DUPE

DUPE speaks to illustrator RICHARD KILROY about his practice, tools of the trade and Liverpool

DUPE: How would you describe your style?

RK: It’s mostly a mix of realist pencil work and playing about with space and line. It’s predominantly black and white for now with occasional colour but I plan to expand on this a lot this year. Pencil and realism are the starting point for me, I aim to take that and play a lot on spatial work and breaking it up further.

DUPE: Have you ever explored with any other mediums? Are you ever tempted too?

RK: I’m beginning to work more with photography when it comes to getting my own images of the models that I draw. I practised photography in university but not much beyond that. I was originally told my tutors I should actually do photography over illustration as they preferred it. I’m confident in my eye as a photographer, but don’t actually see myself as one. Material wise I’m planning a lot with cards, acrylics and rougher materials this year. I usually like to include pen and ink, again something I plan on pushing further this year too.

DUPE: What are your tools of the trade?

RK: 0.35mm pencil led, bristol card, felt tips, gouache, patience.

DUPE: If not illustration what else would you be doing?

RK: I would definitely be involved in publishing in some respect for another. I’m always very keen on looking for compositions and layouts in things, so to some extent could see myself doing layouts and graphics. Same for photography but there’s already enough photographers out there.

DUPE: You grew up in Liverpool, studied in Leeds and now live in London. Do you miss the north?

RK: I miss aspects of the north but I do love living in London too much. I miss the prices, the space, the fact everyone is generally a lot more open, because they’re not used to walking through hundreds or thousands of people on a daily basis and switching off. Also no-one in London seems to get drunk that often. Especially with Liverpool, there’s the whole thing with people really going to town with their hair and beauty and outfits. A lot of it is kind of awful but I love the excess and fun of it too. It’s a love/hate thing for me.

DUPE: What’s next for Richard Kilroy?

RK: Well I’m working on a book featuring a lot of fashion’s leading illustrators, so continuing with that. Planning the next issue of my publication Decoy, and experimenting with my work further.

DUPE: You know how dogs have a tendency to look like their owners… I think this is the case with you. You look like the drawings you make - Do you agree or disagree with this?

RK: No I totally agree and I think most fashion illustrators I know do too! Well, I don’t look like a model obviously, but it terms of how I dress is similar to my work. Lots of black and white and usually one big bold colour, usually fairly graphic. I’ve been called ‘clean’ and ‘neat’ before haha. I draw the outfits I’m drawn to. I find it strange when illustrators or designers don’t embody their work in some respect.

DUPE: If you could travel to anywhere right now where would you go and what would you pack?

RK: Like anyone else in the UK it is ALL I have thought about these last few weeks ha.

a) I need a holiday

b) Somewhere hot with a beach

c) Now

My main plan is to go around Italy for a few weeks this summer, Sicily, Venice, Florence etc. However if it was more exploring than a hot getaway, I’ve always had a fascination with Western America and road movies, the photography of Keith Davis Young and movies like Boys Don’t Cry and Into The Wild, so to explore those kind of areas would be amazing.

http://richardkilroy.com/

— 2 weeks ago with 1 note

DUPE meets up with artist / curator GALA KNORR to talk about her pratice, projects and travels

DUPE’s Georgia Lucas-Going and Gala.

DUPE: First of all Gala, where are you from?

GK: I was born in Vitoria-Gasteiz, it’s a city on the Basque country in the north of Spain, but I left when I was 16 and came to school here with a lot of American people hence the accent!

Dupe: So I’ve read that you’ve studied in Paris, but also in London?

GK: I went to the Parsons School of Design in Paris , it’s an English speaking school, so my French was slowly building but my art was quickly growing, and then I went to Central Saint Martins.

Dupe: You’ve moved around so much where do you feel is your home?

