James Pyman

JAMES PYMAN
‘It’s not demonic possession – he just will insist on reading his newspaper’, 2004

Ink, pencil on paper
42 x 30 cm
Gallery Price: £1,500 | S1 Patron Scheme: £750

Please note that shipping within the UK is available upon request.

James Pyman’s recent work has focused on a series of publication projects employing stylistic conventions from newspaper cartoons, football annuals and children’s books. Working within these genres he has produced artist books that employ imagery as narrative form in fictional biography and illustrative storytelling.

‘Wilf - a Life in Pictures’ is a fictional biography of an English editorial cartoonist. Wilf’s career began in the early ‘60s and lasted through to his early retirement in the ‘90s. Throughout his working life he maintained friendships with a group of fellow cartoonists. Through this invention ‘Wilf’ examines how codes of illustration and visual styles change over time and chart the development of a mass graphic language - showing how it felt, as well as how it looks at certain moments in time and the thoughts of the group of cartoonists on their personal and professional relationships over the period.

Pyman describes the book as ‘a biography from a parallel universe where history is informed by the present’. Sixty of Wilf’s cartoons spanning a thirty year period are represented together with invented archive material and examples of his peers’ artwork. The book resembles an artefact from a Blue Peter time capsule that has been sealed in and allowed to age.