PROFESSIONAL PRACTICEJONNYJONNYJONNYPROFESSIONAL PRACTICEPROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
“I DON’T REALLY WANT TO PUT ANY QUOTES IN HERE, BECAUSE IT DOESN’T SEEM VERY GENUINE.”
JONNY CLAPHAM, BEING DIFFICULT
CONTENTS- FUNTRODUCTION- WHO AM US? WHAT IF I?- ELEMENTS OF MY PRACTICE- PROCESS- INFLUENSPIRATIONS- LOBOTOMY OF SELF- RETROSPECTICLES- COLLABORATE/MYSTERY SACHET- FURTHER COLLABORATIONS- GRANDMOTHER RESSURECTION MECHANICS- NAKED!- ONLINE PORTFOLIO- TWITTER- EXTENDED THOUGHTS ON TWITTER- PROMOTION OF THE ME- CACTUS INSERTION TACTICS- COMPETITIONALS- AWARENESS OF INDUSTRY- FUTURE PLANS FOR THE FUTURE- DRAWING OF A VASE- EXHIBITIONS I’VE BEEN INVOLVED IN
- LINKS OF RELEVANCE
Hello NAMELESS READERSHIP and
welcome to the Professional Practice
booklet. This book is a cyber-bound
look into the past year of my life, a
year filled with turbulent creativity and
identity crashes. Luckily I’m through
all that, for now, and I can present to
you the most professional facade of
my creative practice, filled with only
the good bits of work and reams of
self-congratulatory prose embellished
with half-truths about my promotional
prowess.
However, it’s more likely I will be
entirely honest. I was brought up
a Catholic, and despite distancing
myself from the more magical parts
of that belief system, I still find
myself unable to cope with the guilt of
dishonesty.
FUNTRODUCTION
WHO AM US?WHAT IF I?‘What If’s’ drive my work. Simple one sentence
concepts that can spawn imagery work as
fantastic starting points for visual exploration.
What if a man left his gun at the zoo and the
animals got hold of it? What if a bee charmer led a
swarm into a corrupt metropolis as an anarchistic
statement? What if the universe had a baby?
This curiosity towards bizarre storytelling brings
my work into conceptually strange places, which
informs my visual design.
I like to keep my imagery vibrant and sharp, using
simple forms to create characters. Character
design is integral to my practice, creating avatars
that I can use to explore my worlds.
These worlds are ultimately extensions of myself
and the things I love, poured through a visual filter
for others to see, and hopefully, connect with in
some way.
ELEMENTS OF MY PRACTICE
HUMOUR
‘Illustration’ works as a legitimate platform
for beautifully rendered imagery and
somber pieces about hard hitting issues,
but I find myself increasingly disillusioned
by how saturated the market is with
‘safe’ pieces of work that look pretty
but don’t function on any level beyond
that. Therefore, I prefer to view my own
Illustration as a form of entertainment and
humour, to break through the boredom
barrier that so much contemporary
illustration is stuck behind. I want my
work to be interesting on levels that
aren’t based entirely on aesthetic beauty,
but also ideas and content too. Having
a bizarre sense of humour in my work
takes it outside of the expected and into
the realms of ‘weird’. Normality is anti-
progressive, only by embracing the weird
can we be truly innovative.
CHAOS
Sometimes my audience will find
my sense of humour confusing.
This bamboozlement from a lack of
context is a wonderful reaction that
not many illustrators try to elicit, so
I derive a great level of enjoyment
from seeing the confused, often
disturbed, reactions to my work
from peers.
HONESTY
It would be a lie to say that my
practice is always a saccharine
wonderland of fertile creativity and
exploration. Creativity is terrifyingly
unpredictable and can quite often
make me feel like I’m going insane.