GK: That’s the crazy thing, it sounds really cheesy but home is where your heart is so I try to build a secondary family everywhere I go. My family’s in Spain but in Paris I have this family of people who are similar to me, e.g. a friend who was born and raised in Saudi Arabia but was studying there. Everyone who has a similar background always seem to stick together wherever we go. In London it was actually really organic because I embraced all these people who I studied with and we all shared a studio like a little united nations!

Dupe: So right now we’re talking in your studio and you share with 4 other artists? And this work behind us, isn’t it travelling soon? Where’s it going?

GK: Yes this is going to Madrid in 2 days. Then hopefully coming back to London. We’re opening this show in there, in a studio called Bunkhouse, which actually used to be a bakery! The recession has made Spain really poor, but has also given artists really good opportunities to start up small galleries or pop up shows everywhere. I think after our show it’s going to be used for music, as a place where people can come to Spain to play and rehearse.

Dupe: Free things! As there’s no bloody funding anymore! So you’ve mentioned the USA, have you done a show there?

GK: Actually the show that we’re doing in Madrid is called ‘Journey to The Center of My Mind’ and the first edition of it was made in LA, in this artists commune venue called ‘HM157’. I was trying to find a spot to do it in London and I emailed everyone and their mothers basically! Everyone wants money for that and we had none because we’d all just graduated, so I made a Facebook page about this idea and then I realised Facebook pages could get messages and I got a message from this lady who runs the space and she offered it to us for free, so of course I was going to do it. It would be crazy not to do so, so we chose 5 London based artists, and 5 based in California, as we thought it would be a nice bi-continental dialogue. All the artists were women as well; that was the little twist. It’s like how do you make a show with only women artists without being all cliché and feminist, which isn’t bad, but people have a pre-conceived idea of what it’s going to be like.

Dupe: We know you’re a traveller, does that influence your work a lot? It must do?

GK: My work is really inspired by the people I meet or things that happen which spark this revolutionary idea of people going over the street and changing the world with art, which sounds really utopian but I think nowadays you really have to have this kind of mindset in order to survive the negativity of today and continue. I remember my second solo show was based on everyone I’d met on a trip to America, and it was all small portraits made with ink, like on the road, and just finding people who are different and unique and live outside bureaucracy and off the grid, but still have this creative ability to change things, and that’s what basically inspires me.

Dupe: Do you have any road trip/journey stories; something that sticks out in your mind, be it whether you met someone mental or saw somewhere really beautiful?

GK: The most extravagant story which sticks out in my mind was in LA and I was staying with someone I’d stayed with in Paris really briefly who would later go on to become a really good friend of mine. The first night she took me out in Venice beach and we hung out with her boyfriend who was this big, very loud Mexican guy, who everyone knew. He was like ‘oh my friend Danny’s coming’ and he turned out to be this badass Mexican actor who’s in a movie called Machete. We went out to some bar and this guy was trying to dance with me even though he was about 60. My friend’s boyfriend was basically trying to set us up and I was like ‘Oh my god I’m 23 what am I doing with this old man!’ Then her boyfriend got a call and he said ‘oh yeah girls my friend Eminem is coming over’ and I was like ‘what no?! this cannot happen! I’m wearing pyjamas!’

Dupe: If you had to make a mix tape for a road trip who would be on it? Name two people.

GK: One has to be Neil Young, I really really love his album ‘Harvest’. When I was 24 I played it on repeat, he is such an amazing songwriter and his voice is so peculiar, he’s just awesome! The other one…it’s not really a road trip singer but I’d have to say Nina Simone, I listened to ‘Sinnerman’ on repeat for so long, it’s so epic and crazy.

Dupe: So you’ve got the show coming up, and then what’s next? Anything in London?

