THE FUNCTION OF ‘FOLK’:

ILLUSTRATION, NARRATIVE, SOCIETY

A CALL FOR MAKERS (AND PAPERS)

The traditional artist is being transformed into the designer because he works in such a way as to re-establish contact between art and the public, because he has the humility and ability to respond to whatever demand is made of him by the society in which he lives, because he knows his job, and the ways and means of solving each problem of design. And finally because he responds to the human needs of his time, and helps people to solve certain problems without stylistic preconceptions or false notions of artistic dignity derived form the schism of the arts.

- (BRUNO MUNARI, Design As Art 1966)

Following on from the international symposium in 2011 ‘Illustration and Writing’, The Illustration Research event this year will explore the idea of the illustrator as popular or ‘folk’ artist, taking Noel Carrington’s definition of popular art as a starting point, ‘art produced by and for the people among whom the artist lives and works.’

We are interested to explore the idea of the illustration as a contemporary folk art, a vernacular expression of community and identity. This could be work that has been produced to express local cultures, stories and the needs of local businesses, work that has a decorative utility in the domestic environment, work that has been made with skill for a particular purpose or responding to specific cultures, beliefs and customs, and work that has a function within the community it was made for.

Papers/artwork responding to the following subjects are invited for consideration for inclusion in the programme:

• Illustration as an expression of collective memory, the illustration of ‘local’ stories and events
• Illustration of ‘folklore’
• Illustration within folk cultures/visual epistemologies of folk culture
• Magic realism and/or ritualised illustration
• Illustration in domestic and everyday contexts
• ‘Fake folk’: the commodification and exploitation of authentic popular culture
• Democratic and sustainable modes of production ­‐ hand skills, ‘lost’ skills
• Socially engaged illustration, illustration as political (/apolitical) activism
• Urban Pastoral
• The role of illustration in establishing community identity within global contexts
• The social value of illustration

Symposium/Exhibition/Event

There will be an exhibition to accompany the event. We welcome submissions that are sympathetic to the theme of the conference that are visual and/or performative. We will be producing a collaborative publication during the event, and will also be documenting the symposium on film.

Please send outline proposals (500 words) and/or up to 5 images to:
Desdemona McCannon: d.mccannon(at)mmu.ac.uk
Amelia Johnstone: ajohnstone@cardiffmet.ac.uk

Deadline for abstract submissions: Friday 6 July 2012

Further information about the venue and programme will be available on the Illustration Research website in due course:

Please register with the Illustration Research JISCmail network to be kept up to date (click here to register).

Click here to download this call as a .pdf document.

An exhibition of work by Jonny Hannah will be on display at the The Holden Galley, Manchester Metropolitan University Faculty of Art & Design, on the 3 and 4 November 2011 to coincide with our second international illustration symposium; Illustration & Writing: Visual Languages.

All are welcome to join us at the launch from 5.00 – 7.00pm on the 3 November.

The Holden Gallery
Grosvenor Building
Cavendish Street
Manchester
M15 6BR

Jonny Hannah enjoys nothing better than going to his studio to illustrate, paint and savour the odd Tunnocks Caramel Wafer with a fresh cup of coffee. It is fortuitous then, that Jonny’s work has been much in demand since his departure from Liverpool Art School and the Royal College of Art all those many years ago. Jonny’s work has graced the pages of Vogue, The New York Times and many a book jacket, as well as advertising and design work for clients such as the English National Opera and vintners Justerini & Brooks.

Amongst private collectors Jonny has also established a loyal following for his linocuts, screenprints, and paintings. Recently Jonny has started to paint the odd objets d’art, painting on guitars, suitcases, toy cars and coffee pots. It is under the moniker of the Cakes & Ale Press, a highly successful cottage industry, that Jonny has industriously published his limited edition affordable prints and artists books. His most recent book ‘Collected from by the Sea’ illustrates a collection of poetry by his wife Sharon. Of the name, ‘Cakes & Ale’ (taken from the title of a Sommerset Maugham novel), Jonny says that “it’s two items that should be on everyone’s shopping list, although I much prefer one to the other”.

A passionate music lover, and sharp dresser (correspondance shoes and bow-ties are de rigeur) Jonny’s work is inspired by whatever he’s listening to… which happens to mostly be Jazz. In 2005 Jonny’s children’s book ‘Hot Jazz Special’, was published by Walker Books and the Candlewick Press. A book of rhyming couplets, the story accompanies the young boy Henry at the Body & Soul Cafe were he encounters the performances of jazz legends such as Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker and Duke Elington. The stunningly detailed and beautifully illustrated book took 2nd prize at the 2005 V&A Illustration Awards.

