Can you explain how you two first started working together?
After meeting through friends, we quickly ended up sharing a studio space in South Bermondsey. I would regularly dog-sit Cat’s dog, Murphy, until we eventually became a couple. Our working relationship came soon after when I decided to delve into the world of WebGL and there began to be some crossover between our practices.
What excited you both about being able to collaborate together alongside 50 other contributors for a project like 50/50?
First of all because we get the opportunity to create work as a couple. The process is much more streamlined when we’re on the same page creatively and ideologically. We’ve been throwing around some ideas for some time, and the 50/50 brief was a great opportunity to explore some of those.
How did you both agree on an approach for the brief of ‘VISIBILITY”, and how was this represented in your T-shirt design?
DIGI – GXL as a collective is a group promoting visibility from the core of its manifesto, so we felt that in this instance it wouldn’t be necessary to delve too deeply into any singular definition or agenda – instead we took the brief at face value and interpreted it in terms of a direct warning sign. The design itself is reappropriated from a motorway LED ‘Fog Warning – Caution Low Visibility’ sign.
How do you choose which projects you’ll work on together? What’s your criteria?
Projects that offer a crossover between our working practices, that we both believe could lead to an interesting outcome – Cat in 3D, and myself in code.
What would your advice be to any other creative wanting to diversify into a new field, like you’ve done?
Time is not an issue. We’ve often found the idea of learning a new skill daunting when thinking about the timeline of a learning curve, or the time between discovering something new, and the moment when I’d be confident enough to introduce it into my working practice. This can often lead to debates over whether it would be worth it at all.
We’ve found though, that even taking a couple of hours to learn the fundamentals of a new skill can massively impact the way you currently think about work, and lead to totally new outcomes.
What do you both see as being the biggest challenge facing young creators in 2019 and beyond?
Money and living costs are definitely a big challenge.
50 artists, 50 t-shirt designs, 50% profit to artists, 50% profit to Justice4Grenfell. Shop now.
