Description
Varoom 8
The journal of illustration and made images November 2008
The eighth edition of Varoom explores contemporary Polish Posters. Charlotte Web discusses how the Polish Poster School is making a comeback with a new generation of graphic designers. Where once they were used as a Communist political tool, in a new era of digital-aided creativity as well as the emerging ‘home-made poster’ trend, Polish Posters have become a new channel for individual artistic expression.
Mike Dempsey holds an in-depth interview with illustrator Alan Aldridge, icon of ‘swinging sixties’ London. Art director at Penguin, friend of the Beatles, and the author of a string of successful books, Aldridge moved to LA in the 1970s. Now he’s back with a book and exhibition.
Four artists, including cover artist Thomas Hicks reveal how new accessible digital tools, and (new) hybrid working methodologies, have allowed them to take image-making beyond the static and into the realm of motion.
Varoom 8 also features Berlin’s Hemming Wagenbreth, hailed as one of the most influencial practitioners of Modern European image-making and teacher to the Eboy collective. His work jumps between lino-cut rawness and pixel-perfect, isometric accuracy. But it’s always underpinned by strong narrative undercurrents.
John O’Reilly takes a look into the enigmatic world of The Residents, their work described as ‘a kind of David Lynch Vaudeville‘. After 40 astonishing years of pushing sound and image into the oddest spaces, are we any closer to finding out who they are?
Also in this issue, illustrator and educator Paul Bowman takes an elegant swipe at illustrators, their agents, their educators, and their obsession with style. Yet his irritation is tempered by his knowledge of recent cultural history, and his deeply held view that illustration is too valuable a tool for commentating on the world, to be given up without a fight.
