The Meat Wagon: First completed panel for the CWotW album

I am very chuffed to say I have completed the first of 7 panels for the Class War of the Worlds album cover & inlay booklet: The Meat Wagon, my take on Michael Trim's famous (& stunning) cover, The Thunder Child. Acrylic on corruguated cardboard, 18x36" (excluding margins).

I have already noticed one or two minor details which will need to be sorted before the final print, but for now I can leave this be.

CWOTW Progress - the final stretch!

I really should update this when I actually do work & not put it off cos I can't think of words. There has been quite a lot of progress since my last blog update.

These first draft illustrations for 'Reclaiming the Streets' & 'The Red Weed'

These are the final illustrations at the Work-In-Progress stage, I've dropped the multi-coloured style of the first few drafts & gone for a more agit-prop-like 4 colour method, so I only use black, white & crimson with one other colour on each picture - in the case of Reclaiming the Streets, for example, it's bright yellow on the hi-vis jackets. They're all painted on corruguated cardboard (which is cheap & provides a neutral-coloured mid-tone base which gives automatic shading) at 1:1.5 scale, meaning they're 36 x 18 inches to be scaled down for the 12" album illustrations.

I still need to start on 'The Meat Wagon' (Thunder Child), 'Horsell Centre' (Horsell Common) & Brave New World so I'll be bloody busy all week again.

 Reclaiming the Streets WIP 1

WIP 2

 

The Red Weed WIP 1

Nathaniel Parson (the Traffic Warden) WIP 1

The Birds/Free London WIP 1

Wanton Destruction

A couple of weeks ago I smashed a telly & called it art.

I decided to break a TV set because television represents many things which are wrong with the world as I see it. TV channels are invariably controlled by companies & individuals with vast amounts of money at their disposal - it is in their interests to make sure people spend as much time as possible doing as little as possible. To that end, TV is a form of behavioural control. News & programming are controlled to reinforce the status quo; if people are watching the TV they are hearing the opinions & instructions of a few powerful people, telling them who they should want to be, who they should avoid being & who they should hate. TV makes people hate people. That makes me hate TV.

The bitter irony doesn't escape me that people consider the TV, particularly large, new sets, to be prestige items, things which improve their lives by watching or, more likely, selling them on, but I'm in no position to comment on what happens to these things. News coverage ignores or misrepresents the actions of those it deems unsuitable for the masses to see or hear. We see what those in control of our lives want us to see. This was the conceptual background to the act, the rejection of information as a weapon & an assertion that our autonomy as human beings allows us to reject what we know is harmful and destructive to our well-being.

I originally intended to kick the TV to smash it, but having tried this 3 times with no effect but bruising my toes (I later studied the fragments & found that the glass was 17mm thick) & instead resorted to using a piece of metal roughly 1 metre long. The first time I struck the TV with this, it made a dent in the glass but did not shatter it - on the second attempt I struck it 3 times before finally putting the bar through the screen, causing a most exquisite sound.

The scene was documented on video & DSLR camera using rapid shutter drive to capture each movement, pictures will be available soon.

After disposing of the TV (& exposing my friend who was assisting me to some horrible particles, for which I apologise unreservedly) I retained 3 large fragments from the screen & cleaned off the metallic film that lines the inside. I plan to create individual artworks from these fragments, such as paintings. This led me to consider the idea of reassembling the fragments of a TV screen in the box itself, with an image painted or printed onto the inside of the screen, creating the illusion that the TV is still operational. I will experiment with an appropriate image on another television, which will necessitate the deployment of a big, heavy piece of metal.

This was done in a safe environment, with no risk of repercussions beyond a possible mild telling off for disregarding health & safety. I was wearing black clothes & had my head & face covered. Showing the photographs at a group critique a few days after the event, it was noted that when people cover up like this it suggests that they have something to hide, and that they are doing wrong. I commented that what was 'wrong' was not necessarily what was 'illegal', a flexible label in any situation. I thought the difference between 'wrong' & 'illegal' is a fair definition of 'politics'.