The only way to solve these feelings
is to keep making until something
good comes along. If my practice is
in a dark place, so am I. Sometimes
the anxiousness that this constant
self-reflection spawns can cripple
the creative process, but I have
also found that I produce my best
work in this period, being inspired
by personal paranoia to create
autobiographical content. Therefore
it is safe to say that feelings of
dread, insanity and despair all fuel
my practice in unexpected ways,
and keep me being productive.
PLAY
In these times of self-loathing it’s
best to remember why I’m doing
what I do in the first place, and what
this can all mean to my current
practice. Essentially, all Illustration
is a form of play. In this case we
are playing with visuals, much like
we would play with toys when we
are younger. Therefore, I find, that
if I can view my practice in this
way, constantly playing with both
ideas and picture elements and
most importantly finding the fun in
the things I make, then the process
of making can become a lot looser
and genuine innovation can take
place.
Although I can see the appeal in a tight and
controlled image, I find that once you’ve
reached that stage of supposed perfection it
can often remove a lot of the intrigue from
what’s been made. Due to this fascination
with more lo-fi approaches, I sometimes
enjoy to have unfinished, looser elements in
the work I create. With digital processes this
is a lot more difficult to achieve. However,
this year has enabled me to work in a way
that carries the stigma of being bad (with
work being reminiscent of MS PAINT) and
then using this working methodology, with
an increasing knowledge of composition and
colour, to create work with artistic merit.
I mostly work with the pencil tool, using sharp
pixelled square brushes to create my pieces,
the result being lo-fi digital paintings. With
this process I’m constantly searching for
the balance between low quality and over-
rendered imagery, a state that’s incredibly
difficult to achieve. However, with each
image I make in this way, I gain more of an
understanding of the way I work and how to
refine it, or even un-refine it, in the future.
Recently I’ve been keen to use a minimal
range of colours within each piece I make.
This helps to unify the sometimes busy
elements of the pieces.
Whilst digital techniques have been the
most prevalent parts of my practice in this
final academic year, I also am keen to not
abandon my traditional, pen work. However
the digital processes have allowed to me to
return to my pen-work with a better idea of
character composition and more sensibility
regarding shape and form.
PROCESS
INFLUENSPIRATIONS
WEIRD WORLD CINEMA (MOSTLY ASIAN)
Watching strange movies from across the
world has become a fascination of mine, and
only recently has this love of bizarre cinema
crept into my work.
I enjoy watching movies that are genre mash-
ups. Combining ideas from many sources
can result in something that appears to be
brand new, and in the case of these films,
strangely unique. And though these films are
unique in their approach to filmic storytelling,
they are all united by their weirdness.
Asian cinema in particular seems, to me, to
be at the forefront of intriguing storytelling
possibilities. More recently, however, I have
found a fantastic range of technicolour films
from the 1970s that also display the same
sensibility of strange invention and an odd
sense of humour.
Ultimately what’s wonderful about these
movies is that each artefact is quite
unlike what the mainstream perception of
cinema appears to be. They are windows
into other worlds. Places filled with colour,
compositional quality and accentuated
character.
In this sense they inform what I make more
than anything else, as I constantly look to
imbue my work with these same qualities,
mashing up elements to create something
that is weird and therefore ‘new’.
STRANGE BOOKS
This collection of strange books that I have
amassed from second hand book shops
has been particularly useful in informing my
practice over the last year.
Dipping into these tomes can be both a
blessing and a curse. There’s so much
inside to draw from visually, but eventually it
can turn into self indulgent escapism, to the
point where the mental imagery becomes so
overwhelming that it seems impossible to do
it justice.
Nevertheless, they’re an excellent resource,
and fascinating to read. If I could replicate
a small part of the intrigue that these books
carry within my own work I’d be happy.
DAVID O’REILLY
His animation work and general internet
presence has been hugely inspirational to
me. Through his work, he comes across as
somebody who is aware of culture around
him, and how it in turn influences the creator.
The sense of humour present in his work is
admirable, and his lo-fi approach to creating
work has pushed me to discover my own
way of using digital processes in unexpected
ways.
