As featured in Unfolded Magazine Issue 04
How we consume the news is the focus of the talk we had with artist
Natasha Archdale at a recent 'Financial Animal' exhibition -
newspapers turned into 3D shaded art: collages of words, text,
images and drawings combined to create a unique piece that has come
to be Archdale's unique take on the classic portrait. Archdale
tells us that she has always had a gift for drawing since college,
but it was a "car crash in 2000 that left her immobilised for a
long time" which reignited her passion. Time can be a great healer
and with no art materials to hand, Archdale started "experimenting
with pritt-stick and newspapers she had access to". She found she
had a "great love of working with the FT" because of the "shades of
pink and textures" you can use quite effectively and as it is her
daily read, Archdale had a familiarity with the formatting to
easily pick out "words and articles to create each story".
Several years later, honing her technique and after much bedside
doodling, the collection of animal portraits follows Archdale's
celebrated nude collection, with bears and bulls representing the
markets themselves while elephants, donkeys and other creatures
representing various political and economic
institutions.
We were particularly drawn to the Shark, created out of the Wall
Street Journal, which Archdale describes as "natures perfect
predator" and is representative of a "loan shark striking into the
heart of the financially stretched". Also on display was the Bull
and Bear, representative of the "bull and bear markets" both
created out of the Financial Times. On closer inspection we could
see that the Bull contains pictures of Charles Dunstone, George
Bush and finance related articles; whilst The Bear contains images
of David Cameron, George Osborne, the BP explosion, flags and again
more finance related articles.
Her work has bought several commissions, but the 'Financial Animal'
collection is her way of immersing herself back into her art,
experimenting and allowing her creativity to 'run free and without
constraint of a clients brief'. Of future work, Archdale will seek
to continue working on iconic portraits, highlighted by her recent
pieces on Nelson Mandela and Margaret Thatcher.
We look forward to the results and for more information on
Natasha
Archdale, visit her website: www.natashaarchdale.com