LAURA GALLAGHAN ASPIRATIONAL

Illustrator Laura Callaghan is showcasing her tongue in cheek hyper-detailed girls in new exhibition, Aspirational, starting Thursday at KK Outlet.

Every job is a self portrait of the person who does it, autograph your job with excellence Laura Callaghan is focusing on the popularity of inspirational quotes on social media platforms through her art medium of illustration. The girls are complex creatures, often looking unimpressed with life, and to be honest aren’t we all? In a world where girls are torn between being told that they can do what ever they want and yet still being compared against impossible beauty standards, it’s no wonder girls are giving the world the side eye.

Callaghan is keen to explore these contradictions and puts her girls in relatable scenarios, which will leave you slightly uneasy. Her show is an intricate collection of fresh new watercolour paintings, printed textiles and screen prints, which are much more inspiring than your Instagram feed packed full of illogical quotes. They’re also about a thousand times more relatable to gal-life. Quote after quote of things like “Be with someone who looks at you every single day like they’ve won the lottery” and “Every job is a self portrait of the person who does it, autograph your job with excellence” eventually starts to feel like a bit of a kick in the teeth when you’re bored at your uninspiring job, drinking an overpriced dishwater latte.

Wonderland caught up with the woman herself, who talked us through some of the themes of Aspiration, the flaws and failings of social media and the relationship between millennials and capitalism. The exhibition runs from 2nd June – 2nd July 2016 at KK Outlet and it is not something you’re going to want to miss. Be with someone who looks at you every single day like they've won the lottery and talks about you like you put the stars in the sky.

the inspiration behind your ‘Aspirational’ show.

The pieces are a tongue in cheek homage to the prevalence of inspirational quotes on social media. They are pretty inescapable at the moment, copy and paste philosophies and borrowed insights – but when big ‘profound’ phrases, which are intended to motivate and inspire are applied to real life situations they quickly lose all meaning. They’ve now been co-opted by brands to try engage with their customers on a human level, and bizarrely it seems to work – these are the posts with the most likes, the most ‘ME!’ comments underneath. It’s really interesting that they’ve gained so much momentum, though I read a article which suggested people are drawn to positive affirmations in times of hardship and recession, like how readers gravitated towards Superman in the 1930s so perhaps that plays a part in it and I’m just a cynical git. Ahem – ‘No one ever injured their eyesight by looking on the bright side.’

How did you develop your hyper-detailed, technicolor aesthetic?

I started working the way I work now about four years ago. I was doing a weekly fashion illustration for a Sunday magazine where I just had to draw straight catwalk looks and found the more detailed and patterned and colourful a garment was the more I enjoyed painting it. But traditional fashion illustration is super restrictive, it’s solely about the clothing and not so much the mood and atmosphere, so I started working on series of paintings in my spare time where I applied the elements of fashion illustration I enjoyed but took a more narrative approach, so placing the characters in an environment and filling up the pieces with details that would create a richer story I suppose. And it stuck!

Tell us about the materials you work with and why.

For my personal pieces I use watercolour and pen. I like that I can build up a richness of texture and get some really fine detail with smaller brushes. I think there’s a more human quality to the watercolour work too, you can see how a pattern was created, the hint of some of the initial pencil work, any mistakes I’ve tried to cover up…it takes a LONG time to complete a painting though, I’d say each of the pieces for this show probably took an average of 40-50 hours from start to finish. Obviously for commissioned work time is a factor so I ink those illustrations by hand and then colour digitally. Using photoshop also gives me flexibility to make client changes relatively easily – there’s no undo button for painted work so you’re kind of stuck with what you get. Words: Lizzie Griffin and Emily Dixon