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
