The Artists in the original Monster Club exhibition, the spectacular sequel Little Monsters and beyond...
David Miller (2)
Bust 2017 [assemblage- cork, eyeglasses, top hat,
pipe, pocket watch, plywood]
Visit my site here
Prabhat basu (2)
Expulsion II 2017 Pigment on canvas
Shelley Hughes (2)
Gag 2017
An inquisitive, different child of the 70’s, now an unusual
woman with a penchant for Taxidermy, rather attracted to the eccentric side of
life..
My art practice has a theatrical, disturbing edge – inviting
contemplation, a second glance and occasionally repulsion.
Subject matter ranges from beauty through to decay, the
poignant beauty within death and the inevitable death of beauty.
Other themes of interest explore the female form,
distortion, beauty and voyeurism – with elements
I work with a kaleidoscope of mediums and whatever I create,
assemble or photograph, sometimes hides or reveals a dark and typically British
humour.
I use imagery and disparate materials belonging to distinct
eras, their juxtaposition remaining
untransformed, sometimes ambiguous, possessing a potential
to evolve or adapt.
Surreal sensations of presence create a disquiet layering
effect – seductive, disturbing and
unnerving..
My influences are an amalgamation of an obsession with
dolls, a love of horror, a childhood fascination with taxidermy and the bright
lights of glamour…
…Your nightmares are my dreams…
Visit my site here
Jamie Fowkes
Arrggh 2017 watercolour
I predominantly produce paintings from models I create. I choose subject matter that I find
interesting such as a child's toy model monster and make a low grade version by
recreating them out of everyday objects and materials such as cardboard, foil
and found objects. These models serve as
the subject matter for my paintings.
The models that I make are not exact recreations from the
subject, however I aim to create the essence of the subject without paying too
much attention to every tiny detail. The
rough quality of carelessly made models, translate into carefully crafted,
beautiful paintings. My process of
creating artwork often results in the paintings to be considered ‘Baroque’ in
style. My aim is to distil the beauty in
these items that the models are made, through the medium of paint or
graphite. A beauty that is often
overlooked.
Painting and drawing to me are very intimate practices,
expressing my subject matter with intricate marks of paint and subtle colour
nuances or pencil lines that are both flowing and rhythmical, help to creat
artworks that are detailed and descriptive, but also displays my sense of a
stylised beauty in painting and my passion for the medium.
Visit my website here
Visit my website here
Alex Robertson
Skin of Paint 2017 mixed media
We
are mainly bags of water held in place by a strange flexible layer that both
defines us, attracts us.
Harjit Dogra
The paper light/shadow boxes were inspired by classic
silhouette animation and my obsession with paper. For this paper and
light was the medium. The construction of the pieces involved several elements
which all had to precisely and delicately assembled. This included the drawing
of the concept which had to be on separate layers for the effect, the cutting
of each individual design, the layering and spacing of the paper and the
construction of the outer box. The dichotomy of the final
piece in it’s lit and unlit state is truly magical.
Anita Roye
Connectones 2017 mixed media
I am interested in the extended field of painting, which
often sees the paint leave the canvas and enter a three dimensional world.
Exploring the exterior environment as a place to exhibit art is of particular
interest to me. A sense of ambiguity enables a great deal of scope for
subjective interpretation.
These Connections have resulted from a playful investigation
into materials, creating very visceral, gloopy type sculptures which can be
seen hanging on to door frames etc..
Ian Andrews (2)
These mixed media pieces are typical of my working
methodology. They began life as drawings over 18 months ago during my
recuperation from a total knee replacement.
To distract me I was given a catalogue of animal prints from
the British Museum containing works by both famous and anonymous artists. They
became the starting point for a range of graphic inventions fuelled by drugs,
pain and boredom.
The originals were left for over a year in a pile under the
sofa but suddenly became relevant again when I was producing a performance
around the theme of the food that required “characters” to interact with an
installation.
The drawings were reworked, enlarged, cut up and collaged!
They were then framed, (in deliberately recycled, old-fashioned frames,) but in
many cases this was not the final act as the glass was broken, sealed in resin
and work continued on the uneven surface.
New drawings are now springing up from this sequence linking
them more strongly with the work being produced as part of the residency at
Stryx entitled “Guess who’s coming to dinner?” but of course this theme itself
grew from my work with Dan Auluk and his FEATURE collaboration.
Emily Sparkes
Nutella #2 oil on canvas 18 x 24 cm 2016
It Came from YouTube!
