This coming January, the Perth Museum and Art Gallery, will showcase the mighty hand drawn ink-sketch of the entire city of Perth in Scotland. The sketch is around 2 meters and took several months to complete, using inks on archival paper and mounted onto Diasec for public display.
This cityscape is part of a huge national art project by art duo Carl Lavia and Lorna Le Bredonchel. They aim to produce a 69-page portrait of the whole of the UK.
In 2016 Carl Lavia joined forces with photographer Lorna Le Bredonchel and together they formed the ambitious '69 cities of the UK' project.
Carl who goes by the nickname Sketch is a self-taught artist based in London. He has been sketching since the age of 5 when he first became interested in the aesthetics of architecture, maps, and cityscapes. Whilst in his early work he created fictional cities, Carl’s current practice focuses on depicting visited cities from an aerial viewpoint, emphasizing the abstraction of pattern and intensifying the detail and abundance of information. Predominantly working with ink on archival paper, Carl distinguishes between drawing and his approach – sketching – which allows for a more immediate and impressionistic response.
Lorna studied photography at LCC, she handles creative output across all aspects, including research, mapping, photography, drone video + still photography, online presence, and securing exhibition space within each city.
During their epic road trip, Carl is sketching in large scale every single city within the UK, alongside Lorna who is documenting the entire process. Each artwork takes 1 to 3 months to create, during which time they explore the city by foot, Carl making sketches and Lorna undertaking planning, research and taking photographs. The cityscape is then created, using the small sketches and photographic fragments, using only black and white, pen on paper, to capture simultaneously the intricate details and the vast expanse of the urban environment.
Carl and Lorna began their collaborative project in Birmingham in 2016, followed by Manchester and Edinburgh in 2017. Each artwork will be on public display within its respective city, and exhibitions have so far been held at a number of significant locations including Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, as well as the central libraries of Manchester and Edinburgh. At the beginning of 2018 Dundee was completed, and was on show at The McManus, Dundee's Art Gallery and Museum. Next came the city of Stirling, now on display at The Tolbooth, Stirling's venue for live music and the arts.
Currently, Carl and Lorna are working on the beautiful city of Perth. The ink-sketch is nearly complete and will go on display in the Perth Museum and Art Gallery this coming Jan 2019.
Up next: the city of Inverness, Aberdeen, and then Glasgow.
After Glasgow they will form a major exhibition of all the Scottish cityscapes together, showing in several spaces throughout the country with an accompanying book.
Carl has sketched St Matthews Church 3 times! an intimidating building with a story rooted in Scotch Whisky, windows from other churches, the WW1 Black Watch Colours and sheer beauty of the stunning 212 ft architectural structure - the stuff of legend!
Several sections had to be rubbed out and re-created.
Beginning the 3rd panel of Perth.
We have coined the phrase, blood sweat tears and ink! - most of our clothes have ink stains.
St John's church Kirk, Perth, Scotland.
The middle section of the river Tay.