Dome I - Selected for the Royal Academy Summer Show 2016

I am very glad to announce that my etching Dome I has been selected for the Royal Academy Summer Show 2016. It is now my third year in a row having work selected and it gives a real sense of reassurance and belief when exhibiting in the show.

Dome I , 2016,  Etching, plate size 55cm x 47 cm, £395 unframed

Mirror I and Mirror II selected and hung for the Royal Academy Summer show 2015

I was delighted to find out Mirror I and Mirror II were both selected fort he Royal Academy Summer show this year. I had a lot of positive feedback from being selected last year so I hope I am able to build on that again this year.

Mirror I, Etching,
Edition 30,
paper size 70cm x 65cm,
Hahnemuhle white 300gsm
£395 unframed

Mirror II, Etching,
Edition 30,
paper size 70cm x 65cm,
Hahnemuhle white 300gsm
£395 unframed

The two prints are based on the Sound mirrors on the south Kent Coast.The acoustic mirrors were built as early warning devices around the coasts of Great Britain, with the aim of detecting incoming enemy aircraft by the sound of their engines.
The mirrors though had a limited effectiveness, and the increasing speed of aircraft in the 1930s meant that they would already be too close to deal with by the time they had been detected. The development of radar put an end to further experimentation with the technique.
The idea of recording this defunct out of date technology relates with my current interests and proved to be a tough technical exercise capturing the form and surface quality of the dishes.

Selected works for my new upcoming website.

The images below will be included in my new upcoming website. I will be including a back catalogue of previous works and new pieces.If you are interested in purchasing any of the prints or have any other questions please contact me directly on i_chamberlain@hotmail.com.

Transmission III, 2014.Etching, plate size 62cm x 51cm edition 20, 17 available. £495.

Fort III, 2014.Etching, plate size 62.5cm x 55cm edition 30, 28 available.£495.

Fort I, Etching, 2013 plate size 55cm x 47cm, edition 20, 18 available. £495.

Fort II, Etching, 2013. plate size 55cm x 47cm , edition 20. 19 available. £395.

Transmission, 2011 Etching, plate size 62cm x 51cm, edition 20.Sold out

Transmission II, 2011 Etching, plate size 62cm x 51cm, edition 20. 17 available. £495.

Communication I, 2014 Etching,plate size 27cm x 22cm, edition 30. 26 available. £185.00. 

Communication II, 2014. Etching, plate size 27cm x 22cm, edition 30. 27 available. £185.00.

Bridge I, 2012. Etching, plate size 38cm 33cm, edition 30. 28 available £235.00.

Bridge II,2012. Etching, plate size 41cm x 34cm, edition 30. 22 available. £235.00.

Sat.I, 2010. Etching, plate size 35cm x 30.5 cm, edition 30. 22 available. £235.00

Sat.III, 2010.  Etching, plate size 35cm x 30.5 cm, edition 30. 24 available. £235.00

Good news! - Shortlisted for the John Ruskin Drawing Prize.

I have recently been selected as a finalist for the John Ruskin Drawing prize, The pieces Fort I and Fort III have been selected. Please see these images below;

Fort I - 65cm x 62cm - Etching - £395 - unframed edition of 20.

Fort III - 78cm x 72cm- Etching £495 unframed, edition of 30.

Information of the Drawing prize is below;

THE FINAL SHORTLIST

Anny Evason, Alex Hamilton, Ben Lingard, Colin Maxwell, Catherine Sutcliffe-Fuller, Chris Shaw Hughes, Dr Dolores de Sade, Darren Reid, Evy Jokhova, Gillian Swan, Hannah Brown, Ian Chamberlain, Jennifer Morgan, Michael Cox, Maggie Hargreaves, Mandy Payne, Philip Sanderson, Ros Ford, Rebecca Upton, Roanna Wells, Sonia Stanyard, Sarah Taylor- Silverwood, Sean Williams.
The Campaign for Drawing in collaboration with the Guild of St.George is excited to announce our final shortlist of artists for the second John Ruskin Prize: Recording Britain Now. Still a relatively new award in its second year, we invited entries from all over the UK offering ’Fresh, contemporary visions of the UK's urban, rural or social environment“.
From a wide selection of entries from just under 600 professional and amateur artists, after much deliberation, our selection panel came to a final shortlist of 23 artists. Impressed by the breadth of interpretation of this year's theme and the imagination, wit and technical skill of the works we received deciding on the final selection was no easy task.
The final selection will appear at Millenium Gallery, Sheffield, 28th June – 12th October 2014, partnering the major V&A exhibition, Recording Britain. The winner will be announced at the private view on Friday 27th June and will take home the £1,000 prize.


I am delighted with this and fingers crossed you never know????
The winner will be announced at the opening event at the Millenium Gallery,  Sheffield Fridat 27th June.