WE LOVE KATAMARI
We Love Katamari is an insane game
created by Namco. Aside from the innovative
gameplay, the visuals have had a ton of
attention and love poured into them. The
incongruous elements that make up the
world of Katamari are, much like everything
else, influential because of their weirdness.
SHIGERU MIZUKI
I recently discovered his work and fell in
love with his drawings of Yokai Monsters,
creatures from Japanese Folklore.
The drawings are beautifully detailed, but
also contain comical elements. The two
combined create a fantastic world that you
can’t help but want to explore, touch, feel, be
inside...
CHILD ART
Drawings kids do tend to be a lot better than
grown-up drawings, in terms of character
and expression. I’ve put a lot of work in
recently trying to undo the tightness of my
pen drawing and go back to a more childish
aesthetic.
RETROSPECTICLES
NEGOTIATED PRACTICE
This was a huge learning period for me, during
which I discovered the flaws within my practice,
which I could then take forward and learn
how to solve. The project started with high
ambitions to create a narrative, with the theme
of british folklore, magic and the supernatural
as a starting point.
My mind flitted from idea to idea, with different
narratives forming and dissipating in my mind
within the spaces of mere days. I realise this
now as a lack of focus, and I was backing
out of project ideas down to fear rather than
solving the problems head on.
The parts of the project I enjoyed most were
the spontaneous experiments that have
influenced me further down the line in my EMP.
The most notable process to come out of these
spontaneous pieces was the experimentation
with lo-fi processes on photoshop to emulate
microsoft paint. These were created in a period
of creative dryness, and suddenly re-ignited
my practice in interesting ways. However
at this early stage, I hadn’t had the time to
experiment with and refine this technique in
any wholly meaningful way.
Nevertheless it’s important to remember this
project as being part of a continuing body of
work that has flowed onwards into the EMP.
All the pieces made here were essential in the
development of what I am currently making,
and what I’m sure to continue to make post-
graduation.
I also managed to find a way to compile all
the pieces made during this project into a
humorous and chaotic glimpse into my ‘Identity
Cruise’ throughout the course of negotiated
practice. Including unfinished themes, doodles
and ideas that came together as a celebration
of my failure to focus. This compilation meant I
could look back on the works created and find
new value in them as lovable malfunctions.
EXTENDED MAJOR PROJECT
It took me a few months to get going, but
interesting things began to happen in this huge
space of time between December and May.
For a start, I realised that my lack of focus
during longer projects could work in my
favour when tackling shorter projects. This
meant more openness to collaboration and
unexpected projects, like the Jimmy’s Iced
Coffee 24 Hr Brief.
These shorter briefs, normally one day long,
led me to make surprising creative choices,
and eventually I shifted back into making
digital work with the crunchy aesthetic I had
been exploring before.
I also began to experiment with moving image,
kick started by the GIF workshop I organised
and leading on into my response to D&AD’s
Make Your Mark Brief. This, again, meant the
fast paced creation of imagery, which led to an
inability to be too critical of what I’d produced.
Post the D&AD brief, my work ended up going
to interesting places visually. I became much
more confident with the application of colour
(in some cases, perhaps too confident). Colour
has been less-present in my work previous
to this, due to colourblindness making it feel
awkward.
As I continued to use colour, I could see how
subtler combinations could also work in my
favour, and created limited colour imagery,
which I consider my strongest to date.
This unit was not without it’s hard times of
wobbly indecision and future-fears, but now
I’m finishing it feeling a lot more confident
about my practice, knowing that within months
I’ll have a whole new bunch of imagery to
add to my portfolio. This constant evolution
and refinement of aesthetic alongside a more
constant work ethic has been extremely
gratifying, and I can’t wait to see where it goes
next.
I feel that collaboration is essential
in this current illustration climate.