The Creature from the Chocolate Spread Lagoon!
Taken from Youtube user CemreCandar ’Bathing in 600lbs of
Nutella’, this painting explores how the use of the Internet and digital
technologies makes monsters through the likes of memes, video clips and other
shareable images, by emphasising absurd humour, hyperbole, and hysteria.
Furthermore, our contemporary dependence on the screen can also provide a
rationale for a re-examination of the canvas and of painting.
Emily Sparkes lives and works in Birmingham. She is
currently working towards a practice-based PhD, following on from an MA in
Queer Studies in Art & Culture.
Rebecca Walker
House (detail) mixed media 2017
My work investigates decaying buildings which are often dark
and disturbing. This piece carefully replicates the damage and destruction that
has unfolded in a once occupied mental hospital. The raw truth of this piece
and the miniature size scale enables the viewer to immerse themselves in a new
world. It allows an escape route from reality with the hand-made wooden objects
and painted detail. An experiential journey is then formed through a place that
was once feared by the public and may still be. It brings to life the forgotten
world and lets you experience the isolation for yourself.
Grace A Williams
Escamotage
Digital Photograph
90 cm x 70 cm
Grace A Williams, 2014
Escamotage ~ Sleight of hand, Trickery, Conjuring, Vanishing
Taking its name from the Bautier de Kolta illusion Escamotage D’une Dame - an 1800s magical vanishing trick in which the female body was spectacularly disappeared under a heavily patterned covering - Escamotage negotiates the language of the Persian rug as a motif for female vanishing. Fraternizing the violence of enchanted disappearance with the bizarre hidden mothers photographs of the Victorian age – in which mothers concealed themselves under carpets in order to hold their children still for portraits - the Persian rug is ever present for its ability to simultaneously reveal and conceal an exposure of the female form.
Bio
Grace Williams is the current Gertrude Aston Bowater award holder for practice-led PhD research based at the Centre for Fine Art Research, BIAD. Traversing photography, film and installation her research explores the performance & sexual politics of the female body within the fields of Mediumship [channeling conduits] Magick [Occult, black magic] Magic [vanishing women] & pre-narrative cinema, with a specific focus on the materialising mediums within the Thomas Glendenning Hamilton photographic archive.
Ian Andrews
Mixed media drawing and construction
“I NO LONGER BELIEVE IN ANYTHING….”
As a child, monsters played a large part in my
imagination, whether they were lurking under the bed or in the wardrobe and a
vacuum cleaner was always loud and frightening no matter how much control my
mother seemed to have.
Art always takes me back to my childhood. Making work
always feels dangerously close to “playing with my toys”, although if “genius is childhood recovered at will”
perhaps I shouldn’t worry so much.
This piece came about in a typical random fashion.
Starting from an image of a performance artist lying on a gallery floor, it
acquired a book with flying pages motif while being part of an enormous
collage, all of which was stripped away to leave the figure, transformed into
Georges Braque, imagined dead in his studio…
assaulted by a vacuum cleaner? Well someone has to clear up the mess!
Perhaps he is not dead and the noise will awaken him.
I’d love to meet Georges, it’s a dream I’ve had since I was young. As Georges
himself said……
“You see I have made a great discovery: I no longer
believe in anything. Objects do not exists for me except insofar as a
relationship exists between them and between them and myself. I have reached a
sort of intellectual non-existence…. which makes everything possible! ”
http://ianandrewsfineart.tumblr.com/
Art Club
Prabhat Basu
Art Club
Art Club young artists:
Sonny Ataria-Wright, Josh
Bather, Antonia Creavin-Jerwood, Reuben
Dunbar, Nathan Gardner-Brookes, Phoebe Gardner-Brookes, Sanna Javid, Tony
Lewis-Taylor, Alannah Lucas, Gabriel Moran,
Aleysha Saddiq, Muhammad Saddiq, Charlotte Thompson.
Fragmented Facts is a series of works which was inspired by
powerful images of victimhood from different newspapers. Each image that I used
depicts the brutality of everyday life: A man pleading for his life in a
religious riot, an old woman waiting for her family’s return, a young boy who
lost his leg in a war zone or a young girl crying for the violent loss of 16
members of her family.
Seeing these shocking images I felt powerless and I wanted
to retell these stories through different visual means. The resulting work
presented a juxtaposition of two main elements: one, the realistic depiction of
the victim in monochrome tones and the other, the painting of an imaginative
hybrid form emerging from my mind and prompted by the suffering of an innocent
face.