Fort III - Finished and ready to edition

Fort III is now finished and ready to be editioned. It has been done especially for the Back from the Front exhibition at the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol.I have been invited to exhibit alongside some other  fascinating and interesting artists.

Back from the Front - Art, Memory and the Aftermath of War is a programme of exhibitions and events at the RWA commemorating the start of The Great War, and 75th anniversary of the start of the Second World War.

"Alongside these powerful evocations of war and peace, a number of artists have created work in response to war: Michael Sandle RA and Emma Stibbon RWA RA react to monumental sculptures across Europe; the late Richard Hamilton’s ‘Medal of dishonour’ offers a searing critique of political subterfuge; Ian Chamberlain reflects on the industrial technologies of conflict; Lucy Willis RWA responds to the plight of the dispossessed, while Paul Gough RWA draws on the emblematic power of civic statuary to explore how memory is shaped and controlled in our over-crowded urban spaces".

Fort III - Finished !

Fort III - Pencil and Graphite, 75cm x 60cm

Sea fort V

 I have managed to finish a new drawing Sea fort V this week. Although this is quite  a literal figurative study I will now aim to start breaking up and abstracting the form. This then will hopefully be taken into etching.The finished drawing is below along with  a couple of working drawings.

Sea Fort V - pencil and graphite, 75cm x 60cm

 

 

Sea fort V preliminary sketch.

Sea Fort V working drawing

                    

In response to Muirhead Bone

As part of the Invitation to exhibit at the Royal West of England Academy I have been asked for the piece of work to respond to  works by a war artist. The artist I have been paired with is Muirhead Bone.

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/sir-muirhead-bone-778

 As you can see by the examples above there is a very strong similarity in the aesthetic of his work and my own. We also share the same connection with drawing and the etching process. He had a nickname at the tine as the British Piranesi and the original  Giovanni Battista Piranesi has long been a strong influence on my own work.  
Please see below for examples of Piranesi's Imaginary prison (Carceri d'invenzione) series.

I look forward into seeing how I can look deeper into Muirhead Bones work and hopefully discover more connections and similarities with my own. Within in my own work I want to start looking more into monoliths, monuments and memorials and creating my own form first hand  drawing research and reference. It will be interesting to see how working towards this exhibition can give me more clarity and direction with my own themes and concepts.

 I have  recently been invited to be a guest Artist for an exhibition at the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol. The show will be in the summer will coincide with the centenary of the beginning of the First world war. I will be working on  new piece of work based on my research on the Maunsell sea forts. I thought I would  document the progress of the work from the initial drawings through to the finished etching. I hope then it will help to serve as an example of how and why I take an image from a drawing through to  finished Print. It is the reasoning and rationale behind this that I question within my own students work and it is important that I am able to realise and understand this within my own work.
Please see the images below for the beginning of this new project.

Fort III - Progress drawing 1.

Fort III - Progress drawing2.

Fort III - Progress drawing3.

Submissions for the Royal Academy Summer show.

After the positive response to my work at the Multiplied Print Fair at Christies, I have decided to enter the following two pieces below for the Royal Academy summer show. 

Fort I - Etching 70cm x 65cm, Edition 20

Transmission - Etching 75cm x70cm, Edition 20

Larger Charcoal drawings of Sound mirrors

Studio shot of the finished Four larger drawings- Roughly A1 in size

Now the larger drawings are finished I will need to start breaking them down and editing the information to be included in the final etchings. This suite if etchings will then be exhibited for the first time in October at Multiplied art fair, 2013 hosted by Christies auction house, London.

Fresh Inspiration - Sound Mirrors - Denge, Dungeness, Kent

1. Sound mirror, charcoal

2. Sound mirror, charcoal

3. Sound mirror, charcoal

4. Sound mirror, charcoal

 The quick charcoal  studies above are of the sound mirrors based in Kent. (For more information please see below). I plan to complete a series of drawings and then take a selected few and rework them through the etching process. Two or three larger charcoal drawings will be completed next week to start to understand the tone and form of the mirrors. The images will then start to take on a life of their own and  inform how I can use line, aquatint and mark making for a final print.

Information on The sound mirrors;

Prior to World War II and the invention of radar, acoustic mirrors were built as early warning devices around the coasts of Great Britain, with the aim of detecting incoming enemy aircraft by the sound of their engines. The most famous of these devices still stand at Denge on the Dungeness peninsula and at Hythe in Kent. 
The Dungeness mirrors consist of three large concrete reflectors built in the 1920s–1930s. Their experimental nature is evident by the different shapes of each of the three reflectors: one is a long, curved wall about 5 m high by 70 m long, while the other two are dish-shaped constructions approximately 4–5 m in diameter.

The mirrors fit well with my interest in man made objects and forms. An increasing area of interest is also how the technology that was cutting edge soon becomes defunct and redundant and super seeded by something else.