[pdf - 2.18 MB] Sonderheft zur ISH - Form

14 Bath Solutions
Die Geschiche des Badens à la
Andrew Rae: Schräge Mischwesen
neben Robotern und Borat in seiner
bizarren Badehose.
The history of the bath according to
Andrew Rae: strange hybrid creatures
alongside robots and Borat in
his bizarre bathing suit.
When it comes to baths, the ISH in Frankfurt is the
trend-setting venue. Here, leading manufacturers
present their latest products and show us today
what the bath of tomorrow might look like. For
form, English graphic designer Andrew Rae gave a
free rein to his ideas on the theme of bathing.
Grotesque, yet fascinating and always a little dark is an
appropriate description of the scenes which the British
illustrator likes to enrich with lab equipment, cables and
absurd instruments. “Perverted Science”, the title of an
event at Club 333 in Shoreditch, London, where Andrew
Rae began his career in 1998 designing flyers, is still a
fitting description of the major theme of his works.
Rae’s ability to bind together seemingly unrelated things
into narratives particularly comes into its own in his
busy scenes. It is not for nothing that his named sources
of inspiration are Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter
Brueghel the Elder. His pictured illustration, in formal
terms not so dissimilar from Bosch’s “The Garden of
Earthly Delights”, tells the history of bathing. “Well, my
version of it,” corrects Andrew Rae. The scenery is populated
by figures and elements from every channel of information.
The river Styx is flowing from the underworld
of Greek mythology and Joseph Bazalgette, the engineer
of London’s sewage system, is standing on its
banks. A women in a red bikini is taking a sour shower
under a giant version of Philippe Starck’s Juicy Salif lemon
squeezer. Space tourists float in zero gravity, we
can make out Borat, the Kazakh television reporter, in
his tasteless, garish green bathing suit and in the central
image a gigantic Hummer has landed, with a pool on the
loading area, complete with bikini girls, directly from a
hip­hop music video. Does Rae personally watch a lot of
TV? “Yes. I guess you could say that.” He develops associations
as he draws: “I start at some point with my
theme, and as I draw ideas come to me, then more and
more details come and in between I research a bit.”
Thus the internet is an important source of information
for him, as is his collection of old encyclopedias and
science books.
In his works, Andrew Rae, who studied illustration in
Brighton, pairs the laconic humor of his illustratorcolleague
David Shrigley with Marcel Dzama’s obscure
image worlds. With his trusting, somewhat naïve felt­tip
pen­style, Andrew Rae succeeds in producing his extraordinary
scenes with wit and irony. His illustrations
regularly appear in England in the “Guardian” and other
newspapers and magazines, he took on wall designs for
Selfridges in London and works for musicians and record
labels. It was as art director of the cartoon series
“Monkey Dust” on BBC3 that he became really well
known in England. He followed this up with three more
animation jobs. He also recently redesigned the entire
on air identity for MTV Asia. Andrew Rae enjoys this
work, because it follows completely different procedures:
Animation means direct teamwork – a welcome
change to the solitariness of illustration. This is why Rae
also works in a collective of studios called Peepshow
Collective in London. There, ten designers work on analog
and digital, commercial and free projects with a
main focus on illustration and animation. Andrew Rae
has just finished a new animation for Channel Four. He
developed the trailer for Mesh, a platform for digital and
interactive animation created in 2001. A job that seems
to be made for him: “Most of my illustrations find their
way onto the computer sooner or later. This is why next
I would like to do an exhibition with good old­fashioned
pictures on the wall.”
www.andrewrae.org.uk
www.peepshow.org.uk
Bath Solutions 15