The Black Heart Gang’s Tale Of How animation

Robin Rhode

There’s a lot I could say about South African artist Robin Rhode.  But to simply say that he’s endlessly cool pretty much sums it up. In fact, he’s so cool that Nike’s been accused of ripping off one of his pieces for a television ad (can you say plagiarism: just don’t do it?) Read more

Andreco’s Fake Religion animation

Presented only with stills from Italian artist Andreco’s stop-motion animation Fake Religion, I was really loving it, purely based on its stark, surreal imagery. I was pretty disappointed not being able to locate the actual video, but that aside, I simply adored the images. I really would have loved to have seen the video presented in the breathtaking setting of the Palazzo Re Enzo in Bologna. Such a beautiful contrast of aesthetics between the dramatic murals and vaulted ceilings of the Palazzo and the stark graphic imagery of Andreco’s animation. Read more

The Black Dog’s Progress animated short

Stephen Irwin (not to be confused with the Crocodile Hunter) made this great animated short which tells the story of an abused dog via a series of looping flipbooks.

Isabel Rock

Horses are a recurring for Isabel Rock. Pastel colours, gnomes, glitter and unicorns adorn other pieces. But this light-heartedness is balanced with dripping illustrations, gushing elaborately in swirls and fat blobs. Block color and a feel for excess hint at the distraction of love, yet darker undertones of struggle and conflict exist.

Kate MccGwire’s pigeon art

Kate MccGwire graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2004 and has since exhibited all over London, winning a solo show at 2009’s Heart of Glass. Her most recent installations are taken from thousands of pigeon feathers, flowing water and even a mouldy growth on a wall. We asked her why she uses pigeon feathers: ‘I’m currently using pigeon feathers as they come from a bird that is generally reviled — regarded as vermin and referred to as “rats with wings”. I started to collect pigeon feathers that moulted from the birds in a shed next to my studio. I realized that they were actually very beautiful’.

Johnny Kelly designs the Don’t Panic poster

The latest Don’t Panic poster artist to create free art for your walls is Johnny Kelly, who drew on the theme of Democracy. Rather than just opening Illustrator and vectoring out something about Obama and his dog, Kelly created a super-detailed paper sculpture of the human head as a giant machine, and then photographed it. Of the project, he says: ‘The model was first sketched out a number of times in my notebook. Once that was fully worked out, I planned out the model more rigidly on computer, then got cutting. After everything was stuck into place, my friend Linda Brownlee — a photographer — came over and shot it with a Hasselblad camera. The actual model is A1 in size, so we needed to shoot it on film rather than digital to make sure we could capture as much detail as possible’.