Images vs Words - Artists vs Writers

Can an image tell a story? Or is it only once words are added that an image becomes a narrative? Is art a form of language?

As part of an individual project I will be interviewing artists on my blog about whether they feel their art work is telling a story or whether the story is only built once an image is related to words: whether this be through thought, vocal or written language. My plan is to discover what a more powerful storytelling tool is: images or words.

I will also be looking at various pieces of art and writing a creative response in the form of poetry or micro fictions. This is to asses the storytelling aspect of the picture and how the image itself represents a story. I want to discover whether the organicness of the image is telling a story or whether it is the writer who adapts it to a story.




My first artist example is Russell Morgan, an illustrator based in Kettering. I met Russell at the World Horror Convention 2010 in Brighton earlier this year and was particularly taken by his work. I like how thousands of tiny tiny dots scrunched together can create an image. I think Russell's work has a particularly strong storytelling element to it: his pieces seem to feature a character and always portray a strong emotion. For example the picture below: Suppressed Memory, builds a series of stories in my mind.

The piece by Russell which I have used for my creative response is titled: Arupa Lipica, as per the below.

I will post my response to this seperately.

My project will take the form of interview's with artists, posted here, and my personal creative response to images through fiction writing which, I will share an example of here. The first interview will be with John Routeledge: a photographer and sculpture based down is Essex! Watch this space!

World Horror Convention 2010: Brighton Shock

The world horror convention of 2010 was a manic whirl-wind of horrors; a combination of authors, fans, artists and art work and lots and lots of free tea. It was held in Brighton this year, the first time in many years since it has visited Britain and I was very excited to be a part of it.

Despite the long, long hours of work which I won't mention (8am-12pm most days!) mostly I can say that it is one of the best, biggest literature events I have been too.

We started the weekend by setting up the art show with the same people that were setting up the art show for Easter Con. With a team of less then 6 volunteers and 2 experts it took us around 9 hours to turn a cold, damp room into a magical, wonderful art gallery ready for the artists to set up their work. You can see our progression below.

First we set up the scaffolding, with no idea what we were doing!

Then we added the boards. I never want to see another cable tie!

Then we added the lights...

And then we were ready for the artists to come and fit their fantistic art work! This particular corner was for Les Edwards work!

The art room was full of such wonderful work; it was my favourite place to be over the weekend.
Although it did turn your head a bit funny after a while considering most of the work was based on horror! Artists I spent my time drooling over instead of watching the door included: Les Edwards, Ben Baldwin, Jim Burns, Vincent Chong and many many more.

A particular favourite of mine which, yes, I did end up buying (don't blame me, blame the subliminal message the artist left in the painting) is as below:

By Russell Morgan - Appropriately titled Suppressed Memory:

My favourite part of the weekend was that there were no ego's. Despite there being people such as Neil Gaiman, James Herbert, Kelley Armstrong or Les Edwards about everyone mingled with everyone, there was no divide which was lovely. In fact nearly every writer/artists/book seller etc which we helped over the weekend made the effort to come up to us at the end and say thank you. Even if I was a little star struck shaking hands with Les Edwards! He does, afterall, created hand painted pictures which sell for thousands! My skabby hands are not worthy!

Here's a few clips of things I didn't get to see but some lucky people with my camera did:

James Herbert getting ready to be interviewed:

Neil Gaiman interviewing James Herbert:

The huge crowd at the mass signing. I only managed to get this photo because I stood on the stage, although my bad photography skills show me up again as I didn't manage to get any of the writers in the photo! I can assure you they are behind the crowd, cowaring behind their tables with a pen!

I loved the convention with all it's: hard work, pier parties, free drinks, free books, writers, artists, fans, beautiful hotel rooms, rain, writers crawling to the bar, lifting, carrying, building, taking down, buying, browsing, pointing, fish and chips and most importantly, people!

I wish I could say I'd love to do the next one. However, it's in Texas.

A delayed response to the Writing Industries Conference.

This is my very delayed response to the Writing Industries Conference which took place on Saturday the 6th March in Loughborough.

The day opened with a key note speech by the wonderful Graham Joyce who gave an honest discussion on the end of the print age. Although the future of the print age seems dark, Graham Joyce argued that the future of writers, however, will prosper. Provided that writers can become adaptable and learn to write in various forms. My favourite point in this key speech was the idea that society will always need stories, no matter what form they come in:)

I had two favourite panels of the day. The first was the 'Community Journalism, Blogging and Finding New Relationships' panel chaired by James K Walker, John Coster, Al Needham and Susi O'Neil. The best advice I took from that panel was to do with being honest and direct when blogging - the audience need to know what to expect from your blog and who is speaking. As expected though it was hard to define how running a blog can assist a writer financially although there was a concensus that it definitely helped in building an audience.

My second favourite panel was the 'How does public funding support the development of writers' chaired by Henderson Mullin, Jonathon Davidson, Farhana Shaikh and Kate Wilkinson (standing in for Steve Dearden). The concensus was that writers can't expect funding for their writing only; they need other skills which will advtantage the public in some way as well as themselves. The most interesting idea I took from this panel was that funding bodies do not only have to be literature intended companies; places like the NHS/Walking companies, organisations outside the box can be a possibility if you can explore how literature relates to the companies aims.

Writers need to treat themselves as businesses and find new ways to reach new audiences; whether that be through building an on-line presence, taking part in community projects or finding ways to relate their work to the public. At the end of the print age writing is losing its solitariness; writers will need to have more of a public presence. It's no longer onyl about sitting at home and writing, writers need a face as well.

If the Writing Industries Conference is to run next year I would like to see more opportunities to network and discuss individuals work; perhaps a reading lunch where writers can have an open mic to read their work. I would also like to see more indepth panels that explore already tried and tested ways to build an audience for a writer. There was a lot of general advice and it would be good to see more specific advice aimed at writers who are already networking have a presence in the community and how to push this further. Perhaps this is the hardest thing to define as it is not straight forward.

I would love to see more events such as The Writing Industries Conference around the country to bring writers and literature development activists together. I'm looking forward to the next one:)