The romantic notion of the
isolated illustrator seems to be
less fetishised within illustration
practice, with illustrators instead
turning to social networking and
blogging to create vast networks of
people to work with. Collaboration
can also teach the individual a lot
about their personal practice, with
new or completely different ways of
working informing their own work in
unexpected ways.
This year I became a part of
a collective, Mystery Sachet,
alongside Louis Wood and Nathalie
Moore. A lot of the work created
within this has had a humorous
edge. The briefs tend to be a day
long, creating fast-paced humorous
content without the luxury of
reflection time,
COLLABORATE/MYSTERY SACHET
STRUMPET CRUSH
A 24hr LOVE ZINE created on
Valentines Day. Besides artwork, it
also contained a short story I wrote
called “Story about a man who falls
in love with his own heart”, which
Louis illustrated.
LEGITIMAT SEXY FASHION SHOW
A day of puppet and doll making,
ultimately ending with a sexy
fashion shoot and a makeshift
catwalk. I then took these photos
and edited them into an ‘ultra-
professional’ video, which aroused
many.
GIFPOCALYPSE
A one-day GIF workshop we
ran involving 10 or so students.
Everyone got together to create
apocalypse themed GIFS.
FURTHER COLLABORATIONSCORPSE MILK
I gathered a diverse bunch of illustrators (2nd
and 3rd years from AUB, Kingston University
students and Japanese Aimi...from Japan)
to create halloween based comics. This was
published in digital form.
SECRET ZINE
A zine I participated in, drawing images of
visiting tutors Marcus Oakley and Salvatore
Rubinno. I chose a few of the most cutting-
edge illustrators in my course to be involved
in the project, and it was nice to see that I
made the correct choices.
1000% BUTTITUDE ZINE
A collaboration of nudey drawings made for
the NAKED Exhibition, put together by Elliot
Coffin and I.
LIVE DRAWING EVENT IN BOURNEMOUTH TOWN CENTRE
I was involved with a group of students in
creating a strange woodland scene at an arts
event, poorly organised by a girl who didn’t
seem to know what she was doing. It was a
strange day, with an eerie fog hanging around
the triangle, along with friendly vagrants who
wanted to share their own chalk masterpieces
with us. Nevertheless, it was an unexpected
and fun experience, working at a larger scale
than usual. A shame, then, that the board
was chucked away by the ‘organiser’. And
she was from Arts and Events management.
Shame on her.
JIMMY’S ICED COFFEE- 24hr LIVE BRIEF
An event set up by marketing in which an
Iced Coffee Merchant gathered students
from various courses together to create
ideas for him for free. My group decided
to take a humorous approach to the brief,
where others were taking it dead seriously,
and created a mock advert for Jimmy with
cheeky pokes at his business. I edited the
video later, my body surging with Iced Coffee
after-effects. The result made Jimmy and the
marketing team laugh, and even inspired a
slight smile from a rather surly graphic design
tutor who was present.
Jimmy, being the benevolent being he is,
decided that he liked ALL the briefs and
wanted ALL of them done for him for free,
which was really kind of him. As time has
passed, I feel that doing anything for him for
free would be counter-productive in terms of
making a living off my trade, and despite him
being a very nice man, I would want to come
into some kind of financial agreement with
him before embarking on any projects.
NAKED!I was happy to be one of fifteen students involved in participating work to student-led exhibition called NAKED at OPEN SPACE gallery. This participation slowly became curation of sorts, myself and three other students taking the helm and setting up the gallery space.
This was not only great for me as a turning point within my work, but was brilliant experience in organising an arts event, and working out where to hang pieces of artwork in relation to others. It was a wonderful weekly diversion from my general practice and an opportunity to work alongside peers to create something special.
Curating this exhibition also involved working with Elliot Coffin to create a companion zine called 1000% BUTTITUDE: This zine contained sketches and rougher works from the ‘exhibitionists’ in the show. Gathering and designing this booklet was really fun, again learning how to handle a
vast and diverse range of work.
