Name: Michal William
Location: Bristol
Age:33
Website(s):
How would you describe your work?
I work mostly with photocopies, making minimalist collage/photomontage using text and images. For years I made gig posters, slowly realising that they had 'artistic' merit in their own right, and even slowerly realising that I could even make something that didn't even have any 'information' in it! In my posters I would be facinated by the movement I could create by placing the cut-out letters and numbers and shapes in different places, and how each would determine how and where the others would be placed. Various gravitational points would pull figures, characters, in, and spin them out. And it's this play-fight between choas and control that entertains me enough to continue to create my non-poster work.
What are you currently working on?
I am currently expoloring the flight of sea gulls and ballerinas and others. It's funny.
Where do you find inspiration for your work?
Old films, old buildings and old books.
3 artists/designers you love and why! :
Matt Jones (as well as others around him in the Bristol music scene) has greatly influenced not only my artwork, but also has informed my music, temperament and life goals. Before I knew Matt, I was a big fan of the bands he was involved in (Crescent, Movietone, etc), and when I first saw his large white abstract carpentered paintings in 1996, it was some of the first art that I felt I could instantly understand and relate to. And the simple style of his posters for Cafe Mono made me rethink what gig posters could be.
Marianne Brandt is my favourite artist of all time. She is mostly known for her metal design work at the Bauhaus in the 1920's, but at the same time she also produced many photomontages, usually just for herself or her friends. Her photomontages are playful, political and minimalist, and again I felt an instant understanding as soon as I saw them. I have never studied art, and so I can only trust my instincts when making or appreciating it. Marrianne Brandt's artwork stuck out its hand and said 'hello, you and I are the same.'
Charles M. Schulz was suprised himself how a few lines and dashes on paper could invoke so much emotion and human recognition. This is what any form of art means to me - seeing a relationship in it to what you know, belonging to some language that is not part of words (even when words are used).
<3
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