GK: Well, we want to have the upcoming show again in London, but it just seems impossible, we’re all based here but opportunities are very low. I realised that if you don’t have a gallery or anyone who wants to show your work then you have to invent this gallery and curate it, and this involves a lot of meeting people and earning their trust, so we’re in the process of earning people’s trust and showing them this project is really worth their time.

http://galaknorr.tumblr.com/

http://www.facebook.com/journeytothecenterofmymind

Mosh pit in Blues, Chemically Transfered Ink on Canvas, 2012

— 1 month ago

DUPE speaks to artist duo KEELER&TORNERO about inspiration and collaboration

D: Could you explain how you operate as a collaborative duo?

K&T: We’ve known each other for nearly twenty years and have been working together on and off for about ten, so we know how each of us operates and generally we’re interested in the same things. Collaboration requires a level of mutual understanding and this develops the more you work together.

Everything we do comes from the input of both artists, we work on the same piece, sometimes at the same time. It’s a process of give and take and if we don’t agree, we have to negotiate until both are happy. Sometimes we have to just let things go because we can’t arrive at the same standpoint, but this is ok, there’s never a shortage of ideas.

We’ve found that when collaborating it’s important to suspend personal preconceptions about outcome and in some ways this is the most exciting thing – you’re never sure how something is going to end up. Even if one of us has a strong vision, it’s important let go of this if it appears to be going somewhere else. If you give yourself up to the process, you enter uncharted territory every time but the pay-off is being able to get to a point that you could not have anticipated on your own.

This way of working can be daunting because it doesn’t matter how many times you do it, you never know exactly where you’re going, you’re forced to leave your comfort zone but it’s also exhilarating for the same reason. It never seems to get easier and you don’t get used to that feeling of uncertainty. The only thing that possibly changes is that somewhere in your subconscious you know that it’s all going to be ok, it always is. It’s not the easiest way to work but it can be the most satisfying.

Another benefit of working collaboratively is that you have an ever-present support mechanism. When you have a problem, you can talk about it, if you’re stuck you can get guidance and if you’re uninspired you can get a pep-talk. We tend to balance each other out in terms of skills and motivation and usually what one of us doesn’t like doing or isn’t good at, the other takes over.

We tend to work in intensive blocks, fully immersing ourselves in the process that we have chosen to follow at any given time. We usually have several pieces on the go at any one time so we can put things in rotation, wait for things to dry, talk about the next step for each one and there’s always a definite dialogue about where each thing should be going.

D: Are you inspired by other dynamic duos, artistic or otherwise?

K&T: We’re interested but not necessarily inspired by anyone who collaborates, the Chapman brothers, Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Ren and Stimpy, Laurel and Hardy etc, etc… In fact it’s been pointed out on numerous occasions that we resemble L and H when we’re in the studio.

We’ve always loved Gilbert and George and the main reason for that, apart from the obvious, is that they don’t seem to take themselves too seriously. We’re especially fond of their ‘Singing sculpture’ from 1970 in which they sing ‘Underneath the arches’ for hours on end.

D: How do you organise yourself between your personal practice and your commissioned works, how does one influence the others?

K&T: Working on commissioned art outside of our usual practice helps expand horizons in terms of what’s physically possible. We do a lot of stuff which involves working large and fast and that requires that you wear a different head to the one you’re used to, and in this way you tend to see the whole thing from a different perspective. There’s always a cross-hatching going on, personal work being inspired by outside commissions and vice versa. Sometimes personal work is put on hold when commissions come up because of time scale issues and this is when self-discipline becomes important to get back into the personal work. This is why we always end up working intensely in the weeks before work goes up on a gallery wall.

D: What is the inspiration behind your surreal and somewhat grotesque imagery/narrative?

K&T: We get inspiration from all over the place and are constantly collating and adding to our library of digital and found images.

