Swifty
Unfinished Business
Design Manchester opens with the launch of Unfinished Business, an exhibition of iconic and appropriated imagery by the prolific graphic artist Ian ‘Swifty’ Swift.
As part of the launch Swifty will take part in an exclusive talk with Professor David Crow, Dean of Manchester School of Art, which will delve into his creative mind and maverick working methods and the exhibition will be on for the whole of the festival.
Unfinished Business marks Swifty’s return to Manchester after nearly 30 years and the exhibition runs throughout the festival, taking over three venues: PLY, Kosmonaut and the window of Manchester’s craft institution Fred Aldous. He will also be selling his wares at the Print Fair at the People’s History Museum and ‘wheat pasting’ at various secret locations around the city!
For two and half decades he has cast an innovative and distinctive visual shadow over contemporary urban culture as we know it and you can bet your life you’ve seen or even owned a piece of his artwork. Swifty honed his craft with Neville Brody on The Face magazine after leaving Manchester Polytechnic in the late 80s, and by the early 90s had firmly established himself in the music industry with a vast creative output designing record identities and covers for the likes of Talkin’ Loud and Mo Wax. His art direction for the magazine Straight No Chaserlasted nearly 20 years and he was the first person in the UK to start an independent Font Foundry – ‘Typo-Matic’. Today Swifty continues with his graphic design practice along side producing his own brand of skateboards, t-shirts, print editions and fine art.
He has exhibited and lectured all over the world and now returns to Manchester to re-mix, re-appropriate and re-evaluate various ideas and concepts he started as a student in Manchester but never finished. In the coming months his first book ‘Full Circle’ will be published with gammaproforma.com.
Share: