Modern Panic V
Artists
In alphabetical order

Karina Akopyan [Russia]

Karina Akopyan was born in Moscow, Russia into and moved to England at the age of fifteen to finish her education and study art. At that point she was mostly interested in oil painting but later on her interest changed slightly and she started working with gouache and experimenting with other materials. Being torn between fine art and illustration Karina decided to study Illustration because it gave her chance to do more figurative drawing. Karina graduated with degree in Illustration from Kingston University. Her recent work depicts themes of fashion, fetishism and theatre, also featuring a series of drawings and paintings of some of London’s most daring performers. Her figures are abstract, they don’t need to appear to be real figures at all. They are the expression of emotions and states of awareness, made up memories, fears, sex fantasies and secret aspirations. Karina currently lives in London and works as a freelance artist and illustrator. 
karina-akopyan.com

Jean-Luc Almond [UK]

Jean-Luc Almond was born in DR Congo. He graduated in 2013 with a First Class (Honours) degree in Fine Art Painting from City and Guilds of London Art School. He was awarded the Painter & Stainers’ Award for an Outstanding Foundation Painting Student in 2010. In 2014 he exhibited in the National Open Art Competition in Somerset House where his work was selected as the CASS ART Commission Prize Winner. He frequently exhibits in London and his paintings have also been chosen by Rebecca Wilson, Director of Saatchi Gallery, London, to be included in numerous online Collections where he has sold work to both national and international collectors.
jeanlucalmond.co.uk

Rhine Bernardino [Philippines]

Rhine Bernardino graduated at the University of the Philippines (Diliman) with a Bachelors Degree in Film and Audio-Visual Communication. She has been accepted into MFA programmes at both Goldsmiths College and the Royal College of Art in London, UK, for an October 2015 start. Her work focuses on the use of body in performance art, coupled with the exploration of the use of video and photography not just as a form of documentation, but also an integral part of the creation process. Bernardino’s practice often revolves around the concept of human endurance in performance art, with performance’s heightened emphasis on presence and process. She emphasises the human body as both artifact and mechanism: an object to be observed, investigated and experimented on, and the body as means of expression through interactions with others. Bernardino co-founded _inventory, an independent, collaboration-based collective that organises performances in alternative and public spaces. She has exhibited internationally, including London, Tokyo, Florida, South Africa, Bangladesh, India, Manila and Ho Chi Minh City.
rhinebernardino.com

Anne 'Blondie' Bengard [Germany]

Berlin based artist Anne ‘Blondie’ Bengard explores the relationship between people, personalities and imagination within her work.
The use of juxtapositions and undertones of humor and eroticism within her subject matter often lead to provocative yet sensuous images. Her inspiration comes mainly from pop culture, japanese culture, the people around her and childhood nostalgia. Her distinctive style is heavily inspired by Japanese manga, classic and contemporary portraiture, pop surrealism, super realism, and above all a love for pastel colours and manipulating water based media.
Blondie was born in Leipzig, Germany and moved to England at the age of 9 resulting in a dual upbringing between England and Germany. Since graduating from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London in 2010 with a BA (hons) Performance design and practice. She now divides her time between Berlin and London, frequently travels to Asia, particularly Japan and Thailand and enjoys dying her hair many shades of blue.
anneblondiebengard.com

Jules K Bloom [UK]

Jules K Bloom was born in 1965 and studied graphic design and art foundation at Colchester Institute of Art and film/tv art direction at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art & Design.  He worked for over a decade in films, commercials and promos as a designer, storyboard artist, model/prop maker, and costume specialist.

An ongoing active interest in vintage cars, aircraft and antique arms & armour led to a departure from film/TV and resulted in an eleven year career as a restorer and conservator at the Imperial War Museum, where his varied skill base was developed further with new techniques, knowledge and abilities.

During this time, Bloom embarked upon a project which led to a working relationship with the Swiss surrealist artist H R Giger and the realisation of some large scale interpretations of his designs from the 1979 Alien film.  This return to more artistic avenues galvanised Bloom to a decision to return to the creative world, and in 2013 he left the IWM to become a freelance artist.

Jean-Francois Bouron [Korea]

Originally from Korea, Bouron currently lives in Paris. He has been drawing since childhood and recently started painting as well.  Bouron's universe is full of this malaise towards reality, sometimes oppressing, and heavy with melancholy, he is on an obessive quest of identity.

