Dr Volker Sommer, A Short History of Hysteria, 2012

top to bottom

Black Bed, 1016 x 660mm, pencil on paper

Burnt Bed, 420 x 297 mm, pencil on paper

Burnt Bed, detail

Black Bed 2, 420 x 297 mm, pencil on paper

White Bed, 1016 x 660mm, acrylic and gouache on paper

From top

Tunnel (sketch) pencil on paper

Tunnel, pencil on paper

Sanctuary I, soap on paper

Sanctuary II, soap on paper

Blue bathroom 1, ink on paper

Blue bathroom 2, ink on paper

Black Shower, 1016 x 660mm, graphite powder on paper

White shower, enamel on paper

White shower detail

Untitled, soap on paper

Untitled detail

White bathroom, enamel and gouache on paper

White bathroom detail

White shower (detail) enamel on paper

Sanctuary I (detail) soap on paper

The works of CA explicitly reconstruct a domestic domain where women are seemingly suppressed and relegated to preside over linen, beds and dishes. in CA’s Breaking Point, we watch a sculptured house-wife washing dishes, her hands made from soap that slowly dissolve under running water. That she will break the plate she is cleaning is therefore predictable. is her controlling husband subconsciously enjoying his wife’s docility and foreseeable clumsiness? is she feeding his desire to please him? or is she staging a muted revolt? Will there be regular outbursts – the complementary side of routine domesticity? in CA’s piece at least, one pair of hands dissolves each day – and so, one plate is bound to break each day.

Dr Volker Sommer, A Short History of Hysteria, 2012

Breaking Point: life size sculpture, soap, hair, sink, water

Not Waving but Drowning is an ongoing series that celebrates impermanence and mutation in objects. The situations that the pieces evoke describe disappointment, but also reconciliation with that disappointment. Abject circumstances are presented in their hopelessness, but by the fact of their presentation as objects they also, on reflection, revel in the disintegration of firmly held beliefs into simplicity, an abstraction into purity that can be beautiful and point to a new, empty space for things to occur.

Not Waving but Drowning is the title of British poet Stevie Smith’s most famous poem.

Pearl Necklace

sink, soap necklace

He: I am going to give you a pearl necklace!

She: Oh! Aren’t you lovely!

Poor Chap

soap, water

We Table

One way mirror, soap, steel, copper, bedsprings, glass

The We Table is an object that offers both companionship and objectification in a relationship. The table top is a one way mirror, on to which one party can urinate. The person lying beneath the table can choose to see only a reflection of themselves, while remaining visible for the other person to enjoy themselves. The table is fully fitted with a drainage system and the table top slopes gently for improved flow. Copper vessels are traditionally used for their purification abilities.

130 page graphic novel adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, published September 2010 by SelfMadeHero.

“I am a complete evangelist for this book, which I consider to be quite magnificent. Anyango has brought to life Conrad’s nightmare journey far more successfully than the movie-makers who came before her; I’m certain that in the future, I will think of Heart of Darkness, and see only her drawings.

Every page is both extraordinary, and extraordinarily beautiful, and I urge you to go out and buy it.”
Rachel Cooke, the Observer

“…a murky monochrome vision; subliminal connections influenced by avant-garde cinema; surreal mismatches of scale that allude to colonialism’s distortions of moral perspective.”
Michel Faber, The Guardian

“Conrad’s exploration of power, greed and madness plays out as disturbingly as ever.”
Sam Jones, the Guardian

“brooding with mood and menace”
Paul Gravett, Comics historian and Author of Graphic Novels: Everything You Need to Know

“it is the sensational artwork by Anyango that makes the book…in the crepuscular gloom of her heavy pencil drawings, a pall of grey and sepia with contrasts of black, she catches something potent about the sick heart of colonialism and also about the resilient and unforgiving landscape in which the drama of the impossibility of human redemption unfurls. It is not Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, not quite, nevertheless the visual content is so painstakingly executed, so beautiful, that the pages look as if they’ve strayed in from the world of painting.”

The Times

2x2 is a graphic novel currently in progress. These are some rough spreads.

Illustrations for The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

From top:

Garage

Chair

Corner 1

Corner 2

Radiator