The Firestation

Private View: Weds 2nd September, 6-8pm 

Artists featured are: Rob Ryan, Adam Bridgland, Helen Ingham, Martin Grover and Stephen Walter

In association with Windsor Festival

The Firestation is proud to collaborate with TAG Fine Arts in a Graphic Art show, featuring five contemporary artists working mainly in print. The artists' works make part of important international collections, as well as famous commissions.  With themes including signage, tourism, nature, maps, stories, and love, this inspirational collection of work is as witty as it is striking. 

Adam Bridgland

Adam is running workshops for all ages during the course of the show: Wish You Were Here, Love From Windsor (19th Sept), and The Big Draw (10th Oct). 

Described as 'your favourite leisuretime artist', Adam embraces the everyday object, finding inspiration from the colouring book image, travel guidebooks, and scout paraphernalia.  Kitsch and humorous, yet equally poignant, his work investigates the notion that the holiday is essentially a fantasy that rarely lives up to our expectations.  Since graduating from the RCA in 2006, Bridgland has exhibited internationally and his work can be found in major collections including: British Museum, RCA, V&A, De La Warr Pavilion, Purdue University - Indiana, BBC and UBS. Adam's page on artnet

TAG Fine Arts worked with him on his first London solo exhibition in January at the London Art Fair this year.  He has recently been selected for the Northern Print Biennale 2009.

 

Martin Grover

A mixture of public signage, poetry and overheard conversations, Grover's striking images are filled with a sense of fun.

The screenprints depict his everyday surroundings as a backdrop for tales of the banal and bizarre. The artist finds inspiration whilst traveling around on buses where he frequently finds himself marveling at the shifting cityscape or caught up in other people’s dialogue and arguments in closer quarters.

Martin's work was recently acquired by the V&A prints and drawings collection.

Martin's page on artnet

Helen Ingham 

All of Helen's print works are made on a traditional letter press, using a hand operated press, lead or wood type and illustration blocks.  This series is made up from people's statements from artist in residence trip she made to the US.  Whilst working in a letter press print shop in a museum in Nashville she found a number of her conversations so touching and surreal at times that she wanted to illustrate them. 

The works have a nostalgic atmosphere of old-world charm, with soft colours and retro-style lettering sympathetic to the traditional production method.  Helen's page on artnet

 

Rob Ryan

With commissions at Liberty's, the V&A, Fortnum & Mason, Paul Smith, Tatty Devine and Vogue, Ryan's work is rightly in demand.  He is currently illustrating poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy's new children's book, after which he plans to create his own.  Working in hand-cut paper and screen-print, his intricately crafted compositions tell little snippets of love stories. These images evoke a heady mix of sentimentality and melancholy, romance and hope tinged with loss and despair.

This Is For You, a fairy tale for adults told through hand cut pieces of paper, has been made into a book that will be available to buy signed.  The show features a selection of stunning, unique paper-cuts.

Rob Ryan's page on artnet

Stephen Walter 

Walter’s intricate pencil drawings have evolved from a fascination with maps, public and sub-cultural signs, symbols and obsessive tendencies.
A major map project The Island - London Series was published by TAG in 2008. The series has been acquired by major public art collections including the British Library and the Government Art Collection. A touring show, the work has been exhibited throughout London at St Pancras Crypt, V&A, and is currently on loan to the Courtauld Institute of Art.  Stephen's page on artnet

    

Next exhibition: John Vincent: With No Hope of Heaven

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