ONLINE PORTFOLIOWEBSITE
My main funtioning portfolio is my
website, which I consider to be the
most universally accesible means
of getting clients to see my work.
Creating the website has been
useful in helping me to edit down
my work and find the choice few
pieces that both show my artistic
prowess and represent me as a
creative warrior.
This meant creating a slick,
professional design to contain the
vividness of my imagery. It’s all
about finding the right mixture of
chaotic vibrance and professional
minimalism, thus catering for,
and displaying, both facets of my
creative services.
PDF FOR IPAD
For the sake of my portfolio review
with Gina Cross, I created a pdf
document that can be viewed on
the Ipad. I felt this was necessary
in keeping up with the ways that
potential clients now look at work.
My pieces also look fantastic on the
high contrast/brightness screens of
the Ipad.
MY BLOG AND ME <3
Tumblr is an intersting tool in
seeing how productive I’ve been
during previous months. Seeing
this growth of content over the past
few has been a really satisfying
experience.
I chose a minimal theme for my
blog, and this runs alongside my
website nicely. I didn’t want a blog
where the cursor was something
sparkly or the background was
yellow with strobe effects. Though
now that I’ve written that, I kind
of do want it. A lot. But I’ll resist,
because the minimal theme is
useful in containing the ‘colourful-
business’ of my work.
I haven’t had a lot of followers, but I
feel like that’s not a major problem.
I’ve been using the blog as more
of a ‘madman’s image dump’ than
a ‘professional diary’, uploading
images pretty much every single
day. It’s more fun not explaining
the work, rather than filling my
blog with words. I want it to be
confusing upon entry but intriguing
nonetheless, like rifling through the
rucksack of a dead clown.
I set up a Twitter account to promote
my creative practice. I seem to be
slowly getting more followers week
by week, but I’m also quite unsure
how to gain more, and whether
I should be aiming for a large
amount of followers or just specific
followers of honourable repute
(meaning industry professionals
and potential clients). Most of
the time it just makes me feel like
I’m intensely staring at someone
famous from across the room, but
they aren’t looking back at me.
But it is slowly growing, and
hopefully by submitting work to
websites to get featured, I can get
more twitter exposure and become
more involved with the online
networking world.
EXTENDED THOUGHTS ON TWITTER
Twitter often feels like a dangerous playground, with industry professionals riding the see-saw, working out the balance between sounding like egotistical success-fiends and sad little ordinary people. This results in an ambivalent environment where nothing feels entirely real because no-one feels safe to truly express themselves. When trying to write a ‘tweet’ my mind turns to PONG, with one paddle representing what I think I ‘should’ be saying and the other representing what I want to be saying. Usually, what I want to be saying doesn’t feel ‘professional enough’ and the resulting tweet ends up being fairly mundane; informative but depersonalized, and I find that troubling.
I have the same reaction to
seeing Illustration peers I know well interact on twitter, talking about practice in a way that doesn’t feel entirely genuine. My twitter feed is a mixture of creative professionals sharing success stories and awkward tweets from young practitioners trying to garner their attention via insincere shout outs. I know this because I too have tweeted my fair share of these in an attempt to gain interaction with ‘cool, famous types’. All of this makes me feel like a shallow being.
But is there anything inherently wrong with this process, or is this just the nature of the industry in general? I imagine that if we were to pretend that Twitter was a physical location,
a real networking event filled with both industry professionals
and their followers, then the method of self promotion would not be too dissimilar. Of course, with the amount of followers they have, more successful practitioners would be crushed to death by their adoring fans, but physical logistics aside I think interactions would be vastly similar. Insincere statements happen all the time within real-life networking events and make excellent conversation starters. “Please be my friend and see me as a legitimate creative being” becomes “I loved your new book, it was really nice” (even if their new book was only vaguely interesting to you). Perhaps Twitter just exposes these shameless acts of self promotion for what they really are, because to do it in real life requires courage. Doing it online requires a keyboard.