His work is therapeutic and provides a huge well-being.  He explores a lot of items and themes that cross his pathway, marked or touches him.

Primarily a draftsman, Bouron uses lines, and therefore the tools that are most relevant (pastel, pencil, ballpoint pen black, rotring, Posca, etc..) Used on acrylic paint or the oil, and occasionally collages.
cyandreams.com/jeanfrancoisb

Paul Micheal Browne [UK]

An interdisciplinary artist based in the South West, UK, as equally in love with stories as ideas, I am obsessed with what goes on in the mind behind our staring eyes. Through text, prose, sound and found objects, my work explores the forced rhythms of human behaviour, memory, mental health, ephemerality and the negotiation of finite time.
paulmichaelbrowne.com

Christophe Richart Carrozza [Italy]

Christophe Richart Carrozza’s work focuses mainly on the art of Tarot and Psychomagic.  Richart has been studying Tarot for over 17 years. He first discovered the Tarot when he was 12 years old in a little town called Sète (pronounced ‘7’ in French) like the major arcane number 7 which has the image of a chariot. Coincidentally Richart’s surname Carrozza translates as ‘chariot’ in Italian. 
The way of the Tarot led him then to shamanism and 4 years of classical psychotherapy. It also helped him to become conscious of his passion for Psychomagic, a theatrical chamanic way to cure inner problems invented by Jodorowsky, for theater through acting and directing, for martial arts and for so many other things connected to art and to the beauty of life.
Tarot revealed to him, through the teachings of Alejandro Jodorowsky, that the human being is mostly unconscious and that in the center of it there is a huge black, agitated and mysterious place beyond which there lies a diamond shining, as brilliant as the sun; our inner God.
Father of a young girl, he is currently based in Chile.
facebook.com/pages/Christophe-Richart-Carrozza-Tarot-Psicomagia/

Rowen Corkill [UK]

Rowan Corkills work is created from a deep ethnological fascination with various cultural religious and occult beliefs, many of which are founded on a cross pollination of reality and fantasy. The artist uses his practice as a means to explore and examine the endless distortions of reality which the human mind has transformed into fantastical mythologies and ideologies. The similar role of the artist as creator is also questioned with particular interest in how the use of fiction can be used as a tool to acknowledge and question our presence on the planet. The artists work features many strange and bizarre materials collected from human animal and plant life, most of which are imbued with strong symbolic references and meanings. These symbolisms are often created out of superstitious and fictitious beliefs which elevate the objects and materials beyond the ‘norms’ of the everyday. Yet the creations of these beliefs are firmly rooted in realism as the core of all things. Rowan Corkill is a Scottish artists living in London.
rowandgcorkill.com

Freyja Dean [UK]

Freyja Dean studied BA Scientific and Natural History Illustration at Lancaster University before an MA in Art and Science at Central St Martins, London. Other projects have included illustrating specimens for the Royal College of Surgeons and Forensic Facial Reconstruction at Cambridge University.

Design work has included costumes for opera, character design for computer games and various album covers. Dean's work has always been concerned with the natural world, our life cycles and our attitudes towards them.
 
She is currently working for the Royal College of Surgeons on a project creating synthetic body parts for surgical trainees to practice procedures on. As well as this, Dean works on various freelance design projects.
freyjadean.com

Olivier Dzo [France]

Under the odd name of DZO (in capital letters) is Olivier, a self-taught artist and freelance designer from the South of France. Thanks to a family with an artistic affinity, the young Olivier graduated from the School of Fine Arts of Toulouse and begun a successful career in graphic design. But with the creation of the artistic counterpart that is DZO, the French artist wished to go deeper into his exploration of the “noosphere”, a philosophical concept about human thought. For DZO is more than your usual artist. His art, speaks to the old etchings and engravings of religious and occult manuscripts, flirts with alchemy, witchcraft and blasphemy. It is at the same time disturbing, haunting and stimulating. His intricate drawings, full of enigmatic detail, mix sensuality, darkness and mythology. The message beyond the lines are sibylline, surrounding the world of DZO with mystery and fascination.
behance.net/dzo

H.R. Giger [Switzerland]

