Recycle X Illustration
OCT / 2022
Collaboration with Recycle Archaeology and Colouring In
Recycle X Illustration was a student project between Kingston School of Art and Camberwell College of Art led by Laura Copsey and Dr Rachel Emily Taylor. The project was linked with Dr Helen Wickstead, a founder of Recycle Archaeology, and hosted by Luise Vormittag, a founder of Colouring In. I was commissioned to create a poster for Colouring In’s third issue ‘The Past’ and I had the opportunity to present our work and speak at their symposium about how illustrators might work with historical narratives and the past in their practice.
For the project, each student chose one ‘de-selected’ archaeological object from Recycle Archaeology’s archive. The objects I chose from the archive were two ceramic fragments. Helen predicted it was a type of stoneware from Germany from the 16th or 17th century. I was curious about how it had ended up here in London, so I set about my research on this object.
From process-led research, I discovered a Facebook group called ‘Bellarmine and Bartmann and other early stoneware jug/bottle, and earthenware’. It had 1.1K group members, including both archaeological experts and fanatics. Every day there were more and more posts of people sharing their objects with us and asking for stories about them. These strangers had created an online archive full of passion and information. This encouraged me to look at how heritage creates community and how illustrators can use it to tell a story. My visual research method for this project was to cut up the images people had shared and digitally collage them as illustrations. The text in my poster was words written in the posts and comments by the people in this group. Like the images, the words were snipped-up poetry to reflect the breadth of conversation.
Download Colouring In: the past article here
