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TWENTY-NINE 4 x A4 comics pages. |
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DUCK WITH A GUN 4 x A4 comics pages. |
ENTERARTS
Following the success of the February exhibition, I took part in the June EnterArts End-of-Course exhibition at The Learning Quarter, Wolverhampton. The exhibition ran from June 8th to the 18th, 2004.
The Installation was split into three sections: samples of my Comics work, Posters containing information about me and my work, and Free Comics.
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TWENTY-NINE 4 x A4 comics pages. |
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DUCK WITH A GUN 4 x A4 comics pages. |
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I produced two posters for the exhibition: a short biographical essay, and a look at why I chose Comics as a medium.
MATTHEW CRAIG
Raised from a larva by Bolivian circus folk, the boy who would become Matthew Craig first experimented with hard science, soft women and watery houmous at the Universities of Manchester, Sheffield, UMIST and Leicester.
Having outstayed his welcome in academia (having been caught drinking tea on Newsnight), Matthew Craig then decamped to the small wetland town of Cambridge, where he pursued the dual careers of Research Assistant on the Human Genome Project and Town Cryer.
Ejected from Cambridge for being just a little bit too weepy, Matthew Craig drifted for a while, until he was dragged from the river by a small brown dog. Delirious, and mistaking the dog�s pleurisy for Angelic Proclamation, Matthew Craig sat up, passed out, sat up, passed out, and determined to have a little lie down before becoming a Vehicle for Great Stories. Until he failed his MOT.
Undaunted by any of this, Matthew Craig Writes Things, and can be read at the following websites: The Matthew Craig Dot Com, Robot FIST!, Working Title Comics and Ninth Art.
WHY COMICS?
I've been reading comics since before I could read, and my love of the medium has grown with my understanding of it.
Comics are an invisible art, a marriage of words and pictures, with a profoundly accessible visual language. Comics iconography permeates human society like a crazy-quilt tattoo: unsurprising when you consider that Comics have been with us since the first caveman daubed the first cave wall with steaming elk blood.
Comics is a medium that thrives on immediacy - the visual language of comics bypasses the intellectual barriers of prose fiction (including the ability to read). In many respects, it as as close to a printed form of telepathy as can be found anywhere in the world.
From my mind to my hands to our page to your eyes to your mind, Comics is the most versatile (and undervalued) medium on Earth.
Let's see where it takes us...
I produced three � A4-sized booklets - two minicomics and one prose story - to be mass-photocopied and stored in hoppers attached to the installation display boards.
HONDLE GOES WILD ABOUT DEVON
TWENTY-NINE
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The comics were mounted on two 8'x4' hardwood boards, having first been fixed to display boards with sticky pads.
Preview images and advertisements for my current and upcoming work were included in the display. The thematthewcraigdotcom URL was prominently displayed, as were the URLs for now-defunct collective Working Title Comics, Robot FIST!, and Ninth Art.
The free photocopied minicomics and prose were first printed onto A4, then folded into �-A4 pamphlets, and placed into hoppers, which I then fixed to the display boards.
The Open Evening (June 10th) wasn't quite as much fun as I had hoped it might be. I took along a box of each of my four comics to date, a few copies of Just One Page, and a folder containing script and story samples for people to look through. And while I got to talk to quite a few people about Comics and Comics Art, and I did manage to shift a lot of free minicomics, I only managed to make �5.00 on the night. Clearly, I need to work on my sales technique.
All characters and images (C)