Despite all this, I’ll continue to use Twitter to promote my creative practice. I think the best
way to move forward with comes with understanding it. Yes, it does encourage me to create a fake, hyperbolic version of my creative lifestyle (without the bouts of self doubt that are part of daily practice), but hopefully in being aware of that I can avoid coming across as a vague construct and more of an actual human being. Twitter may be a dangerous playground, but real playgrounds are also dangerous. Taking risks never hurt anyone. Except for all those kids who died in playgrounds. This article is for them. #deadkids.
PROMOTION OF THE MEREPETITION OF SIMPLIFIED FACEa section written from the future sent back in time by an art critic
“Jonny chose to promote his
practice through the perpetual
repetition of his own face. This
avatar became an invitation into his
world, and how he viewed himself
as an illustrator; young, vulnerable
and with a round head. Many of his
peers viewed this as an obnoxious
move, a cavalcade of vanity spam
with no inherent worth as a self
promotional tactic. It’s likely that
it was a desperate attempt to
immortalise himself as an illustrator,
an individual, without putting in the
essential groundwork.”
At the time he believed he could
hop his way to success via
stepping stones of his own visage.
If he could make himself famous,
then his work could follow in his
face’s metaphorical footsteps.
This promotional device, although
a narcissistic blimp-ride towards
success, was often buffeted by the
winds of ‘real-world-logistics’. He
seemed to be ignorant to the fact
that other people in the world could
also have glasses and ginger hair.
In fact a lot of other people
actually had ginger hair for real,
and his was more of an auburn
haze.
Nonetheless,
this ‘simpliformation’ of himself
was a useful tool in linking
together his internet presence.
It’s important to remember that
he achieved all this in an age
where the internet was incredibly
difficult to use, well before
personalised URLs became a
birth-right.”
Written by Critic-bot 2073
Model by Allie Oldfield
GIANT VERSION OF MY OWN HEAD
A giant version of my own head,
made of cardboard, has been
utilised in the past as a promotional
strategy at parties. Various
problems with the head include no
eyeholes, balance difficulties and a
lack of breathing space. However
these issues are trivial when
considering the general outward
aesthetic of the piece, which serves
as a reminder to all of my inflated
ego, physically ‘masking’ my true
and vulnerable self.
It also looks really good on other
peoples bodies... Especially the
topless guy.
BUSINESS CARDS
I haven’t yet sorted out my
business cards, but I definitely
have a professional plan for when
I do. In fact I have THREE.
Plan A)
Instead of making Business Cards
I am offering a unique service in
which instead of potential clients
taking my card home with them,
they get to take ME home with
them, for at least a week. During
this time I will constantly remind
them of my existence through
obnoxious shouting and hijacking
of their social networking. I will
wear a red t-shirt with my name
on it. This relentless ‘notification’
system will eventually, with luck,
land me an industry job. I will treat
restraining orders in a similar way
to rejections, seeing them as an
indication of my supreme efforts in
networking.
Plan B)
A BUSINESS CARD with a
drawing of me on it. The drawing
has perforated edges so you
can push it out of the rectangular
card and have a miniature
cardboard version of me. By
bending the legs and putting blu-
tac on it’s butt you can sit him on
your desk where he can watch
you forever.
Plan C)
Print some normal business cards.
COMPETITIONALS
LITTLE WHITE LIES
I entered a competition that Little
White Lies was running to promote
Wreck-it-Ralph. The brief was to
create a videogame titlescreen
in MS PAINT, with the theme
being ‘disney movies’. I took a
less serious approach to the
competition (something that, since
winning it, I realise is the best thing
to do in most scenarios). This didn’t
win me any exposure at all, but it
does sound more impressive than
it actually is PLUS I won an Ipad
Mini, which was a nice reward for
about an hours work.
