Tuesday 29 May 2012

Pushwagner

Here's the news release that the MK Gallery have sent out about the Pushwagner exhibition that they are hosting during which the MKomix Comic Fair is taking place on July 19th. 







This summer, MK Gallery presents Pushwagner: Soft City (28 June – 2 September 2012), the first solo exhibition outside Norway by the visionary artist Hariton Pushwagner (born Oslo, 1940). Since the recent discovery of his work, Pushwagner has become a celebrity in his home nation, appearing regularly in newspaper headlines and television talk shows, renowned for his homelessness and hedonistic lifestyle, and compared to a modern day Edvard Munch.

Pushwagner’s defining creation is the graphic novel ‘Soft City’, an epic satire of capitalism and life in the modern metropolis, produced intermittently in Oslo and London between 1969 and 1976. His work also takes the form of intricate and obsessively detailed paintings, presenting a personal mythology of a world under perpetual siege from pollution, totalitarianism and mass destruction.  

At MK Gallery a tightly focussed presentation of Pushwagner’s early work will be shown in three distinct groupings; Soft City, Family of Man and Apocalypse Frieze.  In addition, Pushwagner’s design for an enormous Pop Art inspired mouth will be realised in the form of a mural surrounding MK Gallery’s main entrance.  Visitors will have to step onto its projecting tongue and enter the cavernous mouth to reach the exhibition beyond.

The 154-page graphic novel Soft City provides an account of mechanical, daily life in a dehumanized, dystopian modern city. Completed in 1976, the humdrum lives of Pushwagner’s characters allude to George Gurdjieff’s descriptions of people in a state of ‘waking sleep’.  The menacing controller in charge of life in Soft City and the pills the family swallows on a daily basis evoke Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ (1932). 

The Family of Man section focuses on Pushwagner’s series of thirty-four silkscreen prints produced in the 1980s; these enlarged variations on Soft City, printed with a gaudy pink colouring, will be exhibited alongside the Oblidor Guide Book, a sketchbook that reveals the artist’s working process. While charting the transition of his work from the book format to the wall, the obsessive repetition and endless reworking of almost identical images reveal Pushwagner’s interest in mass production, mass distribution and making his work available to broad audiences.

The Apocalypse Frieze, rife with literary allusion and piercing social commentary, comprises seven large-scale works of meticulous detail: Heptashinok, 1986; Dadadata, 1987; Gigaton, 1988; Jobkill, 1990; Oblidor, 1991; Klaxton, 1991 and Self- Portait 1993.  It shows endless processions of haggard figures, doggedly advancing towards Armageddon, where factories double up as death camps and the ravages of war are perpetuated under the watchful eye of robotic men in suits. These works (shown for the first time as the artist intended) will be grouped in the style of Jan Van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece of 1432. Self-Portrait suggests that the artist’s mind is spiralling out of control, as the watchful eyes of thousands of female nudes witness faceless automata marching down the vortex to oblivion.  The Apocalypse Frieze will be presented alongside early sketches made in homage to artistic figures from Hieronymous Bosch to Vincent Van Gogh. 

Following its presentation in Milton Keynes, the exhibition will tour to Haugar Vestfold Kunstmuseum, Norway, and  Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, in the Netherlands. 

MK Gallery’s Pushwagner exhibition coincides with the exhibition Edvard Munch: The Modern Eye at Tate Modern (28 June – 14 October). The Pushwagner exhibition will be complemented at MK Gallery by a substantial Norwegian Season of video, music and performance events with around fifty Norwegian artists and curators. 

You can contact me regarding the MKomix Comic Fair here.

Wednesday 23 May 2012

Jade Sarson

Comic creator and illustrator, Jade Sarson's, has provided an excellent flyer for the MKomix Comic Fair. Jade is a Milton Keynes based creator who will be exhibiting at the event on the evening of July 19th at the MK Art Gallery. Please visit her website for lots of cool stuff.






If you are a comic creator interested in exhibiting at the event (it's free) or are interested in attending and require more information (it's free) then please contact me here.

Sunday 20 May 2012

Announcing MKomix


This summer, the Milton Keynes Art Gallery is hosting an exhibition of Pushwagner art. To run alongside the exhibition, they will also be putting on a number of events including, on the evening of July 19th (6 PM to 9 PM) a Small Press Comic Zine Fair which I am organising called MKomix.

MKomix will feature some of the best UK based comic creators displaying and selling their work. The fair will take place in the gallery amidst the Pushwagner exhibition itself. Best of all, it is free to enter and, if you’re a creator, free to exhibit.

Currently, small press comics are one of the most vibrant, creative and diverse artistic scenes taking place in the UK and MKomix is your opportunity to sample just some of what is going on.

Details about Milton Keynes Art Gallery can be found here. The Milton Keynes Art Gallery is situated across the road from The Centre: MK, next to the Theatre. Nearby, there are lots of pubs, clubs and restaurants and is a short bus journey from the train station. After 6 PM, most of the parking nearby is free.

Please subscribe to this website for future updates. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions including if you are a comic creator interested in appearing at the event.