Who's who
Tom Barwick
Lecturer
BA(Hons) Fine Art - Nottingham Trent University, MA Illustration: Authorial Practice - University College Falmouth, PGCE - PCET - University of Plymouth
Tom studied Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University in 1990, going on from there to develop a career as an underground comic book artist, creating several independent titles and contributing to many anthologies both in the UK and abroad.
His underground status guaranteeing him overnight obscurity, this slight profile led Tom to stage a series of exhibitions in Soho and Hoxton (London) from 1996 through to 2001. His work caught the eye of several influential art directors at the time, predominantly designers working within editorial, new media and music packaging. Regular commissions from Wallpaper*, GQ (UK & Asia), The Mail on Sunday and many other publications led to recognition from the design community, with his work appearing in 16 juried anthologies of illustration, including: Illusive: Contemporary Illustration and its Context (2005), Fashion Illustration Next (2004), Graphic Beats (2010) Basic Illustration 04: Global Contexts (2010).
Tom has worked in Higher Education since completing his Master's, MA Illustration: Authorial Practice and PGCE-PCET concurrently between 2004 and 2007. He has been teaching illustration, design and applied technology at the University of Plymouth and University College Falmouth since 2007.
Much of Tom's illustration work is produced digitally using Adobe software and he has an active research interest in all aspects of new media. These are the skills he uses to enthuse students on the MA Creative Advertising course on the potential of new media when it is applied in an advertising context. Even students who have no knowledge of design software when they join the course receive a basic grounding in Adobe software to learn how to construct layouts and work with visual as well as textual language as a means to finding creative visual solutions for their ideas.
Tom's current illustration projects explore non-linear narrative and wordless narrative as potential new modes of visual communication. The research is currently looking into ways in which narrative can be evolved from the social sciences, in particular anthropological studies that codify a community's narrative in way that exists beyond the identified plots we recognise in the contemporary narratives we digest daily. The outcome for this project will be created using new media to explore virtual spaces and stories without edges or endings.
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