The Art Workers’ Guild
The Art Workers’ Guild
Clary Salandy of Mahogany Carnival design giving a lecture at the Guild
Please note that Guild meetings are now being held in person at the Guild and streamed on YouTube
This is how Wikipedia describes me: ‘Rob Ryan is a British visual artist who specialises in papercutting and screen-printing. He is known for his detailed paper cut outs.’ But they also say that my parents are Dolly and Buddy Ryan which is the first I’ve heard about it! So just to set the record straight:
’I am Theresa and Tom Ryan’s son,
And I don’t feel a need to belong.
I’m lost in this universe for a brief speck of time,
And then ‘Pouff’, I’m gone.’
Daniel runs 200 miles a month / tells truths / makes work everyday / embraces chance / moves towards difficult things. He is relentless / observative / angry / calm / on or off / awake or asleep.
We will hear the stories of three very special homes as told by the people who lovingly care for them.
Annabelle Campbell is the director of David Parr House in Cambridge
Laura Hussey is the National Trust’s house and gardens manager of Khadambi Asalache’s home on the Wandsworth Rd, London
Stephen Wright is an artist who has created his own amazing ‘House of Dreams’ in East Dulwich, London. Due to unforeseen circumstances, Annabelle Campbell will sadly no longer be able to join us for this evening’s lecture.
Grayson Perry is one of Britain’s best-loved contemporary artists - and is known for having a wonderfully lusty laugh. Although he works mostly in ceramics, he is also known for his fine tapestries, sculptures, and etchings in which he chronicles contemporary life - drawing us in with wit, nostalgia, and emotion. His work is funny and insightful - and he is also quite often on the TV talking about culture, what it is and what parts we all play in it.
Our greatest living cartoonist. Michael Heath has been making us laugh out loud with his sharp and incisive pen for many decades. His highly focused eye has been seeing through the nonsense of modern life long before it was even known as that. He has worked for Punch, Private Eye and just about any publication worth being in.
Michelle has been building Submit to Love, a supported studio for artists living with brain injury, for over 20 years at Headway East London - a local brain injury charity. In 2023 they co-produced an exhibition called differently various at the Barbican, which featured 124 artworks by over 70 artists with brain injuries. Find out more about how Submit to Love was born, and why art is so important for (re)discovering your identity after trauma. Michelle will be joined by an artist from the Submit to Love studio.
The thoughtful and perceptive Geoff Grandfield has been at the forefront of British illustration for the last four decades but much more importantly he loves to dance and smile, generally doing both at the same time. He will talk on the theme of truth and how visual creative practice can open up an understanding of self and sense making.
The talk will chart how Christopher (Brother Brown) became an illustrator. His influences, his love of books, college days and the development of what might be called a style. He will reflect on the past, the present and try to see what the future might hold. ‘I’m serious about my work but my work is often far from serious.’
Skateboarders… noisy vandals that make a nuisance of themselves around city centres. But did you know there is the secret underbelly of the skateboarding scene? Fume huffing, screen printing creatives who represent a niche within a niche. These special or perhaps deranged individuals have spent thousands of hours perfecting their craft, creating artwork to be sold to likeminded obsessives who have dedicated their lives to skateboarding, all created with the sole purpose of this artwork being destroyed
In 2015, following a period of laborious pencil drawing for gallery destinations, John Hewitt began a daily pocket-sketchbook practice, resulting in over 4,000 gel-pen drawings of whatever the day presents. These are posted on social media, rapidly connecting makers, audiences and curators, while enabling peer correspondence around subject strands. More than 71 million images carry the sketchbook hashtag on Instagram, and his output belongs to that culture in a significant way.
I have no idea what I’ll be saying or showing apart from there will be images and there maybe some sound. I’m surprised to continue to just about make a living from drawing and making stuff although it’s never been as bad as this. I still think I have something to say but when I’ve said it there’s always something else to say. Humour beats everything.
‘As if I were being poked repeatedly in the eye with a blunt stick, I cannot avoid becoming increasingly aware of a painfully cynical trend in London architecture which threatens to turn the city into the backlot of an abandoned movie studio.’
The Gentle Author presents a humorous analysis of facadism - the unfortunate practice of destroying an old building apart from the front wall and constructing a new building behind it - revealing why it is happening and what it means. As this bizarre architectural fad has spread across London, The Gentle Author has photographed the most notorious examples, collecting an astonishing gallery of images guaranteed to inspire both laughter and horror in equal measure.
Harriet and Rosie met whilst studying painting at Chelsea School of Art and set up the imitable world of Tatty Devine shortly after graduating. The pair will reflect on working and creating together and their journey over the last quarter of a century.
‘The use of discarded, found and multiples of objects is a fundamental element of my practice.’ With a playful eye and clever fingers Ann takes apart the everyday bits and pieces that fill our world, she breathes new life into them and creates sculptures that are both inventive and joyful.
Jiro paints anything and everything that he experiences, from airport terminals to snails. He is often the protagonist in his own paintings, acting out with gentle self-deprecation the tragicomedy of an artist’s life. In this talk, the Japanese-born, UK nurtured Londoner chronicles his life and art from the age of five up to the present day.
Through revealing the skilled process involved in creating taxidermy, Jazmine aims to show how this often-misunderstood craft is not only useful for science and education, but also that it really can show the utter beauty of living things. A poignant reminder that life is fleeting and precious and that we need to work hard to protect it.
The imagery of myth, folklore and fairytales are a constant theme in Claire’s large figurative ceramic works, referencing art and social history, and contemporary city life in equal measure. Claire will discuss some of the ideas and narratives behind her humorously subversive work. Alison uses clay unearthed from sites of historic and geological interest, from seabed faults to dinosaur fossils, to make ceramics informed by overlaps in history and future.
An artist who works in many mediums and who exists between London and Germany. ‘One day the lens of my camera broke. The moving part fell out when I bent forward to take a picture of a moth. It fell right on top of the moth and squashed it. It was an obvious but shocking revelation: I am not outside of the world, but inside of it. I had to rethink my strategies and position as an artist.’
