Slant, the latest IGI exhibition, is currently showing at the renowned Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast. It runs until the 27th of September and features the work of 18 IGI members with a peculiar brief: re-interpret your favourite painting.

Slant opened last 31st July in Belfast running alongside two other exhibitions: Images 31 from the Association of Illustrators in the UK and Last Riot from the collective AES+F who were headlining the opening after their great success in last year’s Venice Biennale. They were three very different exhibitions in a very different space. (more…)

Here’s a few podcasts spotted recently by the Scamp team that may be worth checking out. Cartoonist Bob Byrne of Mr. Amperduke fame is interviewed on The Comic Cast. Dublin-based street artist Asbestos is interviewed by Culture Shock radio. Lane Smith is interviewed by Just One More Book. And here’s two Bookworm interviews: Françoise Mouly is interviewed about Toon Books, and Art Spiegelman is interviewed about his new book ‘Breakdowns’.

Legendary Irish folk singer and musician Ronnie Drew died on 16/08/2008. At Scamp central we decided to ask fellow illustrators to put down a few marks to commemorate the great man’s death.
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We are all born free is an outstanding and beautiful picture book celebrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Artists and illustrators from all over the world offer their personal interpretation of the Articles, making them easy to understand for young readers. Children aged 6 and over will take great pleasure in discovering an exceptional illustration as well as a fundamental right on every page they turn. Published by Frances Lincoln in association with Amnesty International, with forewords by David Tennant, who describes this collection as a ‘beautiful book’ in which ‘you’ll find thirty rules for the world to live by’ and John Boyne, for whom this book ‘might be the most important one that you ever own.’ Slide show here. Illustration by Chris Riddell.

I guess if you were looking for where Getty got their idea for cheapo royalty free illustrations you’d have to look no further than their historical ancestor, the clip-art book. In this Design Observer article Steven Heller owns up to his own past trangressions in using them, and cuts to the core of why they fail, just like stock illustration.

Here’s designer Michael C. Place getting busy producing an original handpainted artwork in a new correction fluid roller promo called ‘MyStyle’.

Here’s a collection of great Steven Heller podcasts from the ICON5 illustration Conference recently held in New York. They feature interviews with Gary Panter and James Jean among others.

Many of you would have heard James Jarvis speak at his SweetTalk 29 last November, and what a great talk it was! Well, here is a photo of his new installation in the window of Niketown London. The giant bird scuplture is complimented by a series of illustrations inside the store. You can see more on the Creative Review Blog.

It’s frustrating how Nike stores around the world are responsible for the commissioning of some of best illustrators and designers for their in store displays but in Ireland the best we can hope for from Nike is posing the question “Do we put our tracksuit bottoms inside our socks or leave them loose?”

The Association of Illustrators in the UK recently ran a survey of their members which is has some fascinating insights into the current state of the industry. The survey found that 34% of illustrators believed editorial illustration accounted for the lions share of their income, children’s books being the next highest with 16.8%. There also appears to be no gender bias with a 50/50 spit of males and females in the industry. Go here to see the whole survey.
illustration by Zara Picken

Temple Bar has unveiled a public art scheme that utilizes the city’s traffic signal boxes, based on a similar model that has been used internationally. Here’s a bit of video on the RTE news website on the scheme featuring ‘Maser’. (although curiously the domain name mentioned in the piece is still not registered). And here’s the original PDF brief for the scheme. If successful the scheme will be rolled out on a larger scale.