Our annual round robin
If you’re keeping up, you’ll know we put together a round-up of what we’d been up to this year in early October. So, this isn’t a full 2019 round robin, more a round robin chick fledging at Christmas.
We’ll get started with an update of what our artists have been working on in recent months.
Andy Gilmore has continued to work on geometrically precise personal work like the enigmatically named ‘Microstates’ pieces. Plus, he’s worked with Sunday, Godfrey Dadich over in San Francisco, ESPN and Wordsearch.
Through creative agency Interabang, Anna Bu Kliewer found herself collaborating on the design for the packaging of a new brand of sugar and aspartame-free, vegan-friendly mints called Motif. She also appeared in the November/December issue of Esquire, providing illustrations for Richard Benson’s article on the rise of the podcast. This month she takes on a new music project with Universal. More on that next year. Finally, she has just illustrated this year’s Christmas card for ES magazine.
Besides having three exhibitions running in parallel in South Korea – ‘All In’ at Avenue L Art Hall, ‘Tomorrow and all the Time’ at Everyday Mooonday in Seoul and a third at Lotte Art Gallery in Gwangbok, Craig & Karl have produced a new range of items featuring their image of the London skyline, which is available at the Tate Modern shop and its online store. And they added a new section to their ‘Chromagic’ installation at the Siam Center in Bangkok – a psychedelic enclosed walkway called ‘Tunnel Vision’.
Since our last update, Danny Sangra‘s Edwardian-era short film ‘Parlour Games’ has debuted and can now be watched in full. Danny also created an animated teaser for new E4 comedy show ‘Pants on Fire’ and a couple of promotional spots for Puma’s revival of their Speedcat Sparco trainers. He continued to explore animation techniques on personal pieces exploring the idea of work, as well as documenting everyday objects in a series of illustrations. We’re pleased to announce that he’s recently joined production and management company Cadence for his work in film, and this month he will also be talking about the balance between commercial and personal work as part of Picsters‘ SUN/SET Talks at Soho House Berlin.
James Joyce was back at the Art Car Boot Fair in Vauxhall just recently, where he was launching an exclusive enamel pin version of his smiley face image in a limited edition of 300. Earlier, he designed a vinyl box set, also a limited edition, to celebrate the first anniversary of W Records, a label set up by W Hotels. And he continues to create illustrations for Douglas Coupland’s articles in Financial Times magazine, looking at how the way we perceive time has changed. He also worked again with BBH London for Audi.
Kate Moross and the team at Studio Moross have been keeping the music alive, creating illustrations, bumper stickers, single artwork and more for singer/songwriter Jade Bird and House Gospel Choir among others. They’ve also been working a lot with Big Shot Coffee + Donuts of Covent Garden, designed the identity for LGBT film festival BFI Flare 2019, and created merch for The Creative Mentor Network, a charity that helps young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds break into the creative industries. Meanwhile, Kate has taken part in the latest edition of Lecture in Progress’s Creative Lives Podcast.
Matt Blease has had a busy few months working with Apple. He did further work on Guinness’s campaign supporting the Rugby World Cup 2019 in Japan with AMV BBDO. He’s also provided illustrations for a series of podcasts made by Hermès, for an election special edition of Guardian Weekly, and for a new book by noted wine sommelier Aldo Sohm – Aldo Sohm’s Wine Simple. And for the second time this year, he’s created new t-shirt designs for BEAMS T. Even as this goes out, he’s working on something for The New Yorker.
It was pretty exciting to hear that Paula Castro was being invited to provide illustrations for Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s ‘Fleabag: The Scriptures’ book. In bookshops now. In a very different vein, she’s been working with an architect in Buenos Aires to create some maps for an estate agent showing the areas of Once and Balvanera and highlighting iconic local buildings. Plus, she continues working with brand design agency Neumeister in Sweden on a project we can’t tell you about yet!
Phillippa Mills was inspired by the heavy-duty Chelsea boots made by Italian fashion brand Bottega Veneta for a recent portrait piece made in oil, watercolour, acrylic and nail polish among other materials.
Quentin Jones’s has moved back to New York since we were last here, basing herself in a new SoHo studio. And not long before heading across the Atlantic she completed a new project – designing a snowboard called the Bottle Rocket in collaboration with American brand K2. She’s currently working on something with Penguin, more on which in January. Elsewhere she’s been working with Carolina Herrera Good Girl and the Kardashians on moving image pieces.
Steven Wilson has followed recent exhibitions in South Korea and the auction of his work for charity with Seoul auction house K Auction by getting into Korean fashion. He worked with Korean fashion designer Heill on his latest collection with patterns based on Korean folk art. He also worked on moving image concepts for the launch of a new BMW in Italy.
In more general Breed news, we’ve recently come back from a trip to New York, where we embarked a round of catch-ups, meetings and introductions to people and agencies including the New York Times, The New Yorker, Mother NY, Deutsch, Moda Operandi, Baron & Baron, Coach, Refinery29, Tiffany & Co, Lipman, Protein, McCann, Spring and King & Partners, Diane Von Furstenberg and Ogilvy.
After completing our work in New York, we travelled north to North Adams, Massachusetts where we discovered the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art close by to where we were staying, and were able to take in exhibitions by minimalist Sol Lewitt, textural artist Jenny Holzer, James Turrell’s ‘Into the Light’ and photographic exhibition The Bright and Hollow Sky.
Back home, we talked to Anna Murray and Grace Winteringham of Patternity, who work with patterns to inspire people to live more connected lives. We’ve continued our #Breedspodcastsofthemonth with Lecture in Progress who offered a broader selection than usual to provide options for every mood. And we’ve added #BreedPlaylistoftheMonth where already Danny Sangra, Matt Blease and Pitch & Sync have told us about their current listening of choice. We also started a new series looking at London’s more unusual cultural centres with The Conservatory at The Barbican.
That’s our news up to the end of 2019, so we’ll just wish you all a very happy Christmas and look forward to bringing you an even more beautifully illustrated 2020.
Olivia and all at Breed
Image by Steve Wilson