Thus in Fragmented Facts the works are a fusion between what
was there – an actual event of an injustice, and what my emotional reaction and
my unconscious mind created.
Sarah Fortes Mayer
Head 2014 polystyrene foam, body double, chemistry stand, wig.
Ole Hagen
The title of Ole Hagen’s The Origin of the Universe (2013)
promises something that seems impossible. In a seven-minute amateur theatrical
the work is supposed to tell the story of the origin of all things. But the
artist isnt alone. He claims to have asked the immaterial essence of all
things if it can put on some costumes and line up for the show.
The scientific version of the story claims
that people and materials have their origin in stardust, with consciousness
beginning by chance at a later point. In Hagen's video this account is turned
on its head. His story of origin is more mystical than scientific. Regardless
of what we may think came first, human understanding is grounded in the bodily.
People (including the artist) are two-legged creatures with seven holes in
their head, and they can only see straight ahead. So the show is adapted to
their requirements.
We encounter a series of sculptural
tableaux and a narrating voice which, with the aid of a disco beat, conducts a
play between the two-dimensionality and depth of the wings. The camera adopts a
central frontal perspective. Within this perspective the show plays out
physically and analogically in relation to a single continuous recording. As
opposed to a cinematic language based on cutting rhythms, here the physical
reality of the things is in charge of the action. According to the artist, the
theatrical is an authentic expression that the world is ordered. This reveals
affect as something real that moves between the theatrical wings. The tension
between the immaterial and the literal and figurative is what in this case
makes the cosmic story comic.
http://www.olehagen.com/
http://www.olehagen.com/
Hannah Honeywill
Bruised 2014 Re-shaped chair and plaster
I celebrate two queer bodies. One is kneeling and the other has an unsteady stance on the floor. Twisted, bent and altered - they are my Frankensteins, but here my intention was that illness is the monster.
We are all rubberneck fascinated by what we might glimpse, there is an excitement and morbid anticipation to witness the impact of re – shaping and transforming from what we expect.
Theses sculptures are a joyous diversion to mark the beautiful monster-ness of difference.
http://www.hannahhoneywill.co.uk/
Shelley Hughes
'Nuts' 2011 Taxidermy squirrel, finger.
I predominantly create installation based immersive works,
inhabited by an excessive assemblage of sculptural bricolage 'hybrids', found
objects, textiles and painterly collaged photography.
The juxtaposition of disparate materials and objects
belonging to distinct eras – some remaining ambiguous, others untransformed,
posess a potential to evolve or adapt.
Themes of interest include the female form, perception and
distortion of beauty, and voyeurism – with elements of novelty kitsch and
theatrical macabre.
Manifestations of the uncanny, surrealism and sensations of
presence create a disquiet layering effect – seductive, disturbing and
unnerving...confusing boundaries between the animate and inanimate.
My influences are an amalgamation of an obsession with
dolls, a love of horror, a childhood fascination with taxidermy and the bright
lights of glamour..
Your nightmares are my dreams.
Alexi K
Portrait of Stephanie Germanotta as a Disembodied Cybernetic Consciousness, ( Subtitle: Tribute to H.R. Giger ). Pencil on Paper, Work in Progress. 2014
It's been very refreshing to have an excuse to produce a piece of art that is totally outside my current style. This is my tribute to the great master surrealist, H.R. Giger.
Giger ( pronounced 'Geeger' ), is the genius behind the Oscar-winning cinematic vision of nightmare personified: Ridley Scott's 'Alien'.
Giger's dark, slick, nightmarish airbrushed paintings, are characterised by biomechanical reproductive organs, detached female heads, and various elements where you're never sure if they're supposed to be organic or machine.
I was disappointed that he died in March of this year, because I was hoping to meet him. So this drawing is my attempt to out-Giger Giger, to make up for his absence. His art is often used by Metal bands on album covers and t-shirts, in order to convey instant 'darkness' in the listener's mind. I want to be as over-blown as those bands.
This particular composition features Stephanie Germanotta ( Lady Gaga ). Why her? Well apart from the fact that she is a closet metalhead - and might therefore appreciate the gesture - you could say she is a successor to fellow New York pop singer Debbie Harry, who - you guessed it - had an album cover designed by Giger - the famous 'KooKoo' album, which depicted Harry's face skewered by Giger-rendered metal spikes. Maybe I'll try to fit in one of those spikes here? Not sure yet, we'll see how it goes...come back in a couple of weeks.
