Postcard from Lille (and South Wales) - Arty days around the world #2
So, after leaving Roanoke we arrived in Lille, France. The country’s fourth largest city and home to a bizarre yearly tradition where restaurants chuck all the mussel shells from peoples plates into the street creating huge piles. Restaurants compete for the biggest pile thus demonstrating they’ve had the most orders for moules frites! Here’s a video of it. Anyway….
Unfortunately we didn’t have too much time to look around as goodonyourwall is moving home shortly (very exciting) so things are a bit busy, but there was plenty to see.
We came across The Dirty Cream, an online gallery and shop. Check them out. They’ve got a good range of stuff from prints to cushions.
It was at The Dirty Cream we came across the work of designer and illustrator Rhys Owen, transporting us from Lille to South Wales. Rhys’s work has been decribed as ‘urban’ however he says himself “I’m about as urban as caravan holilday at Butlins”.
Whatever you want to class it as it’s great. Above is a taster and you can check more of it out at his website (including cushions) Hidden Moves. Prints are available from £20, plus canvases, t-shirts and more.
Film posters not Poles apart
The very cool independent movie magazine Little White Lies (thanks to @drtjam for this lead) is hosting an exhibition of specially commissioned illustrations of iconic films from the 70s, reimagined in the style of their own mag covers. Here are a couple of our favourites:
They’re all £45 giclees, printed on archival paper and hand embossed with LWlies logo. A good price we think.
The free exhibition is at Kemistry Gallery (very good), in East London and runs from Friday June 17 to Saturday July 2.
If you’re interested in these then you might also enjoy looking at some of the classic Polish film posters. After World War II Poland was under the control of the Soviet Union and Communism. Western consumer culture and advertising unsurprisingly were not too popular so Polish designers and illustrators did their own thing with some fantastic results . If you’d like to learn more about the interesting history here’s an article from Smashing Magazine. Below are a couple of greats. Many of the Polish posters are highly collectable now and according to cinemaposter.com (which seems to be the definitive site) prices range from $100 to $5000. Get in there!
“The best works should reach the $10K range within a decade, and an average price may easily quadruple.”
