CATALOG - an exhibition of new work by two graphic artists and was also curated by them

‘Catalog’ at The Conningsby Gallery, London (12th June – 23rd June 2006) - co-exhibitor: Martin O’Neill (2 person exhibition).
‘Catalog’ was an exhibition of new work by two graphic artists and was also curated by them.
The rationale for the exhibition was to exhibit nine new works by each of the artists along with a variety of source materials, both objects and images. In this way both product and process were foregrounded together. The research is part of referring back to the debate within graphic art/design about how ideas take form.

The ideas expressed by Brody and Wozencroft (1994) concerning the need for an expressive language for computer generated art and design and stimulated also by Kurt Schwitter’s Merz assemblage methods, Williams has developed means of creating images that combines experimental sourcing and processing as visual research.

Selecting from a large collection of source materials, many of them found materials, the selected items were scanned and then combined and recombined with hand drawn elements and printed images to produce 9 XAI format works which refer back to the sources in their titles such as ‘Characters and Figures/Donkey’. Intentionally these works cross the analogue/digital divide. In some cases the analogue referencing is deliberately archaic in terms of the use of the lithographic process.

‘Catalog’ was reviewed in Eye (by Luke Pendrell), a journal which had previously featured Williamson’s images including a cover design. When creating illustrations for book publishers and the press, Williams employs this manner of making images to create research that is visual research to create images that provide a visual equivalence to the key points in the text.