H. R. Giger is recognized as one of the world’s foremost artists of Fantastic Realism. Born in 1940 to a chemist’s family in Chur, Switzerland, he moved in 1962 to Zurich, where he studied architecture and industrial design at the School of Applied Arts. By 1964 he was producing his first artworks, mostly ink drawings and oil paintings, resulting in his first solo exhibition in 1966, followed by the publication and world-wide distribution of his first poster edition in 1969. Shortly after, he discovered the airbrush and, along with it, his own unique freehand painting style, leading to the creation of many of his most well known works, the surrealistic Biomechanical dreamscapes, which formed the cornerstone of his fame. To date, more than 20 books have been published about Giger’s art.

Giger’s most famous book, Necronomicon, published in 1977, served as the visual inspiration for director Ridley Scott’s film Alien, Giger's first high-profile film assignment, which earned him the 1980 Oscar for the Best Achievement in Visual Effects for his designs of the film's title character, including all the stages of its lifecycle, plus the film’s the extraterrestrial environments. Giger's other well-known film work includes his designs for Poltergeist II, Alien3 and Species, as well as the legendary unmade film, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Dune.  From the onset of his career, Giger also worked in sculpture and had an abiding desire to extend the core elements of his artistic vision beyond the confines of paper into the 3D reality of his surroundings.

“Hans Ruedi” Giger passed away on Monday, 12th May 2014 at the age of 74.
hrgiger.com

Sandra Heeks [UK]

Heeks is a mature student who has recently completed a BA HONS Degree in Creative Arts at Bath Spa University. Her work revolves around a fascination of found organic objects, objects that are thrown away or cast aside and how by re-contextualising them, taking them from their natural environment and photographing them in unfamiliar surroundings, transforms them into something precious and wonderful. Many of the objects Heeks photograph are overlooked, or thought of as worthless or even grotesque. For her, by photographing them, it brings out more than is ordinarily seen, by capturing and focusing on their intricate details; colour, form, texture and shape, to transform them into a sublime object by making the ordinary extraordinary and highlighting the beauty in the not so obvious. She also questions our emotions and prejudices to death and decay which are part of the natural life cycle, yet are feared or produce responses of revulsion.

Orli Ivanov [Russia]

As a child I have had an opportunity to live in Siberia, Lithuania and Israel before the family settlers in the UK where I studied Art. 

My approach to sculpture centers around mortality, it captures the conflict between material disintegration and intellectual fortitude. The mind, subjected to the needs of the primordial body, drowns in desperation. 

The inability to exist beyond it’s primitive self impede the unremitting pursuit towards enlightenment. My work immortalizes the momentary, the suppressed and the impulsive. 
orliivanov.com

Ann-Marie Johnson [UK]

Johnson is a painter, a fabricator and prop maker, having worked for the Youth theatre and a private theatre group. She has recently completed a BA honours Degree in Technical Art and Special Effects for Theatre and Screen, which gave her a wealth of knowledge in materials and technical skills.
She has just completed working on this full life sculpture, which was sculpted in clay, cast in resin and exhibited for her final degree show.
ajtripsternomad.wix.com/ann-mariejohnson-

Sequin Kay [UK]

Sequin Kay is a London based artist who uses sequins to create meticulously ornate and decorative works on canvas and objects. Kay attended Camberwell college of Arts and Goldsmiths University. Her works have been exhibited across London including on the London Underground, Canada and USA. Kay draws inspiration from Indian culture and their connection to light and spirituality. Her work intends to communicate a subconscious meaning concerning the aesthetic experience.

UTOPIAN VISIONS : The artwork took 295 hours to complete, individually applying 24,500 sequins and 1,010 Swarovski crystals. Utopian Visions is connected to visionary journeys that look beyond materialist thought. Utopian Visions is the artists’ interpretation of the astral plane; where we are given lessons on life from the deceased, souls of the past guide us mortal beings on our spiritual journey. The astral plane can be visited consciously through meditation, near death experience, lucid dreaming, or other means

'A lot of struggle as an artist lies in maintaining that cathartic aspect of creation while creating a visually and conceptually interesting piece of engaging work.' Disruptive and fluid patterns guide the pieces and are associated with the reflection of light. The forms and patterns are used to allow the viewer to uncover something about themselves, through the process of looking, seeking and searching.
sequinkay.co.uk

