IGI features
Slant Exhibition
Sep, 23, 2008
Slant, the latest IGI exhibition, is currently showing at the renowned Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast. It runs until the 27th of September and features the work of 18 IGI members with a peculiar brief: re-interpret your favourite painting.
Slant opened last 31st July in Belfast running alongside two other exhibitions: Images 31 from the Association of Illustrators in the UK and Last Riot from the collective AES+F who were headlining the opening after their great success in last year’s Venice Biennale. They were three very different exhibitions in a very different space.
Last Riot takes all the ground floor and is a shocking display of photographic teenage violence in a very clinical yet romantic video-game like environment.
Images 31 was showing around 80 original artworks selected from the top work in the British market the previous year. It is a fresh and varied show. Almost all genres in illustration are portrayed here and with top quality too.
Slant shows the work of Illustrators Guild of Ireland members who have re-interpreted some of their favourite artworks and influences. At the launch words like intelligent, witty and masterful were used to describe the work that will be on display till 27 September 2008. Really not to be missed!
Artist: Annie West
Title of Painting and Original Artist: Portrait of Henry VIII by Hans Holbein the Younger
Reason for choice: A deep and abiding fascination with Tudor costume, fabrics and general Tudor silliness
Illustrator: Tom Byrne
Title of Painting & Original Artist: La vie en rose culture by Vermeer (the sleeping girl)
Reason for choice: I chose this painting because of the hat on the girls head. It strongly reminded me of the mickey mouse character from the Disney corporation. This lead to thoughts on globalisation and the influence of large corporations on culture, our definitions of fun, leisure and fantasy. This lead to thoughts on the other major influence right now, the Apple ipod. So a sleeping girl with a Mickey Mouse hat and an ipod painted in the style and subject of Vermeer seemed to sum up the effects of globalisation on culture. The pink blob represents the creeping vie en rose which this kind of culture demands. The demand that everyone share their definition of what’s great and good and enjoyable so that they can focus your minds on their products.
Illustrator: PJ Lynch
Title of Painting and original Artist: “Girl with a Pearl Earring” by Vermeer (My Title: “Boy with a Blue Baseball Cap")
Short paragraph of reason for your choice: Vermeer’s work has always intrigued me. “Girl with a Pearl Earring” is perhaps his best known painting, and it appealed to me also because of it’s beautiful subject, and deceptively simple composition.
Illustrator: Brian Gallagher
Title of Painting and original Artist: “Girl Resting” by Francois Boucher
Reason for your choice: I run a weekly Life Drawing group in Dublin and am very interested in the human figure in art. A while back I read an article about the sitter for Bouchers painting, Marie-Louise O’Murphy, in “History Ireland Magazine” and found her life story fascinating. I also noticed recently that Murphys Stout had used the painting in an advertising campaign, it appeared on beer mats and the like, I thought it a bit strange they chose to cover the the buttocks with a drape- I suppose so as not to offend stout drinkers. Here’s my take on the original.....stout drinkers avert your eyes!
lllustrator: Jonathan McHugh
Title of Painting and original Artist: ‘Black Madonna’ - Unknown Artist
Reason for your choice: Religious icons are arguably the original mass produced illustrations - artworks created for a specific client and for a specific purpose. The client and the purpose are more important than the artist himself, who in the grand scheme of things is incidental and often remains completely anonymous… Illustrator, know your place!
Illustrator: Alé Mercado
Title of Painting and original Artist: The Scream by Edvard Munch
Reason for choice: The Scream is the best known piece of The Frieze of Life - a poem of Life, Love and Death. According to his own notes: “...I felt an infinite scream that drilled through all nature” I feel very identified with all this. He must have also lived in a very dark place with no broadband.
Illustrator: Steve Simpson
Title of Painting and Original Artist: The Birth of Venus (detail), Sandro Botticelli
Reason for choice: For some time I have been intrigued by how Botticelli played with the twists, kinks and curls of Venus’ hair, it’s very graphic and slightly cartoony. So when the chance of re-interpreting a masterpiece came along I was immediately drawn back to this incredible hair. Having chosen The Birth of Venus I needed to bring my own twist to it. I decided to use traditional Japanese woodblock prints as a style influence, it’s a million miles away from Botticelli’s early Renaissance work. From there, Venus morphed into a full body tattooed, geisha girl. As I worked on this I did wonder what Botticelli’s work would have looked like had he been born in Toyko rather than Florence.
