All famous (or underground) media practitioners have exhibited their work on way or another. Right now, most commonly it is via the internet – the infinite scale of it allows people to literally find anything they want. In other words, if you search it, chances are you’ll find it, or at least something related to it. Websites like Youtube, FlickR, Vimeo and Facebook as well as the more niche marketing sites like 4chan and Facepunch (targeted more at the internet-savvy geekier ones of us) are most definitely the leaders of the pack when it comes to spreading the word.
An artist that's come to fame this way over the years is Kate Morosse – she is a graphic designer that's worked on many productions including (most majorly) Simian Mobile Disco’s new music video “Synthesise” and her work with Nylon, Silver Cross, Super Super magazine. Her illustrative and overall aesthetic appeal is very minimal and naïve in it's blunt delivery – she uses geometric shapes and circular ones to create imagery reminiscent of cell-division and kids drawings. A lot of her work looks very similar to So Me’s Ed Banger Records artwork, publicized the same way via web 2.0 socializing capabilities.
“I run ISO & Isomorph Records. I have a fascination with three sided shapes, illegible typography, and freeform lettering.”
With a good few years of experience of churning out designs for bands, clubs, gigs, record pressing, live show co-ordination and rare boutique product design for music projects, Morosse runs a team that covers all mediums of the modern music market in order to maximize their stylistic influence on the world. Vice and NME magazine have often regarded her as the future of uprising music and design, constantly referring to her works both online and in their publications.
ISO are always creating internet based media pages and channels for upcoming artists and musicians. Filming gigs, backstage footage, featurettes, documentaries and interviews, the whole of each production is done by ISO’s team of avid young practitioners who all have a great skills in film, video and music.
Morrose's artwork is pretty much always by hand. She is renowned for not starting over again with her work and instead persisting with it until the visuals she was initially after return, like a happy accident. She finds working on the computer can be hugely satisfying but often acts as a barrier between her minds eye and the finished product by taking out the emotion that goes into her pen or brush strokes.
The information above was found on an art blog from a post written prior to her media explosion proving that to some extent, blogs, just like the one I found the post on, have a very big impact spreading the word across the world for all people on the same wavelength to pick up and look at. Art like this happens almost secretly due to it’s extreme lack of mainstream features but a weird zeitgeist begins to spread, leading to word of mouth, eventual blogging takes place documenting the underground uprising and from there on it’s projected into the thick of the mainstream, sucking up everything and labeling it for mass consumption – this can also be the death of many once highly controversial artists as when it is picked up by everybody (like the sudden craze for triangular shapes in graphic design and fashion right now) it becomes old news and then therefore becomes naff.
Some artists however remain underground constantly, surfacing now and then for fame and then sinking back down into their zone of forward thinking, constantly coming up with new styles, ideas and aesthetics – a perfect example would be a guy called John Greenwood. All I can ever find out about him is his date of birth (1959), the name of the exhibition he did at the Saatchi gallery in 1992, his album artwork for Orbital’s “In Sides” album and some other pieces of art on online auctions. He is extremely hard to track. I developed an obsession with his work after seeing his album artwork. It often has an organic yet geometric concoction of organs and machinery – the “In Sides” piece had aspects of the human ear’s anatomy and magnified bacteria alongside octogons, pentagons and triangular rockets. To find out about him I looked all over for some information on the album, from that the artist name was given and from there I rigorously sifted through Google, very occasionally coming across something related to him.
Sadly I still haven’t come across an actual website specifically on him, nor have I managed to find him on any web 2.0 sites – there are many John Greenwood’s on Facebook. Over 500 in fact. Finding him among all of them without any idea of what he looks like, where he lives or where he works would prove near impossible. Google advanced searching has proved pretty handy too though – putting in search criteria like “John Greenwood “artist” “1959” “Saatchi” has often come up with Yahoo questions where people have been looking just like me and are questioning the world for some kind of answer. It is only auctions where I’ve found more pieces by him, tempting me to get in touch with them instead as it would be likely they have his contact details (if he’s still alive that is)…
I’d say John Greenwood has managed to defy the powers of mass media communication very well. I’m pretty stunned that he just isn’t anywhere considering the fame he must have earned Orbital for HIS great piece of art. In a way it’s slightly upsetting – I know for a fact that there will be something official out there whether its just a minor interview, a biography or an autobiography even! It’s just a matter of intensive looking.
Funnily enough though, John Greenwood could well be famous, either in his circle of friends and mutual friends or just from the fact that possibly hundreds of other people have been searching for him too with a “where is he now?” motive.
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