Kayleigh O'Keefe [UK]

Kayleigh O’Keefe is a contemporary artist working in performance, video and film. She was born in Sheffield (1986), received her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from Falmouth College of Arts (2008) and currently lives in London. She has collaborated with other artists and filmmakers, produced and directed immersive live art events for the Pink Bear Club and distributed her performance art videos to an online audience. She has devised and performed live work at festivals such as Dandifest 2014 and E17 Art Trail 2012, competed to become Hamburger Queen 2013 and participated in the performance and development of work for artists Paul Kindersley and Scottee. Kayleigh has also been a panelist and interviewee on live radio and at discussions such as Chin’s Up: Talking Fat and Performance.
kayleighokeefe.co.uk

Shannon Rose Lane [UK]

As a sculptor and training taxidermist, Shannon Rose Lane has worked at events for Tate Modern, The Other Art fair and ArtCube. Her artworks have been exhibited in the window displays of Selfridges and Harrods, and most recently, exhibited and auctioned at the Save Wild Tigers exhibition. She is currently curating an exhibition on September 18th - 19th at Vibe on Brick Lane, where she will show a series of her pieces alongside other female Artists. Shannon's work highlights the disruption of human perception in the modern day, by juxtaposing artificial, infantile colours and textures with images of the natural world. Her sickly sweet sculptures investigate the human psychology behind blind consumerism of synthetic and artificial substances. In a world where we are unsure of how legitimate our reality is, sugar – coated irony questions if ignorance really is bliss.
shannonroselane.com

Simon Lejeune [Belgium]

Simon Lejeune was born in 81 in Namur, Belgium. He is a self-taught artist early influenced by sci-fi/surreal artists like H.R. Giger, Moebius, Yukito Kishiro, Katsuhiro Otomo and many others. He draws with ballpoint pens and a serious obsession to detail, black and white dystopian futures, surreal cybernetic organisms and tortuous tubular machinery.

He is also known to produce, perform and releases hard electronic music. The gear influences his graphic creations and vice versa. At the same time he does commissioned artworks for other producers and labels. In 2013, his works got published in the reference book "Biomech Art", bringing him among a new generation of Biomech artists. He is currently residing in Berlin Germany.
vonkor-lab.tumblr.com

Iain Macarthur [UK]

Born in Swindon, England, Macarthur became a fanatic of art at the age of eight when first introduced to art through the medium of cartoon television shows and comic books.   In 2008 he graduated from Swindon College with a degree in HND Illustration and hopes to progress to a B.A. in Illustration sometime in the future.

Macarthur's work can be described as surreal and unique in its own way. Using mostly pencil, watercolours and pigment pens, he creates portraits of ordinary people but in a unusual way by, embellishing patterns and watercolour effects into the portrait to give a vivid explosion effect—transforming their faces from something plain to something entirely bizarre and wonderful at the same time.
iainmacarthur.com

Vort Man [USA]

Vort Man started making art everyday while living in the Netherlands in 2001.
He spent 5 years between day jobs. In 2006 he started working collaboratively under the name VORCAN. Primarily painting live music, toured through all 50 states. He has been making art full time ever since.

"I was never able to shake the wander lust and took my work to 12 countries before moving to San Francisco. I spent 2 years in Chicago, and now Salt Lake City. I continue to make art everyday. I show my art in group and solo shows and continue to wake up and play "What do I want to do today?"
thevortman.com

Michelle Mildenhall [UK]

All Mildenhall's art is created using latex, it’s a material she has spent years working with, perfecting her skills. The idea came in a flash of inspiration while she was working on a latex outfit for herself.
Mildenhall's art radiates an underlying element of sexual association, not just from her imagery, but also because of the connotations of the medium in which she creates it. Each piece becomes defined and fetishized via its latex conceptualization. Her portraits come from analysing the subjects and stripping them down in a minimalist style whilst retaining their character. It’s not what she has put into the piece that’s important but what she has left out. The negative space is used to its advantage and it lets your eyes fill in the details. Although the images in her work are stylized, Mildenhall feels that they all have strong characters and more often than not there is an erotic/fetishistic element to them, but this is less about the physical appearance than about the state of mind of the subject. Mildenhall want to be drawn to their characters and to be intrigued. Her current series of portraits is a culmination of her exploration of the medium. The work has developed around the limitations and nature of the material and every piece is made by hand and meticulously constructed.

