Go Figure: New Fashion Illustration
Showing from 11 May – 14 July 2012 at Fashion Space Gallery, London College of Fashion, 20 John Princes Street, London W1.
Nearest Tube: Oxford Circus
Opening Hours:
Monday – Friday: 10.00 am – 6.00 pm
Saturday: 10.00 am – 4.00 pm
Sunday: CLOSED
Website: www.fashionspacegallery.com
I'm pleased to say that I'll be featured alongside other talented fashion illustrators at the London College of Fashion's new exhibition 'Go Figure: New Fashion Illustration', featuring over 60 original pieces of work by new / rising illustrators (8 from myself). It'll be great to see all of the illustrations up close and first hand. I haven't been able to see which pieces will be included by the others yet, although I managed to get a sneak peak at Tara Dougans' originals when delivering the work, and they are INCREDIBLE. Thankyou so much to Ligaya and Polona for asking me to take part in what will easily be a great showcasing. Below is the press release and some examples of the illustrators work.
The full list of Illustrators:
Myself (Richard Kilroy).
Artaksiniya.
Tara Dougans.
Zoya Smirnova
Laura Laine
Hannah Mueller
Jarno Kettunen
Rosie Mcguinness
Lesley Barnes
Cristian Grossi
Ingela Och Vi
Eugenia Alejos
Sabine Pieper
Myself
Artaksiniya
Tara Dougans
Zoya Smirnova
Sabine Pieper
Hannah Mueller
Laura Laine
Jarno Kettunen
Lesley Barnes
Press Release:
Fashion Space Gallery at London College of Fashion is proud to announce its next exhibition Go Figure: New Fashion Illustration; the second in a series which showcases the brightest young talent across fashion design and illustration.
This exhibition brings together more than 60 works from thirteen international fashion illustrators who work in a variety of media, from the digital to the hand-drawn via the physical. By showing works by artists who work not only in fashion illustration, but bring influences from their backgrounds in fashion design, graphic design, photography and film into their practice, the exhibition aims to provide an insight into this multi-faceted field.
What binds this group together is the level of attention to detail, craftsmanship and execution, demonstrated through traditional and innovative approaches to materials and process. Work on display has been selected from recent years, both from the illustrator’s professional and personal portfolios to give a sense of each illustrator’s personal creative vision. The illustrations in the exhibition depict menswear and womenswear collections almost equally and provide both a glimpse of London’s creative fashion design talent and more established international names.
Featured illustrators include:
Richard Kilroy’s exquisite hand-drawn menswear illustrations show a keen eye for detail as well a sense of minimalism and space. The London-based illustrator has worked for clients including VMan and Christian Dior; he also publishes his own fashion illustration fanzine called Decoy.
Artaksiniya is a Hong Kong-based Russian illustrator, whose unique approach to figure and stance produces arresting results. Through her elaborate use of felt-tips, ball-point pens and three-dimensional layers, she creates a set of distinctive fashionable characters. This sense of individuality is also visible in London-based art director and illustrator Tara Dougans’ painstakingly crafted works, which have a haunting and deeply personal quality. Her process includes intricately detailed pencil drawings of sartorial minutiae, but also bold felt-tip strokes and digital techniques. Hanna Mueller is a young Gothenburg-based illustrator who combines ink and aquarelle techniques to create striking portraits that convey a more youthfully defiant attitude.
Brussels and Atlanta-based Finnish illustrator Jarno Kettunen’s live action drawings are created backstage at high fashion shows. He uses line drawing and colours effortlessly and with only a few strokes and blurs of colour invokes human forms and shapes of garments. Similarly, young London-based Rosie McGuinness croquis-style line drawings intuitively capture movement of fabric and silhouette. Fashion designer and illustrator Zoya Smirnova’s ‘straight-up’ drawings of street-style menswear displayed outside London Fashion Week are a beautiful take on individual style.
Glasgow-based Lesley Barnes’ illustrations reveal a keen sense of visual movement, pattern and colour, which point to her background in film and animation. Her pieces often depict the work of young designers through a playful mixture of digital collage and patterns. Cristian Grossi is an Italian graphic designer and illustrator based in Parma who cleverly contrasts organic patterns and bold colour planes. His 'Insecta' series takes it a step further and the illustrated image literally comes alive through the use of animated gifs. This insinuation of movement through the digital is also visible in the Finnish illustrator Laura Laine’s work. Her rigorously detailed and delicate illustrations gain a sense of dynamism through her use of posture and styling. Recent clients include the New York Times, Elle magazine and Zara.
Ingela Och Vi is the Swedish duo of Elisabeth Månsson, an illustrator and graphic designer, and Peter Turkalj, photographer, based in Malmø Sweden. Together they create what they call ‘illustration photography’, a mixture of set design, fabric swatches and illustration that is then photographed. Madrid-based designer and illustrator Eugenia Alejos also uses photography in her work. She playfully refers to her 3D collages as 'organised chaos', combining texture, fabrics and bold brush-strokes to achieve a multi-dimensional effect. Sabine Pieper who is based in Berlin and is also a photographer brings out different textures in her work by combining scans of actual fabrics that she folds into the right garment shapes with digital treatments of her line drawings.
The exhibition will be accompanied by an in-conversation looking at the field of contemporary fashion illustration, which will include emerging and established illustrators, writers and journalists. For full details please contact the press office (details listed below).
Go Figure has been curated by Ligaya Salazar, Curator of Contemporary Programmes at the V&A and Polona Dolžan, independent curator.
Through this series of exhibitions devised by creative director, Magdalene Keaney, the Fashion Space Gallery aims to showcase the role of innovation and creativity in the fashion industry, as a testament to the continued rejuvenation of fashion by a new generation of makers.