It’s interesting you say grotesque because when most people see something in this way, we often see it as beautiful. We love old horror movies in which the horror is pretty funny and we’re obsessed with anatomy, so I guess if you mix the two you might get what could be considered grotesque but at the same time there’s always an element of humour. It’s all about juxtaposition for us and that’s where the surrealism in our work comes from. Our inner compass seems to drive us towards humour and the absurd. When you contrast absurd elements, things that are unexpected, you enter the world of surrealism. That’s not to say that these juxtapositions are arrived at just so we can have a good old laugh but rather that we are processing or filtering imagery through our already established mode of operation. All this imagery fits into a larger scheme, as if all the characters and scenarios belong in a vast soap opera.

D: Where do you source the found imagery you work with?

K&T: From our extensive library of books and magazines procured over the years from car-boot sales and charity shops, plus people are always giving us stuff.

D: What’s next for KEELERTORNERO? What are your future projects and works? Any road trips?

K&T: This year is already filling up with solo and group shows in London and across the country, a theatre project, a big mural, illustrations for magazines, poster design and set-painting plus we are getting into film this year.

If we do a road trip it will be on bikes. In fact that’s what the film for DUPE TV will be, a documentary about our bicycle road trip to the bits of London that we don’t know about yet….

www.keelertornero.com

— 2 months ago

DUPE zine is back at Parisian bookshop OFR

20, rue Dupetit-Thouars, 75003 Paris

http://www.ofrsystem.com/

— 2 months ago

Want to be interviewed by Georgia for DUPE TV? Get in Touch! XOX

email us at: contactdupe@gmail.com

— 2 months ago with 1 note

DUPE zine is now on sale at Zürich’s artist run space KARUSSELL

KARUSSEL is a platform for all types of upcoming creatives to showcase and sell their work. A wide variety of products are shown, from furniture to paintings or independent magazines . Discussions, gigs and other cultural happenings take place in this cosy café where people can work and meet up with friends. Second hand furniture is also sold at low-prices. It is a space for experimentations and as the organisers put it, Karussell is one itself. So go, watch, enjoy, contribute within a space that is constently changing.

KARUSSELL
Zweierstrasse 38
8004 Zürich, Switzerland
+41 78 804 12 54
www.karussell.co
www.facebook.com/karussellzuerich

— 3 months ago

New Road Trip submission deadline!

Attention future Dupers ———————->
We are extending the Road Trip submission deadline by a WHOLE MONTH

to the 28th February.

We’ve had some great submissions so far but reckon there are still some visual and written gems out there..don’t miss out….DUPE WANTS YOU!!

— 3 months ago with 4 notes

#zine

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS - - - - -> THE ROAD TRIP ISSUE

DUPE is calling for submissions for its second publication: “THE ROAD TRIP ISSUE” due for release in Spring 2013.

We are looking for original and creative material in the form of photography, illustration, collage, writing, poetry, reviews, etc. The work must respond to the theme ROAD TRIP but can be interpreted as literally or abstractly as you like.

Words to get you inspired: Journey, route, map, exploration, nostalgia, escapism, displacement, pilgrimage, discovery, distance, transient, desire, destination, searching, adventure, A-B, romanticism, possibility, potential, expectations, reality, detachment, necessity, migration, freedom, uncertainty, excitement, unfamiliarity, dreamscape etc.

——————————————————————

GUIDELINES :

Send your final piece of work to be considered for publication to contactdupe@gmail.com by Monday the 28th of January 2013.

Please send all images high res 300 dpi

Maximum 1,500 words for written work.

Please be aware that the zine will be approx A5 in size.

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We are also looking for ongoing contributions to our online content. If you would like to photograph, illustrate, style, write or review for our blog or contribute video material to DUPE TV, on the theme or otherwise please also get in touch! Remember that blog submissions could take the form of non-printable material such as film, music, sound, animation.

We look forward to receiving your submissions,

Love

DUPE

— 4 months ago with 6 notes

DUPE talks to artist and musician Peter Caul

Find out more about him: http://petercaul.wix.com/peter-caul

Find out more about his band: http://www.pseudonippon.com/

— 4 months ago

MERRY XMAS!!! Love DUPE XoX

— 5 months ago