National Arts Festival attendees this year will be the first to enjoy a special mixed-media project set up to cross the divide between art forms, and centred around the notion of visual images as stories in themselves.
National Arts Festival attendees this year will be the first to enjoy a special mixed-media project set up to cross the divide between art forms, and centred around the notion of visual images as stories in themselves.
Selected artists have been invited to participate and exhibit in Co/Mix: Comic Art/Mixed Media 2011, a collaborative group exhibition and visual art performance event on the main programme of the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, 29 June to 14 July 2011.
Co/Mix is a new initiative that aims to showcase the work of artists working at the interface of comic art, illustration and visual narrative. Around 20 artists working in cartooning, comics, toy-making, sculpture, assemblage, graffiti, street art, drawing, painting, and digital image construction will participate.
The work may take any form, including animation and installation, provided that it is based around a unique narrative created or developed by the artist for the exhibition. The group hopes to produce a publication called Co/Mix 2011, featuring the participating artists, to be launched at the event. Co/Mix 2001 will be located in a ‘Co/Mix Pavilion’ to be set up in to be set up in the Thomas Pringle Hall, in the 1820 Settlers Monument.
There, the work will be on sale to festival-goers, and talks and workshops will be held. Co/Mix will also undertake an outdoor Visual Art Performance Event in Grahamstown, which will involve the creation of a street mural. Selected artists have been asked to submit their ideas for the exhibition and for any products that may be suitable for sale in the gallery shop.
Co/Mix is a collaboration between the National Arts Festival and the Centre for Comic, Illustrative and Book Arts, and organised and managed by Andy Mason, Elaine Woodbridge, Lieve Vanleeuw and Pete Woodbridge. Find out more on their blog http://comixart.wordpress.com
