Jess Bonham and Anna Lomax

0:14Hi everyone hello I'm Anna I'm Jess and say we're coming to talk to you about two of the projects that we work on together Jess and I met well I think longer ago just thinks me recently rediscovered today yeah what we'll start talk a little bit about how we met and how we came to work together we graduated together from a degree in illustration at Brighton University back in 2007 there we are when we were students we were we hadn't really different practices didn't we we we were completely inspired by different things. And I you were I was all about well I still am actually all about the pound shop get my nails done depth of market panel cat but chat magazine yeah I actually said that.

1:08And went to be for Brighton. And I went in and they were like so what magazines do you read was like track magazine yeah Bella and then I came out my mom was like how did the interview go and was like they asked what magazines I read and hello what did you say I was like chat magazines like you wouldn't say what Dazed and Confused what's wrong with you I was in two completely different stuff the work that I was doing was very monochrome it really concentrated on negative space it was really minimalist I looked at architecture and Japanese culture Japanese graphic design I mean there was where we were really good friends at university but there was no chance we were ever going to work together we just understand ends of the spectrum we sat next to each other but Jess actually built a wall between the two of us because I had so much stuff I just like minimal yeah I would perk up a little ism and negative space and Anna would focus on fillings yes hence the wall.

2:01So yeah it was it was quite interesting when we graduated we both went to work as for Krissi McDonald's and John Shaw who was shooting a lot of crisps he stuff at the time. And we were both pop making I mean it was more in line with what and I was doing I still had aspirations to be a photographer one day and but yeah it was a year of a year of working together and as set designers and pop makers I think that's what opened your eyes to being still a photographer is working with them and seeing what John was up to and being like yeah.

2:34I was always looking over at this photography side of things whilst I was there making a washing machine out of cardboard but when that campaign finished that we worked on it was the iron campaign Orange and I went off to work as a as an assistant for Julian brought a portrait photographer and you were you were doing design and and it wasn't for it for a couple of years until I went freelance because I was full-time assisting with this one photographer that I started to discover my own work and kind of we experiment with what I was doing this is rather embarrassing to show we shared a studio at this point I should say and then. I was doing my own thing.

3:20And then we decided that we probably should try and work together since Jess as a photographer. And I was there making stuff and it just is really embarrassed to show this I advised to show it.

3:29But we but it's a really good thing to show because it was it was based on this trip that I did to Tom jeunesse and the trip that I think today and and it was really inspired by all the flotsam and jetsam like discarded and didn't really know what to do with it.

3:46But I felt that it would lend itself really well to some kind of photo shoot that didn't involve people.

3:53So I went to Anna and you were really up for it.

3:55And we went down to the under nest together and loaded up our car with all this lattice all this crap and took it back to the studio and laid it out and started to play with compositions and work with like how we could bring these discarded things to life and give them a new lease of life and put them on a bit of a pedestal and kind of what came out of those explorations was this shoe and was like I think it was where we kind of realized that where my maximalism and Jessa's minimalism yo come together and create a happy medium and I could make being more colorful and she could make me be more clean yeah. So it kind of we suddenly realized for the first time in many years having known each other that this was the start of quite an interesting process and quite an interesting collaboration of of of ideals yeah today gesture in a meeting and she said it was three years ago.

4:45But it wasn't more like six or seven so that's the kind of time right. I have a really warped sense of time I don't know where it goes but I'm fast forward three years three and we have been working together non-stop on and off somewhere between the two yeah exactly but we're going to show two projects we do a lot of commercial work together.

5:07But the projects that we're going to show today are personal and I think always our personal projects inform our commercial work.

5:16So we're really keen on doing as much personal projects as possible and this is something that it's nice that featured what's called she said and it came off the back of an email that I received and basically there's a girl in my building who I've never met and I got an email and it said well as the way you might have got a letter and two people in the building got the letter and I'm really worried about the letter that everyone's received and basically it might have concerned you.

5:44But I just want to assure you all that all my clients are really well vetted and since my injury people have got quite upset because my I've not been taking on his many clients and I was kind of reading injury and then just like I'm really well-respected and the dominatrix industry she's like the lady that lives above me what I was like what injury like this is so many questions but I've never met her I don't I still don't know who she is in the building so she said but a lot of her clients have taken her new journey into becoming more of a graphic designer is a bit of a shock anyway.

6:22So I show just that email naturally like mum dad look at this jets look at this you're gonna love it and a there's a project in that yeah and we just we just thought there was something something really exciting behind this idea of a kind of powerful like powerful independent kind of slightly mature woman lady who has this secret life.

6:44This is an example of some of the references that we exchanged between us in the lead-up to these projects it's actually for another project that we did wasn't fair to him yeah well one was from from one project. And this one was like I think he called in this this pair of amazing made me put them on on the shoot and then took pictures of men we didn't actually use them but she was threatening spent picturing we've edited on the references that we're gonna show you tonight quite heavily by the way.

7:19This is basically what what made the cut I bet you dread to think what we might have shown but I guess what emerged from such from that starting point was was this project it's all about always about material and texture and collects a lot of stuff and I think taking those things and seeing what relates and sort of placing those things together and just getting the right level of growing up and the right an innuendo and looking at something and being like is it or is that just me I think it's quite important we we do we really like to be quite suggestive and and kind of tactile with with with the materials so this projects called visual noise and it was it was a response to a brief about sound and and we were really interested in in the descriptive terms that sound designers use to describe certain qualities of sound because it comes from we do a lot of animation stuff together.

8:25And I think that we've been commissioning sound to go with those animations and then because we don't know what you're meant to say and these scenarios so we'll sit in the studio and be like we want it more like well just tendency go really animated and start doing the sounds and stuff like that.

8:40And then it really like there's actually descriptive words so when you go and sit in with the with the sound designer they actually use the correct words so we quite like this disparity between us making good stands and Reimer need to be more we do these correct thing but more breathy or something the real side of it needs to be crunchy and then you're like that's that's really kind of onomatopoeic or is it onomatopoeic it just it just like generates a real visual those those descriptive terms so this project was about translating those descriptive terms for sound back into visuals and also like bringing that element of innuendo into it.

9:22So this is rich and wet tinny and tight hardened juicy and it was also this was for an exhibition that was here just a couple of weeks ago on that all over there which kind of brings us quite nicely backgrounds [Applause]