See also: Alexi's web magazine MONOBLOG - a web magazine of dark art and music.
Alexi is also a co-founder of THE COBALT BLUE Birmingham contemporary art co-operative.
Matthew Krishanu
Crow 3, oil on board, 20 x 15cm, 2013
My Crows
I paint crows for several reasons. I think they look (and sound) great – I find
them arresting when I walk through the park or along a pavement. I like their shape and colour (deep
blue-greys, blacks) – the curve of their beaks and their jagged feathers.
Painting them is fun – I mix media, work thick or thin,
scumble, scratch and layer the paint. I
think they work particularly well in oils too – fat layers of paint, flat
backgrounds, bulging eyes.
They have a mythical resonance – Ted Hughes’s Crow, trickster
tales from Aboriginal Australians, Poe’s The Raven – they are embedded in
culture across the globe.
Lastly, they remind me of my childhood – in Bangladesh and
India crows are everywhere, cawing, flapping, chewing on gizzards. You can’t but look.
Paul Langford
War is the Monster
The Monster that will never die
Feeding on man’s insecurities and greed.
Spewing its evil vomit of hate, its appetite never sated.
The Great War, a war to end all wars they said. A generation slaughtered, no lessons learnt.
Hiroshima. The end of war, no need of fighting now.
Always hungry the monster never sleeps.
Our beautiful world violated, morphs into the ugly beast, surviving on a diet of terror and mistrust.
Man stands by, an impotent voyeur – apathetic time for women to take over while there is still time.
The mahatmas words ring true “The only path to Peace is through truth and love”
Where is forgiveness? Nailed on a cross and left to rot
Where is forgiveness? Nailed on a cross and left to rot
The Monster sleeps no more.
The Monster lives in us all.
Paul M Langford October 2014
http://www.paulmichaellangford.co.uk/
David Miller
The Prosopangosia Suite
The Monster lives in us all.
Paul M Langford October 2014
http://www.paulmichaellangford.co.uk/
David Miller
The Prosopangosia Suite
2012-13
Behind a forgotten door, a door wood-panelled to blend seamlessly with a wood-panelled wall, lies a cool darkness. Muted mumblings, exhausted posturing and the slowly gathering horror of a long lost eternity have infused the air. The Prosopagnosia Suite is populated by aristocratic debris, emerging from the burr walnut veneer, cobwebbed, smoke ridden and gnarled. These forgotten faces are barely recognisable; the has-beens and the never-weres. Were they the figures behind the scenes or the facades engrained in history?
The portraits are discovered in the veneer after long periods staring at the swirling grain and tones of the wood. Following lines in the grain, the background is painted out in dark oils, revealing a motley collection of portraits. The result is then photographed and printed in black and white. For me this practice is reminiscent of laying in bed as a child, with the dim orange light of a suburban night-time seeping through the curtains, transfixed by the landscapes, figures and faces hidden in the 1930’s burr walnut wardrobe at my grandparents house.
Behind a forgotten door, a door wood-panelled to blend seamlessly with a wood-panelled wall, lies a cool darkness. Muted mumblings, exhausted posturing and the slowly gathering horror of a long lost eternity have infused the air. The Prosopagnosia Suite is populated by aristocratic debris, emerging from the burr walnut veneer, cobwebbed, smoke ridden and gnarled. These forgotten faces are barely recognisable; the has-beens and the never-weres. Were they the figures behind the scenes or the facades engrained in history?
The portraits are discovered in the veneer after long periods staring at the swirling grain and tones of the wood. Following lines in the grain, the background is painted out in dark oils, revealing a motley collection of portraits. The result is then photographed and printed in black and white. For me this practice is reminiscent of laying in bed as a child, with the dim orange light of a suburban night-time seeping through the curtains, transfixed by the landscapes, figures and faces hidden in the 1930’s burr walnut wardrobe at my grandparents house.
http://terracegallery.org.uk/
Andy Newman
Paul Newman
From the Secret Garden Project C-Type Photograph 2009
Rebecca Nuttall
Rafal Zar
Andy Newman
Platos Cave
This drawing is taken from a subconscious dream and the tensions and anxiety generated by a feeling of claustrophobia. It aims to ask if you can step out
of a possible Platos Cave into the supposed light. But is all as it seems? Is
the light is leading into a potentially closed court yard and a trap. The open door suggests possible safety or peril and the choice is not certain. Is your guide safe? Or does your guide posses monstrous intentions?'