William Nagle [UK]

Born in the midlands and raised on farms coming to London has changed bother how Nagel looked at himself and how he looked at the world around him.

Nagle recently finished a course at Wimbledon School of Art studying Technical Arts and Special Effects and is currently trying to gain recognition both as an artist and as a concept designer.

Demitri Nezis [UK]

Demitri Nezis aka The Krah is an artist / illustrator born in England and raised in Athens Greece.  He has been living and working in the UK for more that 15 years. Previously working as an artist, illustrator, graphic designer, fashion designer, art curator and in-house in the Creative industry.  He sees his work just like hieroglyphics, when people see the images they can read them like an illustrated book without text.
thekrah.com

Nihil [Norway]

A photographer and photomanipulator living in Oslo, Norway. Nihil is developing a dark, mystic anticipation fiction called "Ventre", a highly dystopian and apocalyptic universe, inspired by ancient sacred texts (the book of Revelations, Edda, Upanishads...) The images he creates are portraits of saints and martyrs who once lost their human identity to drown into divine serenity... He is an autodidact for everything he does and find inspirations in religion, psychedelic experiences and episodes of his past in hospitals and medical research centers. Nihil's work is centered on the soul escaping from this tortured prison that is the mortal body. It's also a reflexion about identity and search for individuality. Since 2012, he has exhibited in Paris and Berlin galleries and participated in numerous collective shows in USA and Europe.
nihil.fr

Stefy Pocket [Italy]

Stefy Pocket aka Stefania Tasca is London based photographer, recently graduated with a BA in photojournalism at the London College of Communication. She was born in Milan and moved to London in 2007, where she started to take professional photographs. Tasca has always been interested in report situations where the subject is people and their actions and where the body language tells the story. Studying photojournalism broadened her ideas to investigate different aspects of documentary photography. 
Tasca intrigued by personal curiosity, explores and investigates strangers lives. Fascinated by people stories and finding the beauty and experience in them. This passion derives by a deep interest to record specific realities and communicate to the audience her own photograph’s meaning.

"I like to create that intimate approach to the viewer producing stunning images, showing different perception of cultures and life style. I’m always in search of intimate and spontaneous moments in open spaces and into the throng of public life to record cultures, societies and moments of everyday life. I’m particularly interested in social issues and street life. I like to observe and I have passion for anything creative. In the last year travelling throughout Europe and all over the world I have been inspired by local and global trends. I covered a series of social topics such as the Gipsy pilgrimage of Saint Sarah, British festivals and carnivals, the American life, London underground movements and different DIY cultures. I’m now currently working on a project based on Jamaican cultural transition and environments."
stefypocket.tumblr.com

Scabbage [South Africa]

“Scab’s mediums know no bounds. His origins, he told me, are in roughly drawn comic books, produced to vent his frustrations as a child who then slipped into the dirty underbelly of London’s underground graffiti scene. Since then, he has moved into to delicate pencil sketches; deeply intuitive photography; oil painting; many forms of professional illustration and mural work; animation; creative writing, Tattooing; plasticine creations; and modifying found objects - among many other things. This makes it impossible to describe his style in any general way, but the more I allowed my eyes to consume his offerings, the more reoccurring themes started to appear.

He has a definite fascination with a few specific things: almost every piece presents a myriad of distorted characters with nightmarish proportions; exquisite expressions on grossly exaggerated features which somehow retain incredible realism and breath-taking detail. Despite the churning of my stomach, I also found a hugely compassionate side to Scab’s work. His creations are shocking, sure, but they have that deranged sympathy which ties into the inevitable truths of the real world” Ironically Scabs artwork has earned him a couple of nights in a prison cell while at the same time; a place in the finals for the BBC Wildlife Artist of the year competition.
scabbage.com

Lucy Sparrow [UK]

Working at the intersection of contemporary art and craft, Lucy Sparrow’s work sets the agenda for textiles within the urban art scene. She works mainly with felt and wool, creating over-sized soft versions of existing objects and major art works The aim of this ‘feltism’ is to question, playfully, the politics of artistic production and to tackle (often collaboratively) some of realities of contemporary living, dealing with issues concerning the politics of consumerism, social exclusion and mental wellbeing.

