Illustration Radio

About two months ago after a reasonably successful mock Viva/presentation of my work, ideas, ambition and philosophies which I will describe more thoroughly after my final Viva which takes place within the fortnight, my tutor Amelia Johnstone (Head of Illustration at CardiffMet) invited me to discuss my work on her weekly radio slot on RadioCardiff (98.7 FM) and I’ve taken a small part on almost every episode since.

Back catalogue:       https://www.mixcloud.com/illorad/

I was originally asked on to discuss my ‘Box-Son’ comedy cartoons in particular, which I found quite daunting because whilst the pictures are comical and the drawing flippantly done, the subject matter is serious and horrible; alcoholism, child abuse, domestic rage. Hopefully Amelia will read this and correct me if I’ve understood it wrong – but I think this is where Amelia wants to take Illustration; to uncomfortable places, with everything left to the imagination.

PitchIllustrationRadio @ RadioCardiff 98.7fm

‘Illustration Radio’ is Amelia’s creation. She answer’s the question ‘How can illustration be on the radio?‘ by stating that radio is illustration. The dialogue that is started with the visual communication that is illustration has to inspire continuation of thought, where the imagination elaborates on the inspiration given. Radio does this because our visual imagination is encouraged by the dialogue, sounds and descriptions, without the solid objective image to obstruct our interpretations.

Illustration takes place on Cardiff artist Richard Huw Morgan’s weekly art/culture slot which for years before now been entitled ‘Pitch’ but which is now being turned into Pir/peer/pier (born from; Pitch.Illustration.Radio). Amelia’s influence on the show has been to move it towards morality debates with personal-responsibility-as-artists being the underlying push. From what I can gather, it was previously a more playful show which concerned local politics and art, and it is now moving somewhere in-between Richard’s and Amelia’s intentions for it.

Since being a regular on the show, there have been a massive variety of guest artists, poets and local political types come to join our conversations and I’ve learnt a lot about how artists exist concerning funding and continuing creativity. I’ll have to elaborate this in other blog posts because I have a full note book of information to organise from these radio slots (and the pre-radio evening meetings).  For now I’ll just leave the link to the job-lot of the back-catalogue (top of this post) and a separate link below for an episode I particularly enjoyed, with guests Shani Rhys James (artist-painter) and Spike Dennis (artist, curator) discussing their work :