My name is Martin Karlsson and I’m a visual artist from Sweden, living in Stockholm. The piece is called London – An Imagery, and it consists of 123 pencil drawings. Very simple drawings like impressions of the city. When I was younger, one of my favourite games was called ‘Chill’, and it was like a horror role playing game set in Victorian London. And some of the products were illustrated by a 19th century illustrator; his name is Gustav Doré, and he did these very nice Gothic scenes. They are something in between documentations and kind of saga imageries. When I moved here to London a year ago, I didn’t have that much experience of the city besides these drawings that had somehow followed me from my childhood. So with my sketchbook I started to update these old drawings from 1872.
These are very small drawings blown up sometimes like ten times, and printed on weather-resistant vinyl. The hoarding that I designed is enclosing these new Tate buildings that are about to be constructed. I kind of like working in this almost, like, folkish way, you know, tradition, that people can really understand what they see. Everyone can appreciate or can relate to pencil drawings, because everyone has done them at some time in their lives.
