Exhibitions & events

The ABSURD EVENT: 10th Anniversary Falmouth Illustration Forum

9:30am to 4:30pm, 9 March 2012

Woodlane Lecture Theatre, Woodlane, Falmouth, TR11 4RH

This March, MA Illustration: Authorial Practice are delighted to be presenting the 10^thAnniversary of the Falmouth Illustration Forum.

When the Falmouth Illustration Forum was launched ten years ago we decided to create a theme for each annual event that would explore a different face of authorial illustration practice. Each forum theme has shed light on a different aspect of the work of an authorial illustrator, the development of an illustrator's individual voice and the assertion of their personal characteristics of authorship.

Our central aim has been the reassertion of illustration as a developing practice against the recent tendency for it to be a repetitive commodity where the illustrator is often presented with an already clearly defined concept.

Over the ten years the Forum has played host to over forty internationally renowned illustrators and as a celebration of the event we are publishing a book including work by all the speakers which will be launched on the day. This year, the forum comprises a day of presentations and discussion exploring, through the work of some of the world's leading absurdist illustrators, a variety of approaches to absurdity in illustration.

Chaired by Sophie Herxheimer with guest speakers: Paul Slater; Peter Blegvad; Benoit Jacques; and Adam Dant

Without being overly dramatic, it was definitely one of those life changing experiences. I think what you're doing is really important, in redefining and re-validating illustration as a profession.Jonathon Rosen

Congratulations for the Anniversary and for the fantastic work you have done in these years.Sara Fanelli

Guest speaker biographies

Peter Blegvad

Writer, graphic artist, songwriter, broadcaster. Born in New York, lives in London. He has been writing and recording music since the mid 70s with Slapp Happy, Faust, Henry Cow, The Golden Palominos, John Zorn, Andy Partridge and others. Peter's weekly strip, Leviathan, ran in the Independent on Sunday from 1991-'98 and The Book of Leviathan was published by Sort of Books in 2000. A Mandarin translation was published by the China Times Publishing Company in 2010. He has supplied BBC Radio 3 with many dozens of ‘cartoons' since 2002, winning a Sony award in 2003. In 2000 he was Awarded the Ordre de la Grande Gidouille by the Collège de Pataphysique, Paris. In 2011 he was elected president of the London Institute of 'Pataphysics. Peter is Honorary Teaching Fellow on the creative writing course at the University of Warwick, and has lectured on such subjects as Milk, Numinous Objects, Prisoner's Cinema (mental images), and the Impossible Book on both sides of the Atlantic. As leader of the creative writing course for Warwick's International Gateway for Gifted Youth (IGGY) he has worked with students and writers in Singapore and Botswana as well as the UK.

www.leviathan.co.uk

Benoit Jacques

Benoit Jacques studied at the Royal Academy of fine Arts in Brussels and at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels de la Cambre, also in Brussels. His drawings have appeared in the international press ( The Times, The Sunday Times, The Observer, The Sunday Express, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Die Zeit, Vogue Germany, Libération, Le Monde, Télérama, Le Soir, Internazionale, and El Pais,...). Benoit has self-published many of his own books of drawings (a bibliography is included in your handouts)  There is also an extensive list of other books by Benoit Jacques by other publishers.  Benoit's has had numerous personal and group exhibitions throughout Europe.

www.benoitjacques.com

Paul Slater

Paul Slater is one of Britain's most popular and highly regarded artist / illustrators. He has been described as a great example of an illustrator whose work exudes personal authorship with original perceptions and intelligence.  Paul works in the traditional pictorial way, employing formidable draughtsmanship and academic painting skills. Over a 25 year career Paul's list of clients includes General Motors, Shell, British Airways, Volkswagen, Campbell Soup, Rolls Royce, Volvo and Cutty Sark have used his images in their advertisements. His artwork has appeared on the covers and inside magazines like Time, Readers Digest, Radio Times and Penthouse. For the past ten years his work has been seen every weekend in the London Times, and in the Daily Express for four years. Paul's work for television includes the British satirical programme, "Spitting Image" and "Around Westminster" for Channel 4. He also worked on Nicholas Roeg's 1988 film adaptation of Roald Dahl's "The Witches". His awards include the 1997 WH Smith Editorial Art Award and The Association of Illustrators "Artist of the Year" in 1996.

Adam Dant

Adam Dant lives and works in London. Dant creates dense, cartoon like drawings, often possessed of a dysfunctional semicircular logic. Mishap and folly proliferate his work. Museums are common subjects, as are maps and complicated jokes. Dant's works often take the form of wall hung drawings and have been described as Hogarthian or Swiftian especially in relation to his use of satire. His new work continues Adam Dant's interest in depicting and interacting with the public space, the anecdotal and Utopian grand models.
Dant's drawings can be found in numerous public and private collections including The Arts Council Collection, The V&A, MOMA New York, Deutsche Bank, The Museum of London,The Government Art Collection, The Musee d'Art Contemporain Lyon and San Diego Museum of Art.

Tickets: £25 available from natalie.mccrann@falmouth.ac.uk