Earlier this year we had the pleasure of visiting Liam Fallon (b. 1995) in his North London studio to discuss potential ideas for a print collaboration.
After many months in gestation we are incredibly thrilled to reveal the details of our edition with Liam.
‘DRAFT’ is a 16 layer silkscreen based on an original watercolour painting that Liam produced especially for the print.
It takes the form of a study for what would become one of Liam’s iconic sculptural pieces ‘The Same But Different’ which was recently exhibited at Richard Heller Gallery in LA..
We then broke this watercolour down into 16 separate layers of colour and tone and meticulously transformed them into the hand pulled silkscreen print below.
‘DRAFT’
—————
16 Layer Hand Pulled Silkscreen
42 x 59cm (A2)
Somerset Satin 400gsm
—————-
Edition of 40
£300
Signed and Numbered
—————-
(Shipping + Local Taxes Applied at Checkout)
Available Thursday 12th December at 5pm GMT via our webstore
‘DRAFT’ offers a contemporary nod to the iconic works of the revered American Pop artist, Claes Oldenburg, and his recurring investigation into the symbolism of lipstick in 60’s America. The lipstick as an object has complex associations with femininity, beauty standards, and consumer culture.
Both Oldenburg and Fallon explore these themes through their sculptures, using the object as a symbol of societal norms. While Oldenburg and Fallon’s works are distinct in their materials, style, and specific conceptual focuses, both artists use the motif of lipstick as a potent symbol to examine societal attitudes toward consumerism, gender, and power. Their sculptures, through their exaggerated scale and subversion of everyday objects, invite reflection on the roles such objects play in shaping identity, culture, and politics
Liam Fallon (b. 1995, Stoke On Trent) lives and works in London. He graduated from Manchester School Of Art in 2017 and has gone on to exhibit nationally and internationally with exhibitions in Glasgow, New York, Los Angeles, London and Berlin. In 2018 he was awarded the prestigious Lim Ai Fang Award for sculpture at the Woon Foundation Prize and in both 2018 and 2020 he was shortlisted for the Mark Tanner Sculpture Prize. In 2020 he then went onto receive a Henry Moore Foundation Artist Award. In 2021 he exhibited at König Galerie, Berlin, Carl Kostyál Gallery, Stockholm and Richard Heller Gallery, Los Angeles. In 2022 he opened solo shows with Castor Gallery, London and Richard Heller Gallery, Los Angeles and in 2023 exhibited at Enter Art Fair with Valencia-based gallery, Tuesday To Friday with a solo presentation which followed in January 2024.
In his practice Fallon explores the diverse landscape of queer culture through the use and manipulation of objects and materials. The binary of private versus public marks a particular point of interest; examining the ways in which spaces are utilised and fetishized in order to explore the sentimental values of love, desire and loss, occurrences that are at once unfolding in the public realm, whilst at the same time remaining an enigmatically private affair.
At a first glance, the sculptural works seem reminiscent of things and places encountered before, but there is a false façade at play and quickly, the reality of each work begins to unfold and theatrically perform. It is these theatrical and performative elements, inspired heavily by Jean Genets literature and film, which change the work from something static to something with movement, weight and dependency. Broken walls being laced up; others are unzipping to reveal a little more than they bargained for. Pencils and lipstick begin to lose their rigidity, slowly morphing into a new form and sculptures grow socks, slowly crawling for the exit. Here, the mundane and regularly used have been revalued and exalted and their previous function as markers of space and function which define our boundaries, are all something of the distant past and instead look towards the future for a new use.
Fallon’s aim here is to litter an envisioned landscape with coded and sculptural objects, monuments of queerness which typically act and communicate under the guise of secrecy. In this new landscape, they would no longer be hindered by discretion but instead, bombastically exist to scream loud of the presence, intention, and purpose.
