BLACK MATTER
BLACK MATTER is a story concerning the metamorphosis of a lonely young woman over the course of an evening, as she travels through her gloomy neighbourhood.
In the work, Cat Sims invokes a classic Zombie narrative, yet one that she employs in the service of psychogeography. She withholds the cause of her protagonist's infection and eventual transformation, instead, the work offers a series of deadly clues which point to a plurality of external causes; the built environment and the vast inequalities in wealth - drawn in her cityscapes, the pulsating presence of social media/dating apps, and strange and mysterious designer drugs.
In the work, Cat Sims invokes a classic Zombie narrative, yet one that she employs in the service of psychogeography. She withholds the cause of her protagonist's infection and eventual transformation, instead, the work offers a series of deadly clues which point to a plurality of external causes; the built environment and the vast inequalities in wealth - drawn in her cityscapes, the pulsating presence of social media/dating apps, and strange and mysterious designer drugs.
Many of the panels were sketched on Sims' walks around her own borough of SW8. Over a two-year period she documented the vast transformation of this area. These original sketches were then reworked to compose BLACK MATTER, themselves transformed, they now exist somewhere between social record and horror fiction.
Black Matter © Cat Sims 2017
XENOS: At the Edge of Life
© Cat Sims 2018
Printed in Berlin by Drucken 3000
Printed in Berlin by Drucken 3000
Sims’ newest comic about environmental collapse — triggered through the human transformation of the natural world — Xenos: At The Edge of Life debuted at this year’s ELCAF. The book comprises a series of disaster scenarios divided into five sections, some set in the near future, others in the near past, which might nevertheless be a possible future. The work presents ideas surrounding waste, industrialised farming, viral mutation and infection in exploding visuals in visceral and intricate flourescent yellow and black graphics. - STACK X ELCAF’s ‘10 Comics Everyone Should Read ‘
DOPE Magazine
© Cat Sims 2018
Full page comic strip to accompany an article on 'Bang Up and Smash' - an overview of womens' prisons in the UK, and a political analysis of their physical and ideology construction - for the first edition of DOPE magazine.
Very little has been written about women’s prisons, especially in the UK, and most discourse is either patronising and gendered or detached and academic. ‘Bang Up and Smash’ aims to break with this, and put an anarchist critique at the heart of the discussion around prison. Jail and the prison society is pervasive in our culture, yet these institutions (and those that feed them) remain shrouded in mystery for many people.
S P A C E Zine
© Cat Sims 2017
Printed in Glasgow by Risotto Studio
Printed in Glasgow by Risotto Studio
Cat Sims confronts issues of social housing in latest zine, Space
Cat Sims’ latest publication, Space, is an amalgamation of “hope, spirit and modernism” decorated in the red and black-hued pages of a printed zine. At a time of social and political change, the illustrations inside draw upon the “architecture of social housing, interiors and public environments constructed in London” and the capital’s surrounding areas.
“At a very general level, I am interested in the connection between architecture, design and social democracy which can be traced back to the Bauhaus,” Cat explains. “Regarding my drawing practice more specifically, I am interested in the notion of allegory in the work of early modernist painters such as Courbet and Manet and, in particular, their picturing of private and public space.”
Cat grew up on a low-rise estate in Bracknell, a designated new town in 1949, an experience which formed her observations on the topic of “the home” and public environments. “The image of the home is an allegorical device; it is a site of social relations and, as the title refers, the organisation of space,” she says.
“At a very general level, I am interested in the connection between architecture, design and social democracy which can be traced back to the Bauhaus,” Cat explains. “Regarding my drawing practice more specifically, I am interested in the notion of allegory in the work of early modernist painters such as Courbet and Manet and, in particular, their picturing of private and public space.”
Cat grew up on a low-rise estate in Bracknell, a designated new town in 1949, an experience which formed her observations on the topic of “the home” and public environments. “The image of the home is an allegorical device; it is a site of social relations and, as the title refers, the organisation of space,” she says.
“The new towns and various social housing projects of the 1950s and 1960s were a crucial component, alongside education, full employment and healthcare in the realisation of a new, more equal, post-war society.”
“Freeing the worst-off from the impediments of overcrowding, disease and pollution by resourcing each with a safe and secure home was considered fundamental to bringing about substantive equality of opportunity. So, I suppose you could say that the collection of environments featured in Space are a celebration of this set of ideas.”
Dalmatians, open spaces overloaded with plants, a Black Flag record and rows of rooms built upon one another; Cat’s intricate and illustrative detailing interprets social housing and London’s architecture as a whole, through a celebration of fine-printed risograph. “I’ve become very keen on making risographs — the printing technique used to produce Space,” she notes. "This is mostly because of the vibrant colours of the inks, but also because the process as it introduces unpredictable imperfections.”
Dalmatians, open spaces overloaded with plants, a Black Flag record and rows of rooms built upon one another; Cat’s intricate and illustrative detailing interprets social housing and London’s architecture as a whole, through a celebration of fine-printed risograph. “I’ve become very keen on making risographs — the printing technique used to produce Space,” she notes. "This is mostly because of the vibrant colours of the inks, but also because the process as it introduces unpredictable imperfections.”
BLOW OFF
© Cat Sims 2018
Album artwork and pull-out CD inlay for guerilla-gig-theatre show Blow Off. The album will be released in 2019.
Blow Off is half gig, half theatre show about a woman who is intent on blowing the patriarchy sky-high. It premiered as part of the Traverse Theatre’s Edinburgh Festival programme 2016 and played to packed out audiences across Scotland.
Created collaboratively as a band, Blow Off combines performer / playwright / theatre-maker Julia Taudevin's epic monologue with the musical sorcery of composer / musician Kim Moore, aka Wolf, and Susan Bear and Julie Eisenstein, formerly of Glasgow’s Tuff Love.
Blow Off is supported by PRS for Music Foundation and has been developed with support from Stereo, Creative Scotland, The Glad Cafe, The Arches, The Arc in Stockton, The Tron Theatre, The Alasdair Hullett Foundation, The Playwrights Studio Scotland and the Tom McGrath Trust.