Pick Me Up runs every year at Somerset House and features a selection of up-and-coming graphic artists and illustrators, as well as housing workshops, collectives, and print companies. This is the first year I've been (I didn't even know it existed) and it was a great experience! I went with a group of people from uni, though I suspect I would have gotten more out of it with people I worked with or similar, or just people who were on time.
The exhibition opens on the basement floor to the selects chosen by an industry panel, which I found really interesting until we dicovered the ground floor. There wasn't anything wrong with the work from the selects, I just found it very artsy and a bit sketchbook-y, which I suppose is the point given they're up-and-coming; the work was great but felt very fine-arty and not incredibly refined. I've only photographed my favourites so perhaps this won't come across.
Marie Jacotey is a French illustrator living in London. Her work uses obsessive imagery, with her PMU selection meaning to imitate a teenager's bedroom. In terms of curation, the flaw in this is that the wall isn't even remotely busy enough to be obsessive- I think that would have been a great opener too.
Also, if you want to know why my opinion matters on this, check out the photo one of my friends took of me, an obsessive teenager, in my bedroom (for a project on non-binary people):
I also liked the work of Corin Kennington, who has really neat lines and does great work with letterpress. He was also at New Designers.
Dutch illustrator Aart-Jan Venema also caught my eye with his colourful and detailed watercolours. His paintings for Pick Me Up were takes on everyday situations in is own style, injecting humour and quirkiness naturally and effortlessly.
Then came probably my two favourite selects, starting with US game designer and illustrator Julian Glander, whose work was super quirky and fun. I loved the foam sculptures of course, but I also think they stole a bit from the fact his illustration/print work was really quite something. It had a relevant internet-y aesthetic about it, and the colours were well chosen and very much my jam.
Charlotte Mei is a Camberwell graduate which is pretty sweet! What's more exciting is that she doesn't seem to sit in the house style of Camberwell either, which makes her even more interesting a find. Her work and the themes she explores reminds me a lot of Tiffany Liao or OMOCAT, who's an artist who has greatly inspired me. She had a really broad range of work compared to other select, both in terms of quantity and style. I particularly liked her pots, which is I gather now mostly what she's pursuing, particularly her ceramic mobile, which is a jibe at everyone harking back to "the olden days" with an impractical yet somewhat functional object, and examining the tensions between traditional and modern media.
Camilla Perkins' work was also very refreshing, and although her actual exhibit in size and variedness was underwhelming compared to the rest of the selects, it seemed the most refined, which is reflected if you google her past clients. Her style is one I've seen before and like (or not quite the same, but similar styles with consciously naive form, heavy use of pattern, bright colours and a lot of potted plants, for example Tuesday Bassen, Kristyna Baczynski and Beau from my class) but different in that for a start, although she is white, her actual work isn't as white as this style tends to be (which in my opinion is overwhelmingly so). Her depictions of African subcultures are engaging and fresh and I was really pleased to find these are far from the only work she's done on such subjects.
Thus concludes the selects, which is where I thought the exhibit ended, but it turns out there was an upstairs which in my opinion was much more exciting. This was where companies, collectives and print houses exhibited and ran workshops, and the work was much more commercial and exciting.
I particularly liked that they stimulated audience participation in so many ways, including the little ways, as sometimes the arts can be a bit inward looking so I'm always down for people putting stickers on a wall.
I also found some ideas to keep for later, such as the cut-out concertina idea from Hato Press which I used for my Simone de Beauvoir project.
Overall it was a great afternoon and we stayed until after closing time. It was definitely one of the more exciting exhibitions I've been to, with a good range of work and a lot of people with genuine passion for what they do.
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