In addition to his work for print, Jonny has collaborated on various occasions with London based animation company ‘Sherbert’, winning a BAFTA in 2000 for best short animation for Charles Bukowski’s The Man with the Beautiful Eyes.

*Image: Anna Bhushan - Bhagavad Gita

The Cardiff School of Art & Design Illustration team will be showing new work at the Old Library in Cardiff city centre as part of the Cardiff Design Festival from the 2 to the 31 October 2011. The work will feature work by all three staff members:

• Amelia Johnstone: ‘Folk After Auschwitz’
• Anna Bhushan: illustrations from the Bhagavad Gita recently published by the Folio Society
• Chris Glynn: ‘Going Into Administration: Notes from Meetings’

Amelia will be giving an artist talk about her work in this exhibition at 2:30pm on the 2 October 2011 in the gallery space at The Old Library.

Amelia will also be taking part in an evening of illustration talks at Cardiff Arts Institute at 7,00pm on the 4 October 2011 (click here for more information), and will be presenting Post Apocalyptic Stories at Milgi’s garage on the 9 October (more information here).

The Cardiff Design Festival commences on the 29 September 2011 and is cram packed full of creative and inspiring events. Please do have a look at the festival website for details of all the events that are taking place: www.cardiffdesignfestival.org

Illustration & Writing:
Visual Languages

2nd International Illustration Research Symposium in conjunction with the Writing PAD network.

North Wales School of Art & Design, Glyndwr University
Thursday 3rd November 2011

“I must Create my own System or be Enslav’d by another Man’s”
– WILLIAM BLAKE

Following on from Shadow Play in Cardiff in November 2010, the 2nd International Illustration Research Symposium looks to illustration as an expression of the ‘primary language of vision’ (Kepes) and aims to integrate its practices and philosophies, both historical and emerging. The event seeks to expand the theoretical and practical frameworks and nuances of this potent and far-reaching discipline.

The call for papers throws the net widely on illustration’s primary intentions: the visualisation of concepts, poetic and rhetoric expression, the elaborative encoding of information and memory through analogy, metaphor and marginalia. We invite papers which explore the synergy between word and image, word as image, the subversive interrogation of text, and the telling of stories through imagery.

Illustration and Writing will look at illustration as visual language, and reflect on the role of the image within, around and in place of writing.
We hope to explore the ways that purposeful images can augment, clarify or problematise meaning in relation to text.

We welcome papers covering the following themes;

• Illustration as interrogation of text
• Illustration as translation
• Fact and truth in illustration
• Narrative and allegorical illustration
• Redefining illustration for children
• Non-fiction, scientific and medical illustration
• Image and text/Text as image
• Hybrid writing
• Visual thinking
• Image perception and cognition
• Illustration, memory and knowledge
• The use of illustration within different education scenarios
• Illustration within and in place of academic writing

Abstracts of no more than 500 words (or recorded presentations of no more than 5 minutes long) should be sent to Desdemona McCannon:

d.mccannon@glyndwr.ac.uk.

Submission deadline: 7 July 2011

Selected papers will be published in issue 1 of volume 5 (5:1) of the Journal of Writing for Creative Practice.

Click Here to download this call for papers as a .pdf document.

Cardiff School of Art & Design’s final year BA Illustration students invite you to their Graduate Show!

17th – 25th June 2011

Morgan Arcade Chambers
1st Floor, Morgan Arcade
Cardiff
CF10 1AE
(just a short walk from Cardiff Central Station)

http://cardiffillustration2011.co.uk/

From 1990 Chris took his passion for drawing and performance into animation, working as a storyboard and layout artist, character designer and developer for major animation studios in the UK, France and Germany. Credits include Tiny Planets, Under Milk Wood, A Monkey’s Tale, Noah’s Island, Kid Clones and Sheeeep!

Chris has illustrated children’s books including the Bump in the Night trilogy with partner Ruth Morgan, and award-winning Byd Llawn Hud/One Busy Book with Gomer Press. Recent exhibitions include solo show The Park at Oriel Tri, and a group show Addiction at Tactile Bosch, curated by Jan Bennett and Kim Fielding.

Chris has taught animation, drawing and professional skills at the University of Western Denmark, Glamorgan Centre for Art & Design Technology, Institut de L’Image de l’Ocean Indien (Reunion Island), UWCN Fashion and CSAD’s BA Graphic Communication programme. He has also contributed to arts education projects with organisations such as Children’s Music Workshop, Fundacio la Caixa in Catalunya, Galeri in Caernarfon and leading UK orchestras.

