If I were in London I would DEFINITELY be going to the Safari Festival, the one day CAF run by Breakdown Press and devoted to
“the new wave of alternative and art comics from the UK and beyond. Taking place over one Saturday at the end of August, the festival is an opportunity for a curated group of cartoonists and publishers to exhibit and sell their artwork, prints and, primarily, comics, and for attendees to experience the best of UK comics’ avant-garde. The artists exhibiting have been selected for their innovative, fearless, diverse approaches to making comics; approaches to cartooning that Safari intends to champion.”
The festival is free; the location is Studio 2, the Shoreditch gallery space of London-based creative agency, Protein. You can check out the kind of books taht will be displayed at the Safari tumblr and the poster by Will Sweeney and Joe Kessler.
Exhibitors include:
Anti Ghost Studio (Babak Ganjei, Rob Flowers, Tim Stevens), Breakdown Press (Joe Kessler,Antoine Cossé, Richard Short, Zoë Taylor), Calm & Collected Studio, Comic Book Slumber Party, Comics Workbook(Will Tempest, Liam Cobb, Tom Kemp), Decadence Comics (Lando, Stathis Tsemberlidis), Donya Todd, Eleni Kalorkoti, Esther McManus, Eyeball Comix,Famicon Express (Leon Sadler, Stefan Sadler, Jon Chandler), Faye Coral Johnson,Good Press, Grace Wilson, Isaac Lenkiewicz, Jack Teagle, James Jarvis, Jazz Dad Books, Joseph P Kelly, Kus!, Landfill Editions, Laura Callaghan, Marijpol, Matt Swan, Mike Redmond, Mothership, Nous Vous, One Beat Zines, Otto Press, Sina Sparrow, Treasure Fleet (Aisha Franz, Sharmila Banerjee) and Will Sweeney
Breakdown is one of the most exciting small press publishers I’ve seen, with books that explore both the experimental edges of comics and the traditional roots of storytelling by such Beat favorites as Conor Stechshulte, Lala Albert and Antoine Cosse. Breakdown Press itself is launching a new book by Jonathan Chandler, and you can see abit of that below, but the exhibitors all have the same spirit of cutting edge comics that won’t make your eyeballs bleed.
Report back on how things go, kids!