The Illustrator's Art Exhbition at Rochester Art Gallery

As I've been learning Printmaking, I visited Rochester Art Gallery and Craft Case in Medway over the week-end to see the small, but interesting Art of Illustration Exhibition.  This was curated through the London Print Studio, who are based in Harrow, West London.  Prints by 3 Artist/Illustrators were featured, and the question "What is the difference between illustration and art?" was posed.  Examples of both illustration and printmaking pieces from the artists were shown, for comparison.

Andrezej Krauze is a political cartoonist, who has challenged authorities in Poland and Europe with his satirical pieces.  I was quite intrigued by his works created using intricate paper-cutting techniques, to give a black and white style with spots of colour.

Lynn Hatzius uses collage and assemblage as both an illustrator and a fine artist/printmaker.  The works combine discarded bits of print offcuts, found objects and cut-up litho plates.  Although I was interested in her techniques, I did not find her pieces very interesting, they were surreal combinations of objects and human/animal parts, but I wasn't sure what they were attempting to convey.

Matthew Padgett makes wry, subversive pieces.  In particular, I enjoyed his "Proposal for a Flowerbed, Southwark Park, London"  It is a set of six beautifully drawn and coloured works which on first glance look like the pages of an old book of Botanical Illustrations.  He has used these to explore the ambiguous symbolism in the Victorian language of flowers, where the same plant may have opposite meanings.  He then gives each plate a mordant twist by adding text to the image, as in the one below.

Chisato Tamabayashi and Kaho Kojima are both makers of pop-up books, their works were rather appealing, different ways of using the concertina format to produce engaging pieces.

Links: http://www.medway.gov.uk/leisureandculture/arts/rochesterartgallery.aspx
 http://www.londonprintstudio.org.uk