Email: cglynn[a]uwic.ac.uk

Born on 7th May 1977 at 12 O’ Clock midday in Chesterfield hospital in Derbyshire. The fourth of six children Amelia spent summers growing up in Dorset and Devon on rivers and in woods playing alone, or playing elaborate games with her siblings, or cousins or imaginary friends. Life was all about imagination then, and continues to be now.

“One of my earliest illustrated memories is Struwwelpeter‚ this book brought my nightmares to life, and is the reason I stopped sucking my thumb. It was in the bookshelf in the room I used to stay in, in my Grandmother’s house, and when the lights went out and the door stood a little ajar the scissor man would come… …The door flew open, in he ran, the great, long, red-legged scissorman…

In his fashion of white socks, red trousers, long nose and tousled hair he haunted me through those early years, imagining as soon as I put my thumb in to sleep that he would awaken from his book like state and come to life to chop off my thumbs. That illustration had the power to change me, and I think has even more significance in my work. ‘Shellewellyn’ my male alter ego was possibly conceived in these early years… look at his work to discover…”

Amelia has exhibited in London in both solo and group shows and around the world with Le Gun. She is currently working on a book about two jealous sisters “Orange and Lemon”‚ who have a tendency to let heads roll; ‘here comes the chopper to chop off your head’. And most recently has begun to research and make images for a new version of Hansel and Gretel with an Angela Carter twist.

Much of Amelia’s work can be found on her website: www.ameliajohnstone.com

Email: ajohnstone[a]uwic.ac.uk

Is drawing a form of writing? I think about how children find it easy to describe concepts in line before they learn to read and write. The latent metaphor in much of speech also reminds me how much of our thinking is visual.

The struggle between word and image continues to fascinate me in my work within the university, as I lecture on the history and theory of visual communication, and also as I watch how students’ learn to think as illustrators in the studio.

Illustrators are amphibious thinkers, able to swim in dreamlike images and also to survive in the arid land of rational thought.

Why do we illustrators never think of ourselves as ‘proper’ artists? Perhaps because we are more like writers, using images instead of words…

Illustration informs, reminds, enlightens and educates through humour, story, pathos, metaphor and allegory. It is a discipline re-discovering its core and finding new form and purpose.

Illustration Research has been established as a new catalyst and crucible of ideas at the forefront of illustration enquiry and exploration.

Illustration Research is based in Cardiff alongside the Cardiff School of Art & Design (UWIC) Illustration programme, looking outwards to international partners and audiences. It has online presence but celebrates the power and poignancy of live engagement and the illustrated artefact.

The aims of Illustration Research:

• Expanding and refining ideas about illustration’s purposes and reach, as a practice and as a discipline engaging with rhetoric, poetics, ethics and justice;
• Enlivening the importance of images, their impact on personal, social and economic development. Illustration has a broad output, many different homes, and has often been trapped in self-reflective and overlooked places;
• Wielding the power of illustration within research, turning practice away from pastiche, the literal, and fixation with style: propelling minds towards enlightenment and delight;
• Enabling all to join in, traversing through illustration to the wonders, horrors, nuances, and plights of the world;

Instigators:

Chris Glynn, illustrator and animation designer, set up the BA (Hons) Illustration programme at CSAD, now in its fourth year. A music and drama graduate, his interests lie in visual humour, rhetoric and memory, and in illustration as mask.

‘Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him man a mask, and he will tell you the truth.’ Oscar Wilde

Amelia Johnstone lectures in Illustration at CSAD and led our first symposium, Shadow Play: Alchemy, Redolence and Enchantment in November 2010. Amelia is currently exploring morality through religion and folklore. Her interests lie in fairy tale, fable and growing, in the human as imaginer inspiring a better existence. She delights in theatre, in books and paper, and has a horror of social networking, of the culture that consumes itself. Her current practice hopes to enable the periscoped perspective, within teaching and storytelling and through understanding the significance of interior monologue and illustration’s ventriloquistic abilities.

“Remember, there is a materiality to symbols and a materiality to imaginative life which should be taken quite seriously.” Angela Carter

Our next event:

‘Little Door’ Symposium: Re-Enchantment of the Image
Oxford, Autumn 2011/Spring 2012 (tbc)
For further details please contact cglynn[a]uwic.ac.uk

We take people in!

Join us as an instigator, friend or research contributor. 
 Please write to us at:
Illustration Research, Cardiff School of Art & Design, UWIC, Western Avenue, Llandaff, Cardiff CF5 2YB, Wales, UK or email illustration[a]uwic.ac.uk