She has advanced her arts practice and social agenda through her own solo shows (“Imitation”, 2012, Hoxton Gallery, London; “Softcore”, 2013, Crocus Gallery, Nottingham), and her work has been shown alongside notable street artists, including Banksy, in the “Urban Take-Over”, the Victoria & Albert Museum’s touring Street Art exhibition and in the “Urban Art Show” (Louise T Blouin Foundation, 2013). She also has works in private and corporate collections in the EU and the US. As part of the strategic vision she has for this field of practice, she curated the “Craftivism” Group Show (W3 London, 2013), reflecting critically on the intersection of fine art, craft, politics and social change. She has been an invited contributor to over 35 group shows, including the annual Modern Panic exhibition (2009-2013) and the City Art Institute of Mental Health Exhibition (Nottingham, 2013-14). Alongside her gallery based practice, she have developed a series of participatory high profile public art projects, including activist work with Greenpeace, and “mini-structures’ a six month long commission for Time Out.

In August 2014, Lucy unveiled an 8-month long project to create an entire cornershop out of felt for a month in Bethnal Green, London. It opened in Brighton at No Walls Gallery on  October 3rd 2014.

Webbo [UK]

Webb started as a painter and graffiti artist but always had a keen interest in sculpture. So the natural development of his style was into 3D and sculptual installations.  He started creating scenes using converted toys and miniatures, combining this with a graffiti aesthetic to produce reliefs, dioramas and single sculptural pieces.in parody of the subcultures of the modern world. He has worked with a professional photographer to produce a set of images of my scenes to be released as posters and prints, and with animators and special effects artists.  Webb has also extensively worked for the Mutoid Waste Company at Glastonbury and the Paralympic closing ceremony aswell as both mutate Britain exhibitions.
facebook.com/web.bo.9

James Wheeldon [UK]

Wheeldon is a recent graduate from the Wimbledon college of arts with a degree in technical arts and special effects course. On the course he explored a number of skills including sculpting, moulding and casting.
"I really enjoy this line of work and have a number of future projects planned and would really like to make use of my skills as an artist."

Trystan Williams [UK]

Williams graduated with a BA in Fine Art Painting from Camberwell College of Arts in 2006, and will start an MA in Digital Fine Art in September 2014, again at Camberwell.

"I realise these things are usually in the 3rd person but I hate writing like that. Basically I've shifted away from painting into more conceptual work which addresses ideas to do with the internet and how people communicate with each other with it. The work involves taking snippets of conversation, excerpts from threads, little isolated sentences and thoughts that people have posted online. I then get these pieces of text laser engraved onto stone. The places I take the text from are usually small online communities where posts either aren't archived or are at least not readily accessible through a simple google search. I enjoy the idea of taking these often transitory and ephemeral expressions of human thought and emotion and having them made into relatively permanent physical objects. Juxtaposing the fast paced nature of the internet and it's never ending torrent of information with one of our oldest forms of recording, storing, preserving and transmitting our culture and knowledge, the carving of words into stone. The pieces of text are as varied in tone and texture as the spectrum of human emotion and thought, and it’s this that I’m trying to get at with these pieces. An attempt to excavate and preserve what is truly human and all too easily lost in the dense humming jungle of high technology and instant online communication."
trystanwilliams.com

Charlotte Wosiek [UK]

Charlotte Wosiek aka HarlotVonCharlotte lives and works in East London as a freelance illustrator and erotic artist. She mixes dark humour and grotesque subject matter in the forms of illustration, sculpture, painting and animation. She graduated with a degree in Illustration from the University of Plymouth in 2009 and has been working as an illustrator and artist ever since.
harlotvoncharlotte.com

Rococo Wonderland [UK]

Rococo Wonderland combines neon lights with printed metal/reclaimed materials to embody/represent themes of chaos, corruption, madness, fear, lunacy, control, power and lust. She aims to convey the notion of 'darkness within light', taking every day themes, fears, thoughts and questions and mixing them with darker notions and interpretations, all connected as the the power source connects to the neon gas and creates the light glow. The work is both physically fragile as well as being focused on the fragility of the world in which we live and the fragility of the human mind.
rococowonderland.com