Cheap

Integrating into the public conscious

In a similar way to that of the artists we publish we want our work to take many different guises and combine and involve many different areas of popular culture and entertainment so they can be looked at in similar terms, understood and enjoyed more widely. We had Cheap Zine but that wasn’t enough, we wanted to be involved in more to draw attention to new image making as important yet fun and accessible so for this to work we needed more coverage.

The first thing we were involved in was an event in the Netherlands called ShopStop which was set up and ran by our friend Yvonne Klasen whom we met through Cheap Zine. The event encompassed drawing, installation, music, fashion and obviously shops and although we unfortunately couldn’t attend were are led to believe it was a success (and I presume it was as it was their third event within eighteen months). This was the kind of thing we wanted to be doing, setting up events that would bring people with all kinds of different cultural interests together because although art, fashion etc. are not all the same they can be a lot closer than people think and mutually beneficial and there are places where they overlap.

We had already began to make Cheap products to promote ourselves a little bit more such as badges and stickers and then we heard about ANTIFREEZE 2009, an art car boot sale set up by artist group Contents May Vary which gave us a chance to sell our zines, existing products and tote bags and meet some new people. It was around this time too that we got involved with Alice Bradshaw’s Temporary Art Space in a zine show and a group exhibition (one of our zines already being there when we arrived and not by us!).

The next thing to be added to the Cheap oveur was critical writing in the form of a review of a group show of new image making called inkygoodness 3: Wonderland (which can be read here: ), a new feature and hopefully a constant on a-n and the Cheap blog and myspace. This is important as there isn’t much writing out there on new image making and it is needed to develop and help give context to this movement. A future review for a book by Michael Dhillon is also soon to be published online at the author’s request to show the opinions of people outside the literary field.

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The Artists and Contributors

When we started out we just showed people we knew because we knew them which was no bad thing, but we just didn’t know anybody else. Once it became free to submit this is when I feel we started getting much more response, much more positive feedback and generally more success.

So we started trawling through literally thousands of image makers on the pages of myspace and then showed our favourites every other month. Which is pretty much what we do with the zine now still. However we have noticed fashions and trends as we have emmerced ourselves in this world, and this is perhaps the most important thing of all.

From the off we have been open to anything visual from paintings, drawings and illustrations to photography, film stills, writings etc., just as long as it works well in black and white. What we have found though is that there is a new (though not really new) kind of image maker that dominates over all.

I think the best way to describe it is as a kind of post-pop illustrational practice. There are several characteristics many of these image makers have in common. The first is that of taking popular culture as a visual language whether it be news and magazine images, cartoons and movie posters or the art historical and feudal Japaese design. The second is the mixing of media and style, again taken from any amount of different sources such as graphic novels or expressionist painting. Thridly is that most of these makers couple gallery and more traditional art based works with their illustrative and design practises, there is no hierarchy between practise and many make products too. The aesthetic side ensures an appeal, an understanding and a relevance to masses of people that quite frankly a lot of artists cannot boast and the blending of their personal and commercial practises goes to furthering and promoting themselves as artists, and why not if this does not compromise their artistic integrity? Image makers we have worked with as examples: Simon Corry, Cake (Stephanie Homa), Steve Rack, Dario Molinaro and George Mitchell

These are the image makers we are interested in now. It is a movement which is perhaps the most important in the world as people are interested in it without even knowing it as so many of these illustrators and designers are already integrated into our conscious. It is a young movement and there is lots of developments to come as it finds its footing and is recognized (check out The Upset and Illustration Play to read more on it). And this is what Cheap zine now chronicles and aims to reflect it with its own involvement in similar activities, events and writings which leads us to our next post.

How Cheap Started

So what is Cheap? Cheap started as a zine ran by myself and my partner Nikki Marie Jackson. We’d seen a video at the Cornerhouse about Miranda July’s Joanie 4 Jackie. She was bored of being the only female video artist she knew so through advertising in galleries etc. she had other female video artists send her their videos which were then returned with films by several other artists on them as well. It worked very simply to show people what else was out there, to create a platform to show their work and an opportunity to meet like-minded individuals. It also gradually evolved with screenings, live performances, talks and now Miranda July is a fairly established director (check out you, me, and everyone we know it’s a great film).

So yes, this is what we wanted to do. We wanted meet new people and show others as we knew there was an entire world going to waste on myspace. So this is what we did, we started Cheap Magazine. Cheap because that was what it was, it was made cheaply on black and white photocopiers and even funded by the artists at first (as most of them were friends) and distributed freely around Manchester galleries and shops (and because people don’t take much notice of art as it is, let alone if you have to pay for it!). We made a magazine because that was most suitable as we are both image makers and it is what interests us the most.

We went on like this for about the first four months/issues before we started making changes. Firstly we realized that a lot of other people made similar things to us and that there was infact a whole world of zines, so we became Cheap Zine, because it is more appropriate, only a little change I know but I believe this recognition is still important in understanding a context. Secondly we started making digital copies of every zine so they didn’t just die after their first run because they got lost or crinkled. Thridly we started charging, still a small fee so we stayed cheap but a fee none-the-less. This allowed us to stop charging artists to make the zine and then the submissions began rolling in. And this leads us very nicely onto our next post…