BIG ACTIVE
PEOPLEText: Ayako Yamatomo
Could you tell me about collaboration’s works with Kam Tang, Genevieve Gauckler and other artists?
All of Big Active’s associate artists have contributed to Head, Heart and Hips. I asked the illustrators and photographers to use their signature style to visually explore the ‘seductive nature of sensual pleasures’. It’s all about taking a commercial art aesthetic and creating a personal response using the power of suggestion. Jasper Goodall’s ‘Amorous Liaisons of the Olympains’ is particularly provocative, and we have made use of a varnish in the printing to emulate bodily fluids…
When you collaborate with them, what do you think is important?
It’s about exchanging and developing ideas and then looking for the most appropriate way to realize them. Keeping things simple is often the best way to achieve the strongest result. When it works best the graphics and the imagery should appear to come together seamlessly…
It seems that your relation with the areas of music is strong, how do you think about the relation between music scene and graphic?
Music and image have always been inextricably linked, particularly at the point which music is marketed to an audience. It’s all about creating defining images. We don’t really see what we do just in straight terms of graphics, it’s more about creating an image – whether that involves photography, or illustration or graphics or a mix of all three. We’re all into music, so it’s really interesting to work on projects where we can combine the things we enjoys the most.
Could you tell your future plan?
We’d really like to come out to Japan and have an exhibition to promote our new book ‘Head, Heart & Hips’. Any offers?
Head, Heart and Hips – The Seductive World of Big Active
Author: Big Active
Features: 208 pages, 24 x 30 cm, full colour, hardcover
Price: €39.90 / $59.00 / £27.99
Released: February 2005
ISBN: 3-89955-060-9
Published by Die Gestalten Verlag
https://www.gestalten.com
Text: Ayako Yamatomo
Images: Courtesy of Die Gestalten Verlag © Big Active