Later this month, we launch End of a Century: Nineties Album Reviews in Pictures by Run Wrake. Edited by Andrew Collins, End of a Century is a rocket trip through the last decade of the Millennium via the NME album review illustrations of the late John Matthew Charrosin Wrake, who traded as Run.
The book launches on Friday 26th June at The Crate, 3 Dunworth Mews, London, W11 1LE, starting at 6.30pm. Want to come? Just RSVP to [email protected].
End of a Century collects the visually incendiary, socially charged, satirically acute artwork of Run Wrake. Specifically, his illustrations for the album review pages of weekly music bible the NME. These regular commissions collectively describe the shifting musical, cultural, political and artistic trends of the 1990s. Together, they form an exhilarating visual guide to a musical decade remembered for its heady mix of guitar-driven grunge and Britpop acts, gangster rappers and manufactured popstars.
From U2, Blur and the Wu-Tang Clan to Nirvana, Kylie Minogue and PJ Harvey, these striking images mutate from monochrome, fanzine-style cut-out Xerox collages to more sophisticated, full-colour computer-generated fantasias. What unites them is Run’s unique wit and invention, borne out of a deep love of music and the multimedia world around him. From the perspective of the next century, they seem brighter still.
Run Wrake studied graphics at the Chelsea School of Art and animation at the Royal College of Art. His graduation film, Anyway, won the BP Expo prize, the first of many international awards over a varied animation career, including a BAFTA nomination for Rabbit. (You can watch the latter below.) An avid music fan, he provided distinctive illustrations for the reviews and features pages of the NME between 1988 and 2000. As a filmmaker working across music, video, advertising and TV, he created visuals for tours such as PopMart by U2 and the Rolling Stones’ 50 & Counting… He died in 2012.
Andrzej Klimowski and Danusia Schejbal will discuss the creative life with Sydney Padua at the Stoke Newington Literary Festival on Sunday 7 June at 4pm. The conversation will be chaired by Resonance FM presenter Alex Fitch. Tickets are available here.
Two recent graphic novels show how artistic and inventive lives can flourish in extraordinary, often difficult circumstances. Andrzej Klimowski and Danusia Schejbal’s collaborative biography, Behind the Curtain, explores their formative years as artists in 1970s Poland. Sydney Padua’s The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage takes us back to the 1830s and an alternate reality in which Ada Lovelace, often credited as the world’s first computer programmer, avoids her untimely death to realise Charles Babbage’s plans for the world’s first computer.
So, if you’re interested in hearing about two of the spring’s finest graphic novels, get yourself on a bus to Stokey on Sunday afternoon! The event takes place at Stokey Stop, 176 Stoke Newington High Street, London N16 7JP, at 4pm on Sunday 7 June.
It’s that time of year again: we’re off to Toronto for Canada’s finest convention. This weekend, the Reference Library will transform into the comic book Mecca that is TCAF, and SelfMadeHero will be centre stage (tables 142-43), offering handsome graphic novels, tolerable staff, staggering discounts and giveaways to cherish.
What’s more, Barbara Stok will be flying from The Netherlands to join us! Fresh from her appearance at MoCCA and the Met Museum in New York, the author of Vincent will be signing on SelfMadeHero’s stand throughout the weekend, as well as talking to Barbara Postema of Ryerson University about her acclaimed biography of Van Gogh (Sat May 9, 11am, The Marriott 50).
If that’s not enough, TCAF will mark the comic-con debut of two of the spring’s best European graphic novels in translation. The first is Pablo, Julie Birmant and Clément Oubrerie’s award-winning graphic biography of Picasso. Stunningly drawn, and focussing on Picasso’s early years, Pablo has been lauded by The New York Observer, Booklist and many others. You should buy it. It’s ace.
The second is Aama: The Desert of Mirrors, the third volume in Frederik Peeters’ mind-expanding science fiction series, which Sci-Fi Now has described as “Prometheus reimagined by Hayao Miyazaki”. We’ll have it on sale for a mere $20 Canadian – a bargain.
You’ll receive a signed book plate with every copy of Rob Davis’s Eisner-nominated graphic novel, The Motherless Oven, Oscar Zarate’s The Park, Glyn Dillon’s The Nao of Brown, and many, many more books.
So, stop by early and get your hands on some fabulous printed goods, some of them cheap, some of them free, and all of them beautiful.
Behind the Curtain, Andrzej Klimowski and Danusia Schejbal’s much anticipated collaborative autobiography, launches at the Royal College of Art on Monday 27th April. The event takes place at 6.30pm in the Senior Common Room, Kensington Gore, London, SW7 2EU – and everyone is welcome! If you’d like to come, RSVP here.
Andrzej Klimowski and Danusia Schejbal’s previous collaborations include adaptations of The Master and Margarita and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde for SelfMadeHero. In Behind the Curtain, Klimowski and Schejbal’sunique styles combine to create a beautiful and intriguing portrait of their formative years as artists in Poland.
During the 1970s, many East European citizens dreamed of going West. Behind the Curtain is an autobiographical account of two young art students who travelled the other way. Studying and working in Poland, they found themselves part of a vibrant community producing visionary work across the arts – even as prices rocketed, trade unions drove social unrest and, finally, tanks appeared in the streets .
A unique collaboration interweaving two distinctive styles, Behind the Curtain combines life, art and politics to reveal the cultural environment that flourished despite the harsh realities of the Communist state. When toilet paper is worth its weight in gold, what price do you put on expression?
This Saturday, Political Book Award-winner and Guardian cartoonist Martin Rowson will visit Somerset House to discuss the history and function of visual satire over the last 32,000 years. The event, which forms part of Pick Me Up Festival‘s “Points of Contention” programme, takes place at 11.30am. Festival passes are available here.
Later, Rowson’s satirical battle bus travels south of the river to the Hill Station in New Cross, where an evening of election entertainment awaits the venue’s politically engaged punters. Organised by Lewisham’s finest, People Before Profit, the event kicks off at 8pm. Full details are available here.
So, if you’re in London this weekend, join us in laughing at the powerful incompetents currently working so hard to win our vote. You never know, we may not have the adorable Cameron and Clegg to amuse us for very much longer!
“Rowson is a master of inky invective.” Ralph Steadman
“Martin Rowson’s cartoons aren’t just all sorts of comic genius – their exposure of the wrongdoings of those with power make you want to have a revolution and thus pose a mortal danger to the status quo.” Owen Jones
“Sending excoriating Exocets straight down at our current leaders, Martin Rowson is a great draughtsman and a sharply well-informed political critic.” Polly Toynbee
The Coalition Book, SelfMadeHero’s collection of Martin Rowson’s cartoons from the era of Cameron and Clegg, is available now from all good book shops.
