Rhian Lloyd (she / her)
In my practice I try to answer questions such as: “what does a bike look like?” And “how can I make this out of cardboard?” This year I have made a book for children called The Star of the Show. I have also been interested in creating lo-fi theatrical interventions in institutional spaces using drawing, costume, performance and projection.
The Star of the Show
The Star of the Show follows a child called Violet as she deals with feelings of disappointment and embarrassment at not being cast as the lead in the play. She eventually discovers that there are lots of different ways to be important as well as being the star.
This project involved location drawing and drawing from film to establish the story’s setting and atmosphere, followed by a process of making versions of each spread many times, then editing and refining them to create the final book. I most enjoyed drawing the buildings and hairstyles.
The book was printed at Good Press on Munken paper and hand-bound. The covers are screenprinted and each is unique in colour and pattern.
Please email with any enquiries.
The Parliament of Foules
Chaucer wrote the poem ‘The Parliament of Foules’ in the 15th century. It is a dream-vision poem about a group of birds who gather together to partner for the year. Each bird makes a case for the bird that they would like to partner with. The poem is written in Middle English.
In the section of the poem that I chose to interpret, a ‘royal’ eagle proclaims his love for another eagle. I was interested in how a poem could be re-imagined as a performance and I began investigating the character of the eagle in light of the research I had been doing for my dissertation, which was concerned with the origins of romantic tradition in the courtly love literature of the Middle Ages. I experimented with visualising a declaration of love, and linking this with the performative realm of the theatre seemed appropriate.
Behind the Scenes: The Star of the Show
Some of the drawings I did in order to work out the finals.
The Parliament of Foules Part 2
I spent the winter break coming into the studio every day and it was mostly quite empty. I wanted to combine what I had learnt about the eagle with my own feelings about the Reid building, a declaration of love towards it or an intervention into its strange smooth spaces. I interviewed students and staff about their experiences of the building and collaged them with images of the interventions.
The Living Room
A collograph to promote an eclectic exhibition at the Old Hairdresser’s in collaboration with Daisy Lewisohn, who is in third year graphic design. I designed the collograph and Daisy did the lettering and printed it.
The collograph was inspired by a doll’s house in the Guildford museum. We wanted to represent the warren-like space of the venue and play on the exhibition’s domestic title.
Drawings
Selected drawings from throughout the year.
