Joe Webb is an artist whose latest
works have just come out of the Saatchi Gallery. A little intimidated, 99shoreditch
went to meet him at Jealous Gallery, where he was signing his new work before
it heads off to Art ’15 in Olympia this week.
In person he was not at all scary.
Affable, open and keen to chat about his work and his affinity with Shoreditch, he told me it is the vibrant, creative vibe that runs throughout
the area that he finds appealing. Jealous Gallery in particular is a great place
for him to get inspiration - working and reworking his ideas, even whilst they
are being printed.
The fact that everything is under one
roof is also a real plus. The
printing processes happens on the upper floors with the prints exhibited and
sold in the gallery on the ground floor.
Joe’s work is unpretentious, so instead
of being instantly baffling, it invites you in and allows you to explore for
yourself. He achieves this by taking existing images from vintage magazines and
combining them into an intimate collage. Figures from different times and eras
whisper and hug each other, in a romantic and timeless way. Photoshop is definitely not
invited to this party.
“I started making these simple
hand-made collages as a sort of luddite reaction to working as a graphic artist
on computers for many years. I like the limitations of collage, using found
imagery and a pair of scissors, there are no Photoshop options to resize,
adjust colours or undo.
My collages work to a basic
rule of sourcing just two or three images, with these I can reinvent the
original scene to communicate a new idea.
I suppose I’ve become
fairly anti-technology, although I now promote my art on websites, own an
iPhone and use Facebook. It’s confusing, I wish I had been born 100 years
ago.” Joe Webb
This
old-school approach is mirrored in the production techniques, producing hand-pulled
screen prints rather than factory mechanical silkscreening.
Even if Joe’s work is not up in the
gallery, Jealous is well worth a visit. It is an established space in
its own right, whose energetic curators put on an ever-changing array of new
and established artists. With friendly staff and very reasonable prices, you
could even pick up a piece of original art in your lunch hour.
http://www.jealousgallery.com
http://www.jealousprints.com
twitter: @jealous_gallery
instagram: JEALOUS_LONDON
No comments:
Post a Comment