Ampersand is connection: Anthony Burrill’s London exhibition is a skillful call for the alliance
“Words, gentle humour, no-nonsense communication and people are at the heart of Anthony Burrill’s practice and his distinctive brand of upbeat messaging” reads the profile of internationally acclaimed graphic artist and designer who embraces the power of simplicity throughout his impactful portfolio of works. Now, the British artist who pushes his traditional discipline of choice aka letterpress printing into new territories via collaborations with other like-minded creatives across numerous disciplines returns to Jealous with the exhibition ‘You Have The Answer’ (27 Oct 2022 - 20 Nov 2022).
‘You Have The Answer’ brings the artist’s habitually-used ampersand into center stage with the symbol acting as an “emblem for human connection” as “large monochromatic screen-prints will line the walls, some of which were created in the Jealous Print Studios.”
The exhibition showcases Burrill’s new body of works alongside a hand-painted wall mural in collaboration with Many Hands spanning an entire wall of the gallery.
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The exhibition follows Burrill’s giant typographic mural in Leeds that was unveiled In January 2020. The public artwork ‘YOU & ME & ME & YOU’ was unveiled in the historic center of the city with Burrill’s signature letterpress typography blown up to epic proportions, covering one side of the 88-ft-high, seven-storey canal-side building, The Calls.
The white-on-black piece embodies Burrill’s mission to “say the most with the least, and connect with people through words” on a monumental scale, and speaks to the importance of human connection during the pandemic he explained in the short documentary directed by Ben G. Brown.
The mural signifies “a particular moment and a particular time” during the global pandemic crisis, and highlights the “value of relationships” between people, and the “simplicity of that connection… that connection is our humanity” he says.
In his interview with It’s Nice That, Burrill added that he hopes the mural remains in place for decades to mark “a time when we were collectively thinking about friends, family and wider society. The pandemic will affect us for the rest of our lives and will become part of our shared history. It’s given us time to think about the things that are truly important. Life is about those we hold dear and how they each influence us. I hope the mural will have the same connection with people in the future as it does now.”
A tribute to the city where he studied in the late 80s, the mural felt like “some sort of homecoming” and that going back reminds him of “where I came from and the values it gave me growing up” he says in the film produced by Charlotte Rosson with production company Maniac, and DoP Matt Gentleman.
The mural that repeats the two words ‘YOU’ and ‘ME’ in alternating size and order, connected by an ampersand, based on Condensed & Elongated Sans Serifs — published by Stephenson Blake around the beginning of the twentieth century— was curated by Laura Wellington at In Good Company, supported by King & Co and installed by Bread Collective.
“The artwork has grown to become part of the fabric of the city and a daily part of the lives of the people who live and work there,” says Burrill. “The message of the mural is about the importance and simplicity of human connection. The key part of the work is the ampersand. It represents the glue that holds our relationships together. The ‘AND’ in YOU & ME. It’s this connection that makes every human interaction important.”
“The prints and mural in the exhibition take the form of the ampersand, in this case the same type that was used in the Leeds mural, and creates abstract patterns using a repeat and rotation of the letterform. The interlocked shapes remind us of how we are linked with other people. How those alliances are interdependent and shape the fabric of our lives” he adds.
Comprised of “new bold, graphic artworks” never before exhibited to the public that calls for alliance, unity, collaboration and connection via the ampersand — a logogram that can be traced back to the 1st century A.D. and the old Roman cursive, in which the letters E and T occasionally were written together to form a ligature of the letters et—Latin for and — the exhibition is the latest installment in a series of collaborations between Burrill and Jealous.
You Have The Answer, Anthony Burrill at Jealous East, 27 Oct 2022 to 20 Nov 2022.
Tags/ typography, exhibition, mural, letterpress, anthony burrill, graphic artist, leeds, britain, covid19, ampersand
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