D&AD
Some of the most fun I’ve had
creatively during third year was
answering D&AD’s ‘Make your
Mark’ brief, giving myself just a
week to create an outcome. Like
the Little White Lies brief, I deviated
slightly from what I think the judges
are expecting to see. It was great
fun, and directly influenced the
shape of my work in the following
weeks so much that I WOULDN’T
EVEN MIND if i didn’t win anything,
because the artistic repercussions
were so fat with creative juices
that my belly is now swollen from
consuming it all.
I would really like to get some
recognition, though...
AWARENESS OF INDUSTRY
Visiting lecturers and tutors have
given me a fairly good insight into
the financial aspects of practice
within industry. Anna Steinberg’s
lecture and following workshop
regarding commissions and
pricing, along with the talk from the
AOI about copyright have given
me a greater understanding of
the logistics of being a freelancer.
Talks from Hayley Potter about self
promotion tactics have also been a
great resource.
These talks have also aided me in
my awareness of potential pitfalls
that I can avoid, pitfalls I would have
otherwise fallen into and learnt
about through my own mistakes.
I still expect mistakes to happen,
but hopefully they’ll be significantly
less dramatic since gaining this
knowledge.
There are steps that I must take to ensure that my
post-graduate experience is not filled with too much
suffering or regression of character. Luckily, I am in
a position to push my practice in multiple directions
through the promotion of self and the continuation
of the work ethic I have developed throughout third
year.
This work ethic involves not becoming complacent,
perpetually setting briefs for myself and taking on the
briefs of others. My fast paced working methodology
means that one day/one week mini briefs are well
suited to me, which could be a fantastic skill in
regards to the industry. This skill could be especially
useful in regard to Editorial briefs, a place that my
style of work could also fit into with refinements.
After graduation, I’ll be sending my work out to design
institutions and publications, making contact with and
presenting myself to as many people in-industry as I
can. The best way to view this activity is to see these
people not as clients, but as professional friends.
Formal, friendly relationships are key to networking
success, and being amicable towards people is more
productive than seeing people as money farms. I see
myself as a service for clients, rather than seeing
them purely as a means of income.
FUTURE PLANS FOR THE FUTUREI’m keen to keep that sense of community felt at
university after graduating. This will be a lot easier
due to the internet, but physical interaction has
become an important part of my practice. As such,
I hope to continue to develop the Mystery Sachet
Collective into something more marketable. I’m also
interested in the curation of others work, particularly
in setting up some kind of platform for innovative
illustration with the focus on works that are humorous
and bizarre. My main fear of the future is introspective
anxiety, so pushing my practice in collaborative
directions is essential for my mental wellbeing. The
only way to combat these dastardly future-fears is to
just DO stuff. In doing, I can only progress towards
something better.
I’ll also continue to make my authorial work, as any
self-led piece could become portfolio material and
lead to commissions. I’m keen to set up some kind
of web-comic, as a portal to an audience with which
to share my sense of humour and ideas. I’ve found
this goal difficult to achieve within an academic
framework, so I feel that it is very much a tangible
possibility now. In this way I hope to build up an
internet audience, and perhaps eventually rely less
on being employed by others to showcase my work.
Perhaps.
EXHIBITIONS I’VE BEENINVOLVED IN2013
NAKED - OPEN SPACE gallery, Bournemouth
WORDS AND PICTURES - BIC, Bournemouth
2012
EQUINOX - Cafe Boscanova, Boscombe
TROPICS - Cafe Boscanova, Boscombe
2011
HIBERNAL - Cafe Boscanova, Boscombe
LINKS OF RELEVANCE
MY WEB PRESENCE
www.jonnyclapham.co.uk
www.jonnyclapham.tumblr.com
www.twitter.com/jonnypclapham
VIDEOS
Jimmy’s Iced Coffee promotional video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQA4vmyrIOM
Mystery Sachet Fashion Paradehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27ZCX6Eng5k
PUBLICATIONS
Mystery Sachet Presents: Strumpet Crushhttp://issuu.com/jonnyppclapham/docs/strumpet_crush
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