“George Hardie 
exhibition of illustrations
24 January 2008, 20.00
NLB Gallery Avla, Trg republike 2, Ljubljana, Slovenia
The exhibition is organized by the Emzin Institute of Creative Production, Metelkova 6, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
emzin@guest.arnes.si

George Hardie trained as a graphic designer at St Martin’s and the Royal College of Art. In 1970 he was employed as a senior designer at Nicholas Thirkell Associates, a subsidiary of Macmillan the publishers. In the seventies Hardie’s main client was Hipgnosis, the legendary designers of album covers. George started by helping them with their typography and eventually became involved in concept, design and illustration of many of their projects, particularly for Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Wings, and 10cc. Now a sole trader working alone in his studio at home (since 1982) on the South Coast of England. His favourite project was the Trickett and Webb, Augustus Martin calendar series. He worked on this for nearly twenty years producing, as was the case with the other contributors, some of is best work. Hardie works fairly regularly for Pentagram and enjoys projects for the Ganzfeld in New York. He is a member (elected 1994) and the International Secretary of the Alliance Graphique Internationale. In 2005 he was elected a Royal Designer for Industry. In 2006 he was the International Speaker for the Australian Graphic Design Association speaking in six cities to professionals and at AGIdeas in Melbourne to an audience of 2000. He also taught and exhibited Manual at Nagoya University of Arts as a visiting professor in 2006. He works as Professor of Graphic Design at the University of Brighton where he leads two postgraduate courses.
 
His exhibition in NLB Gallery in Ljubljana includes 21 frames, which incorporates Hardie’s best works from different creative periods. As Dan Nadel wrote in Eye magazine (Vol. 58, Winter 2005): “Hardie does all the things that a professional illustrator should: he solves problems; he draws with exactitude; he makes images that delight because they are challenging. Hardie is consciously self-depreciating titles nod to a career spent working mostly around, as he says, ‘wanting to do good work. I never saw it as a career thing. But then, I was very lucky – things just fell in my lap.’ But in image after image he achieves something beyond just professionalism: he doesn’t just solve a problem or create a compelling image, rather he draws visual ideas that force viewers to ‘wear a new pair of spectacles,’ and open up to a new visual experience of even the most familiar terrain.”
 
The illustrator will attend the opening on Thursday, 24 January 2008, at 8 pm. The exhibition will be on display between 8 am and 6 pm every business day until 14 March 2008”.

(su segnalazione del prode LS)