The House of Illustration is located just north of King’s Cross station, London, and contains three exhibition spaces.
The Main Gallery (four rooms) is currently hosting a fascinating exhibition of posters and everyday products from North Korea, highlighting the distinctive graphic design and colour palette of that most isolated of countries.
Leading off a side-corridor is a small L-shaped room which is the Quentin Blake Gallery, periodically hosting small shows of selected works by Blake, who was a leading force behind the foundation of the House of Illustration.
And the South Gallery (one room as big as a church hall) is currently displaying a selection of the graphic journalism of Lucinda Rogers.
Fruit mountain at the entrance to Ridley Road by Lucinda Rogers
Lucinda Rogers
The HoI is the only UK gallery which commissions illustrations for public display. For this, its fourth commission, it approached the young graphic illustrator, Lucinda Rogers.
Rogers is interested in realistic depictions of urban environments. As this exhibition more than proves, she has a staggering ability to capture the complex architecture and bustling street life of inner city environments. Rogers’ technique is to immerse herself in the setting of her chosen subject and record straight from eye to paper, without preliminary sketches or the photographs which some other illustrators use. She lives in London but has drawn in other urban settings from New York to Marrakech.
Lucinda Rogers at work in Ridley Road Market. Photo by Patricia Niven
This exhibition combines Rogers’s ability as a highly gifted graphic artist with her campaigning concern for issues around gentrification and urban development.
On Gentrification: Drawings from Ridley Road Market
The show consists of 35 large-scale drawings which capture the bustling street life of Ridley Road Market in Dalston. Rogers spent over four months on location at the market, which has been held since the 1880s and is one of London’s oldest East End institutions.
Her drawings display a breath-taking way with line, a really gifted ability to capture volume and depth – but not of simple and easy subjects like a couple of aristocrats or the still lifes of the Old Masters – but the extraordinary visual complexity of the hyper-cluttered modern scene.
Just being able to draw a transit van from scratch would impress me, but then to sketch in all the street clutter surrounding it, the stacked crates on their trolley, the detail of the retractable awning, as well as the old geezer at the cafe table with his patterned tie, the pens in his pocket and his watch – is quite stunning.
View from Almond Lane coffee house by Lucinda Rogers
Each of the drawings is accompanied by sometimes quite lengthy captions explaining the history and context of the subjects, of the different shops and stalls which throng the market.
The ‘issue’ behind the exhibition is the way this teeming street life is threatened by the erection of a luxury apartment block next to the market. This is bound to attract richer buyers, who will then fuel a need for ‘smart’ coffee shops, organic grocers, chi-chi bakers and bijou fashion stores. Then the influx of identikit estate agents.
Rogers’ view is that markets like Ridley Road often provide the only way for small businesses to start up, and they serve as a wonderfully colourful reflection of the diverse communities they serve. Both are lost when a neighbourhood becomes ‘gentrified’.
Outside Ka-sh fabric shop by Lucinda Rogers
Admittedly an abstract concept like ‘gentrification’ is a little hard to capture solely with pictures. Just drawing the foundations of the luxury apartment block doesn’t really convey the complexity of the issues involved – hence the need for the sometimes lengthy captions. These you can read or not, depending on your interest in the issue.
Where Rogers’s drawings unambiguously score is in their astonishingly detailed and precise, yet loose and evocative impressions, of all aspects of the street market.
I particularly like the restrained, impressionistic use of colour. Only a minority of the images in any picture are coloured in: generally (as in the example above), she combines casual dabs and washes which overlap the borders of the object, with the very precise capturing of patterns and designs on just some of the elements.
I found her selectivity about what to colour and what to leave uncoloured absolutely perfect, displaying a wonderfully sure touch, knowing just how much colour to add to bring the image to life, and how much to leave out in order to leave it rough, sketchy and evocative of movement and street life.
In the picture above, I love the way the guy at the right is semi-transparent, like the fleeting impression of an over-exposed photo. And the way his trousers bunch around his snazzy, pointed shoes. All of the drawings here demonstrate a quite breath-taking talent and, in addition, a wonderful sureness and taste of colouring and restraint.
It is mostly left to the picture captions to explain the issues surrounding the threat to the market. These make a good case, which her drawings powerfully underpin. But it is also possible to not read any of the captions and still come away astonished at Rogers’ fleetness of hand and pen.
Bedding stall and Alex the plant man by Lucinda Rogers
The House of Illustration
All three shows – North Korean produce, Quentin Blake’s Valentine drawings, and Lucinda Rogers Ridley Street drawings – are included in the one admission price of £7.50. Crack along!
Related links
More House of Illustration reviews
Like this:
Like Loading...
Books & Boots 