations – Saul Steinberg, John Stezaker, Shaun Tan, any artist with an ‘s’ in their name.
What’s the funniest thing you have EVER seen?
Martin Creed’s Work No. 850 where a person runs through the gallery every 30 seconds. Funny, absurd, beautiful. Beckett + Usain Bolt. You had to be there, though this video of it is pretty funny.
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