Representing Realness: An exhibition exploring contemporary image making and illustration in an age of prozac, selfies and #metoo

We live in a time where we pick up our phones and are deluged with over-styled photography, or switch on the news and can’t decipher what’s really going on in the world. Perhaps in response, the language of illustration has re-emerged as the voice of authentic experience in public media spaces.
Illustrators and image makers are reclaiming the traditions of their craft to author new works that show our true ‘reality’. From the moments when you drop coffee down your shirt or remember that bad one night stand, to a visualisation of the demons of anxiety. Sometimes it’s simply just imagining up a group that look like the people we all want to see in the world: a diverse, candid and authentic crowd.
An antidote to stock images and selfies, these artworks are now increasingly commissioned across editorial, advertising and cultural campaigns to create symbols of shared understanding. A blobby figure getting sweaty on the morning commute could perhaps be you or me, and so we empathise, we connect – even when the character in question only has four fingers or green hair.