Paul Newman
'The plants must win. It will be a new world. Silent and beautiful.'
Dr Who The Seeds of Doom 1976
Rebecca Nuttall
The Dollifiends
Childhood trauma and nightmares initiated my practise, with
interests including gothic fairy-tales, such as Hansel and Gretel and the Pied
piper. This led me to use such narrative devices, and adapt my dolls to tell an
autobiographical narrative about family dynamics, the innocence/corruption of
children and the Uncanny; how these informed the creation of identity and
imagery.
The tendency of children to confide in their childhood
favourite toys, renders the dolls as substitute friends or foes, it is this
idea that influences themes within my dolls as they inhabit that uncertain
position or space where love is not always unconditional. As children’s toys (i.e. those that get held or hugged),
often show signs of significant wear and tear, the ambiguity of these marks was
appealing – that they could be caused by excessive demonstrations of love or
harm. The use of actual children’s drawings to create embroidered designs on
the skin of the dolls –is reminiscent of self-harm; the infliction of marks –
both physical, mental and social. The bewitching yet antiquated appearance of
the dolls is also intended to relate to the human condition; engaging with the
audiences memory and individuality.
The narrative of my practise concerns themes of
compassionate infanticide, to spare children the pain of adult life. Although
the aim of my dolls would appear to
provide alleviation, the intention would not automatically be benign.
There monstrous motives, are only stimulated by children’s imaginations and
psychology of our physical world into their magical distorted imaginary.istorted
imaginary.
Craig David Parr
Amelia Seren Roberts
Yuyu Wang
My work explores the properties of human’s body and understanding the world through physical senses. Most time I rely on somatic experience in conjunction with solid materials and visual resources to make decisions. I am interested in the uncertainties, between the softness and the hardness; the fragility and the tension; the organic form and the artificial shape; the physical pleasure and the discomfort; the desire of destroy and the ability of protection.
Craig David Parr
In my object based performances, I attempt to examine the
parallel between the archetypal artist and the ‘mad scientist’ and the points
in fiction and popular culture when these boundaries dissolve. I have spent the
last year creating the blueprints for a social history of the town of Trumpton,
a 1960’s children’s television utopia. In my work the town’s residents have
become the occupants of the artist’s studio, breaking out from their frames and
own meta-narratives, they are scaled up and de-characterised to become
grotesque walking puppets that roam the detritus ridden landscape. In this
studio-laboratory the artist, subject and object all become interchangeable as
heads are switched in a parody that brings a more humorous element to the
classic creator tales of Frankenstein, the Golem and Prometheus.
Amelia Seren Roberts
Yuyu Wang
The Summer Wood,
Digital Printed Photograph20x20x20cm 10x25x40cm 10-11/ 2013
My work explores the properties of human’s body and understanding the world through physical senses. Most time I rely on somatic experience in conjunction with solid materials and visual resources to make decisions. I am interested in the uncertainties, between the softness and the hardness; the fragility and the tension; the organic form and the artificial shape; the physical pleasure and the discomfort; the desire of destroy and the ability of protection.
These two objects covered by two photos I took in last
summer when I was in my hometown Taiyuan. The cube shows a head with bit bald,
and another one shows a watermelon with the hair from the bald part of the
head. The work is quite personal because it related with my own experiences for
that summer. The situation of the summer was: I did not make a really good plan
for the summer; it was really hot out there, so I did not want to go to
anywhere; some friends in China started to lose contact with me, so I started
to think where I belong to; and so on.
I felt these two images translated my feeling about whole
summer. Then they became two objects, the object could display on the wall or
embrace in arms.
Black Pudding Feeder 2013 90 x 80 cm
What I am interested in art is monstrosity of human
behaviour. There are no monsters where are no humans. I am intrigued by acts of
violence from school yard bulling to bodies of newborns abandoned in carrier
bags.. I am acutely affected by extremes. Images of half-dead bodies being
shoved into incinerators in death factories during WW2 or heavily mutilated
people of Rwandan Genocide.
This is what we really are, I am afraid. In our societies
some always have powers over others and they don't hesitate to exercise these
powers.
I watch what people do to other people. I don't understand.
I try to make sense of it. I paint it. I try to tame it but I can't tame my own
nature…
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