Illustration
Thomas Hedger
Thomas Hedger is a UK based visual artist. He studied Graphic Communication Design at Central Saint Martins and Visual Communication at the Royal College of Art. Thomas’ work is inspired by ambience and language and is driven to expand the representation of illustration. He mixes strong lines with fluid shapes and bold colours, creating punchy and irreverent artworks. Thomas’s drawings have received awards from the V&A Museum, WIA, Adobe and Creative Review and have been exhibited in London at the Design Museum, The London Design Fair and Pick Me Up at Somerset House.
Sponsors
RCA Fund
Thomas’ recent projects are part of an ongoing illustration research practice. Through expanded approaches to image-making, and looking at the flexibility of an image to contain and project meaning, the research explores how interpretations digress and meander depending on image replication, circulation, and the importance of letting go of an authoritative voice. In pushing an image through feedback and interaction, the work moves into partial autonomy. This autonomy looks to shift his practice beyond illustrative conventions.
By generating a card you are creating a visual through random association between image and text, taken from a predefined dataset. This new narrative can be submitted to the gallery, which becomes a resource for interesting and unique stories.
You may also contribute to this conversation by adding a written connection between pairs of images. This could be discursive, descriptive, detailed or abstract, anything from a thought, phrase or poetry that is read between the images. These texts are then combined with the existing dialogue for others to generate cards from.
This piece is formed from an illustration research practice looking at the images ability to obtain partial autonomy under the theory of three worlds: World1, the world of the physical, World2, the world of mental processes, and World3, the world of objective knowledge. The generated cards contain the product of thought and unintended consequences of World3. This work investigates changes in the ways images are approached and understood as tools of language beyond singular intentions.