The reasons for wearing face coverings are well documented on activist web sites, and clearly evident when we see that people with faces uncovered in protest situations, not necessarily those proven to have committed any crime, are posted on the front pages of newspapers & on TV - an incitement to grass up fellow working class people & use prejudice as a punishment.

It is safe to assume the TV & metal bar used to be part of an artwork, the defunct TV was due to be chucked out. The bar was several pieces welded together - two long bars parallel to each other & u-shaped rods connecting them. I do not know the history of the artworks but I did bear in mind that I was using ex-art to create a new artwork. A concept which it would be sensible to note.

My affection for destroying inanimate objects is odd odds with my personality - I'm sometimes a calm, gentle person & sometimes I haven't slept very well & get ratty with people I actually like really easily, but that's uncommon, I'm usually quite nice. hence, I had to work myself up into enough of a rage to actually mean it when I swung the bar, thinking about the destructive, parasitic nature of capitalist industry, the ruining of young peoples' future & most peoples' present, the tendency of politicians to betrayal and most especially the bullshit idea that any human being is less important than any amount of money. That makes me want to break stuff, cos human beings are my favourite sort of people.

Why would anyone watch the television anyway? All it does is sit there gathering dust.

Class War of the Worlds

Here's my proposal for the negotiated project, due for completion by the end of April:

James Mullett

Fine Art & Illustration Level 3

Proposal for Negotiated Project

"Class War of the Worlds"

The aim of the Class War of the Worlds project is to reinterpret the illustrations from the record sleeve of "Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds" (CBS Records, 1978), recreating the images in a contemporary setting & placing an emphasis on radical activism. This will create a narrative which is distinct from the story of 'the War of the Worlds' but pays homage to its ethos, albeit with an element of humour in the content. The project is intended to appeal on several levels, to persons interested in radical politics & humorous imagery associated with it; to fans of WotW who will appreciate the nostalgic aspect of revisiting a classic source

The project will take into account the text of HG Wells' original novel and works derived from it, such as films, graphic novels, book illustrations & works influenced by it in some way.

It will also take into account radical political material including literature such as the Class War newspaper and other notable publications, and acknowledge visual political messages, especially of the 'agitation propaganda' genre, also political cartoons, protest & activism in photography.

The format will replicate that of the 1975 album, a 12" double gatefold card sleeve with accompanying inlay booklet. Illustrations will therefore be either 12x12" or 12x24" in their finished state.

For those of you unfamiliar with the classic album, info about it can be found here: [link] - the record was a favourite of mine as a child & I loved the paintings. I rediscovered WotW last year, I listened to the recording a few times & found that in many ways it still has the same thrill now as it did when I was a kid, though I do find bits of it quite silly. I got an old copy of the 12" for £6 from the Back to Mono record shop in Lincoln & I'll be dissecting the individual illustrations in due course. Suffice to say, when you've been painting for a while you spot the technical shortcomings. I'll do them better.

It struck me a while back that the Uni Lecturers (Hello!) have rarely seen my work at its peak, for one reason or another. With CWotW I will be doing what I do best on a project I feel genuinely excited about, so I fully intend it to be the best illustration work I have ever done.

Under my narrative, the Martians that invaded England in 1896 have been ousted by revolutionary anarcho-communist Martians, & to make up for massacring us in the last years of the 19th Century join forces with the proletariat to overthrow the capitalist-imperialist oppressors & liberate humankind forever.

ULLA!
WHOSE STREETS?!
ULLA!
OUR STREETS!!

Illustration: advertisement for 'Spam'

I was, lets be clear about this, not very chuffed to be given an ad for 'Spam' as an illustration project. I'm vegan & pro-animal rights &"happy characters" surrounding a can of dead pig frankly galls me, so I chose to do something which fulfilled the requirements of the brief but seemed more appropriate to me personally than the jolly party bollocks on the form.

