Performing an Ollie: Oliver East on his artistic negotiations with space and place

As often as other artists have cited Oliver East on the Uncomics podcast, it was a matter of time before host Allan Haverholm sat down to talk with himself about the life and process of a walking cartoonist, poet, university lecturer, and painter of street rubbish.

Learn how skateboarding is an act of remixing architecture, about transforming space into place, and how East has made up his career as he goes along. All this, with a healthy serving of self deprecation, in this episode of the Uncomics podcast!

The galleries below only cover the works discussed in this artist talk. You are strongly encouraged to visit Oliver’s website, where you can buy his books and prints. For current updates, follow him on Twitter and Instagram!

Subscribe

You can download this episode here, or subscribe via RSS to recieve future episodes as they are published.

Credits

The Uncomics podcast is edited and produced by Allan Haverholm. Music by Allan Grønvall Pedersen. All content is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license.

If you like the podcast, consider supporting it with a small, recurring donation via Liberapay

Works discussed

Ill architecture (2018–current)

Trains are… mint (2008-12)

Wax ever grander (2020)

Ley lines #15: Langweile (2018)

Van diagrams (2019)

Skateboarding as architecture (2020)

Take me back to Manchester (2016)

Further reading

• Architecture professor Jane Rendell, see also critical spatial practice.
• The Lakes International Comics Festival, which commissioned Oliver East’s Homesick truant’s Cumbrian yarn and Take me back to Manchester.
• One of two videos documenting Oliver’s walking process for Take me back to Manchester (Youtube link).
• Manchester Evening News, April 2015“Artist completes historical ‘elephant walk’ from Edinburgh to Manchester”.
• Koyama provides, Annie Koyama’s mini-grant support fund for alternative comics artists.