Today I put up 5 framed pictures in the South Norwood & Woodside Social Club, as part of the South Norwood Arts festival, running from 12-18 July. It’s a bit of an obscure place to put them, but I thought it was fitting, as it’s where local working people come to relax, and I think they’ll relate to the pictures. I hope they read the texts I’ve provided, explaining each work, and then they should make more sense. These are A2 size digital prints, and am trying to sell at £85 each, so hopefully get a sale. I know I should be showing these works at the right level, which is probably a serious gallery, to get the right price and recognition, but I want my work to be seen by ordinary folk, not stuffy art people.

Starting this weekend I’ve got 5 prints on show/ for sale in Crystal
Palace, as part of the Crystal Palace Triangle Art Trail. I have 3 on
show in “Numidie” (small French/ algerian bar, Westow Hill) and 2 in
“fortyseven” (hairdressers, Westow street). They are all very
political works, part of my “Bailouts, bonuses and austerity” series:
http://davemiller.org/projects/bailouts_bonuses_austerity/, plus one
of my “radiation drawings” which features the local area.

Please come along and take a look, and pass the word around. Please
tell any rich/ well-connected friends to come along. All prints are
high quality and professionally framed, and very favourably priced.

Our local magazine - Transmitter - have very kindly given me a mention
in this month’s edition:

“Issue 12 of the Transmitter Magazine is helping celebrate the talents
of local artists and the opening of the Bigger Picture Gallery Summer
Exhibition by sponsoring a local Art Trail.

Shops, restaurants, cafes and businesses all around Crystal Palace
Triangle are taking part in a spontaneous celebration of local
artistic talent. Come along on Saturday 5 June and Sunday 6 June and
feast your eyes on a diverse range of visual art.

Among the exhibiting venues (more to be confirmed) are:
Blackbird Bakery
Bookseller Crow
Domali
Et Pourquoi Moi
FortySeven
Gurkha Cottage
Living Waters Cafe
Mediterranea
MyJumbie
Northwood Clinic
Numidie
Smash Bang Wallop
Streets Ahead”

This started out as something else, to be honest. I started making a small comic strip about the greek riots, trying to explain it all in the great scheme of things (I still intend to do this once I get some peace and time to do it). I took news snippets and mixed in some analyses I’d read. I started on the first panel of the comic and then it took over and I ended up with this drawing and no comic! The feeling of a life beyond. I felt it was strange to draw a riot in Athens - such a lovely place, that is somehow above - better than all this, and so I tried to put some nice scenery in the background, and blue skies/ fluffy clouds as a sign of hope. I was also interested in making this a beautiful bright riot scene, in some way, adding bright happy colours to it, rather than having the usual grey black misery thing you’d expect.

Has been submitted to the “Photos of Mail Nothing to the Tate Modern” project on Rhizome.

Update - really nice comment on netbehaviour from Michael Szpakowski:
“once again you’ve hit the mark. I love this in particular because it is so intensely & clearly partisan (ie on the side of the oppressed & exploited) but without being one-dimensional. There’s something *touching* about it - it evokes something more than simply the issue at hand -there’s a sense of a life beyond. Although it’s a ‘cartoon’ it’s far from a caricature. There’s a sense of the real life of working class people that is so much there in some of your more reflective drawings..”

UPDATE: I’ve had all these drawings printed as postcards, and am selling them in the local bookshop (”Crow on the Hill)” at bargain prices. They look good at postcard size.

I’ve been reading about the nominees for the Turner Prize. I’m not interested in the prize, or who wins etc, but the paintings by Dexter Dalwood are interesting. Apparently he’s from Bristol, and deals in paintings evoking past history, with increasingly politically-themes, including one entitled The Death of David Kelly.

Such as these, some of them are brilliant - I think.

This is good and this.

Some of my Etsy work is now featured on the ‘artofmakingchange’ blog - I recently did an interview for the blog and it’s come out really well I think - they’ve written a nice piece for me.

Got some of my work featured here.

Jess Douglas

forgot to post this last week:

Satirising high street shop closures/ fake frontages/ and artists taking over empty shops.