Hence the illustration: A happy spaceman with his can of pig floating in zero gravity, a happy boar-alien who'll be eating a canful of delicious human & a meat factory production-line machine with a massive claw for chopping bits off mammals.

The astronaut reminds me of some shots from films like Alien, with the obvious connotation of getting eaten by a thing with big teeth. It seemed a logical step for a "happy alien" which was happy at finding a chunk of meat, conveniently packaged in a space suit to keep it fresh, to be a sort of boar or pig, given the contents of 'Spam.' There are quite a few examples of pig-aliens in popular culture, such as the monster Aggedor from the Curse/Monster of Peladon series' of Doctor Who [Link] & I like the idea of humans being put back in their place in the circle of life, as dinner for big things with big teeth.

The "happy robot" was a little less obvious; I had no intention of going anywhere near the anthropomorphised fruit machine on the brief & instead thought it appropriate to use meat-processing factory machinery. The idea of mass-produced dead food turns my stomach in so many knots, so I went for something that looks like it could be used to put a man in a can. It goes without saying that a machine, an inanimate object manufactured to perform a single task, cannot be 'happy', & so I figured someone who was feeling really depressed about the whole butchery thing painted a smiley face on it to cheer themselves up. I hope cheered themselves up so much they used the claw on themselves for fun.

The background was modelled on this photograph: [Link], didn't have time to make it any more detailed & have no intention of going back to it cos this project weas bloody tedious. The robot itself is based on this delightful piece of butchering quipment: [Link], an automated system for chopping animals' legs off.

The original painting is acrylic on W&N Acrylic paper, roughly 20x20cm. The brief stipulated ""no seedy, violent or gloomy imagery", despite the animal-consumption industry being all of those things (udders, man, they're sex bits), so I restrained myself from too much gory spatter & carcasses.

"Plan ahead be sure you can produce the final artwork to the required standard in the time available."

HA.

Summer Work & 'Cocktail Party'

These images are characters designed as part of the summer project, in which we were to design seven people in the style of seven artists. I only managed 5 designs & with my impeccable professionalism, didn't quite complete it over Xmas & the new year. The images are all on brown packing paper which was originally padding in mail order boxes, hence the many creases.

'Party-Goer' after Aubrey Beardsley

Pencil & black ink - Brian Reade describes Beardsley's method: "he never, so far as we know, made preliminary studies, or took tracings from sketches, for any of his compositions... His usual practice was to begin his drawing by scribbling with a pencil, making a host of flourishes & loops & scratchy lines. Over these somewhat vague schemata he drew with pen & brush, & with a firmness of hand that led without considerable erasion to the finished result." Hence I have not rubbed out any pencil marks but worked straight over them with pen/brush. I do not know what process was used to turn AB's drawings into the familiar bookplate prints. I experimented with Photoshop processes to get a purely black/white image but didn't find a satisfactory method that was not impracticably time-consuming.

 'Beekeeper' after Heironymous Bosch

'Göring Ramsay' after Sue Coe & John Heartfield

I was inspired by Sue Coe's I had decided long before that one character would be a chef, but concieved the idea of an overworked, rushing cook. Having seen a little of Coe's work, especially the pro-animal rights themes, I decided a villainous character & decided to use someone about as anti-vegan as it's possible to get - TV chef Gordon Ramsay. That led me to thinking of butchery, which in turn reminded me of John Heartfield's photomontage illustration of Hermann Göring, the Nazi Reichsmarschall [Link to image]. The meat cleaver was an obvious prop in place of the axe. I saw a photograph of Ramsay in a similar three-quarter view pose to the Göring image & caricatured the scale of the head to resemble the photomontage. The comical facial expression is influenced by Coe, particulalrly the use of teeth, which are often prominent in her images. The icon on the armband is a Michelin Star. Sod knows how many animals he's shot on telly.

'Revolutionary Woman' after Edgar Degas

'Field Surgeon' after Rembrandt