MAGDA ARCHER BRIGHTENS UP THE STREETS

Two new brilliant flyingleaps’ artists’ poster prints from painter and printmaker Magda Archer: she’s been called the Queen of Kitsch but there’s a lot more to her work than their flouro surfaces might lead you to think.

Inspiration for Archer’s artwork comes in many forms: her burgeoning collection of toys, tins, children’s books, novelty lamps, religious votives and endless cuttings from magazines and printed ephemera. Since, at its heart the work is about the artist then chance happenings in Archer’s own life play a role: a scribbled note or list that blows across her path in the park; a childhood rhyme or song lyric that returns unexpectedly to mind; the shit things that happen as well as the often under appreciated everyday pleasures such as sunshine, bird song and boxes of Mr Kipling’s Cherry Bakewells.

Her intemerate and cute imagery is however often cut with an altogether opposing sentiment, that is, the world is pretty sick. Archer combines delighting, toothsome motifs with hand-painted words or phrases that come from the pit of the stomach.

There’s the painting of a lamb, pink bow for a collar with its shiny black hooves frolicking amidst tulips, hibiscus and violets coupled with the phrase ‘My Life Is Crap’. And the orange-eyed, pale lilac kitten on a pink ground, an imploring image with an imploring phrase rendered in sunny yellow to go with it: ‘Text Me Yeah?’

One of our favourites is the 2008 chalky white blancmange with a pinky-red jelly topping set against a grey background. This wobbly dessert is top and tailed with the words ‘Thank God,’ and ‘I’m Normal.’ The paintings both draw the viewer in and at the same time talk of human frailty and random cruelties, neediness and self-delusion that visit all of us.

Magda Archer’s Anti-Brexit Dance-Off and Post Brexit U.K. are the latest examples of what flyingleaps does best. Namely make available affordable limited ed. artists’ poster prints signed by the artist that speak potently, wittily and poignantly about the febrile state of the U.K., or indeed, the world.