Illustrator: Una Gildea
Title of Painting and Original Artist: “Portrait of a Lady” after “The Journalist Sylvia von Harden, 1926” by Otto Dix
Reason for choice: In my early twenties I bought a book entitled “Expressionist Portraits” by Frank Whitford. This book was full of portraits portraying artists, actors, musicians, journalists, scholars and dealers of the avant-garde arts in Germany. I was enthralled. Otto Dix was one of the artists reproduced. I have always admired his work, the expression he achieved and especially the hands. In a lot of his work the hands are larger than life and, as the faces, full of expression. I was inspired to create a collage work which would draw on my earliest memories of when I first set eyes on one of my favourite works by him.
Illustrator: Brian Fitzgerald
Title of Painting and Original Artist: Above the town by Marc Chagall
Reason for choice: I always loved the spirit of Chagalls paintings and at the mention of the project this painting sprung to mind.
Illustrator: BRENB
Title of Painting and Original Artist: Valpincon Bather by Ingres
Reason for choice: Having such an open brief was difficult but I’ve always been attracted to this painting. It has a charmingly modest yet sensual beauty. It’s almost as if the Bather is unaware of the artist, giving it a quiet, natural feel. I wanted to replicate that mood but in a comtemporary setting.
Illustrator: Scalder
Title of Painting and Original Artist: Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War) - Salvador Dalí (1936)
Reason for choice: We’re all human beans (and there’s no such thing as a civil war)
Illustrator: Roger O’Reilly
Title of Painting and Original Artist: Hunters in the snow by Pieter Bruegel
Reason for choice: Today, the hunters congregate in out of town shopping malls where cheap food and the palliative lure of endless consumption temporarily fill a spiritual void. Despite the promise of instant gratification, lives and communities remain as impoverished as in Bruegel’s painting of the return of an unsuccessful hunt.
Illustrator: Orla Roche
Title of Painting and Original Artist: The Arnolfini Marriage - Jan Van Eyck
Reason for choice: There has always been a sense of mystery surrounding this portrait. I wonder how the story continued for the fragile couple in their fine clothes. In the years that followed, did Mr. Arnolfini lose the family fortune, maybe Mrs. Arnolfini has an addiction to shoe shopping and soft furnishings. What has become of Fido, their loyal dog…
Illustrator: Joven Kerekes
Title of Painting and Original Artist: Theseus slays the Minotaur by Artist unknown (My title “Maisy slays the Minotaur")
Illustrator: Chris Judge
Title of Painting and Original Artist: Pablo Picasso - Portrait of the Art Dealer Pedro Manach.
Reason for your choice: I always loved this painting by Picasso it always seemed so modern to me. Almost like a cover for a comic by comic artist Bill Sienkiewicz. I imagined Petrvs Manach to be this amazingly slick bar owner in Madrid in the early 1900’s so my interpretation is Barman Peter Murphy from Dublin in the early1980’s.
Illustrator: Kevin McSherry
Title of Painting and original Artist: Nighthawks in the Diner by Edward Hopper (My title - Nighthawks in Baggot Street)
Reason for choice: What drew me to Edward Hopper’s ‘Nighthawks’ is the narrative element: the atmosphere of gloom in a dark city just as America faces into a terrible war. This perfectly composed scene of ordinary people in a pensive moment is elevated by Hopper’s mastery of the medium of oils, the rich palette, and the sensitive treatment. How would the same scene be played out in an Irish city?
Illustrator: Fintan Taite
Title of Painting and Original Artist: The School of Athens by Raphael
Reason for choice: This was always a favorite painting of mine as a kid. Paint by number kits where also a feature of my childhood so thought it would be fun to stick the two together!
Illustrator: Eva Byrne
Title of Painting and Original Artist: Artist : Jan Vermeer. The Letter.
Reason for choice: I’ve always loved the quietness of this painting, and the ambiguity of the womens’ expressions, plus I’m curious, just what kind of news is contained in the letter!!
