KISS-ME-QUICK-AND-GO-MY-HONEY (and other stories)

With KISS-ME-QUICK-AND-GO-MY-HONEY (and other stories), the nine illustrators hope to be personal, individual, witty, intelligent and original. Their work is diverse and reflect their diverse backgrounds and fields of interest and expertise: picture books, editorial illustration, academic teaching, graphic design, print making and painting. In addition to their own ‘other stories,’ each responded to the title KISS-ME-QUICK-AND-GO-MY-HONEY with pictures of loss, love, longing, nonsense and suspense – thereby showing that meaning is never fixed, but always in the process of being created through the artist’s (and the viewer’s!) consideration of different contexts.

The New York-based critical writer on design, Veronique Vienne, is likely to have coined the term authorial illustration in the mid-nineties. It has been used in the USA and UK to describe work in which the illustrator’s signature or voice is evident in the work. It could refer to published narrative illustration, but also to individual art works aimed at gallery exhibitions or merchandise such as stationary or clothing. Even though illustrators are proudly and consciously claiming to work as communicators in an ‘industry’ the days are long gone that they are expected to remain faceless in the background of an advertising project or stay clear of gallery walls.