Mokita at Pick Me Up Somerset House

 

Last Tuesday I attended Mokita at the Pick Me Up art fair at Somerset House. The brainchild of reputed academics Roderick Mills, Darryl Clifton and Geoff Grandfield, this all day symposium had for ambition to take an in-depth critical look at illustration today. The all-mighty Adrian Shaughnessy was chair of the proceedings for the day. I understand Shaughnessy cofounded Varoom magazine and that it might be in this capacity that he was there on the day, but I still found his presence puzzling yet perhaps revealing about the status of illustration today? Could it be that the industry is still struggling with a widespread perception of it being an offshoot of graphic design? Surely there are illustrators of the status of Shaughnessy out there that would do just as much justice to the role of mediator for the talks?

On the programme were three questions; the first one “Is commerce the only real context for illustration?” was discussed by James Jarvis and Darryl Clifton. I found that particular exchange the most enlightening of the three, not least because of the well constructed Powerpoint presentation of Jarvis. “Illustrator as Author, new paradigm of the disciploine?” and “Do we need a theory of Illustration?” were respectively discussed by Luke Best with Roderick Mills and Sam Arthur and Geoff Grandfield. 

At £70, this event was a naughty treat that I thoroughly enjoyed. I guess Somerset House does not come cheap but my wish is for Mokita 2 to be more democratic and accessible to a wider audience. After all, the overriding thought of the day was for illustration to raise its profile and be on a par with photography in the mainstream British culture the way it is for the French. That said I enjoyed seeing some familiar faces there such as Gary Powell and Richard Harris, a former tutor of mine at Kingston University. 

Where were the girls? I am told Simone Lia dropped out. Why not replace her with another woman? It was a bit of a sausage fest on the day and one of the participants heckled: "It all looks rather 19th century to me!" After all, if the conference is to be a true window of the recent seismic changes within the industry, then it is only just to shed a light onto the vast amount of ladies working as illustrators. Geoff Granfield mentioned an agent told him 90% of illustration buyers are male... I’d love to meet that gentlemen and find out where he got his “facts”.