Hammerhead Rabbits

Thick black lines and thinner lines shoot off. Some colours in between.

'anomaly flood' written over coloured lines.

Pattern formed of squares and diamond shapes.

Arrow pointing down drawn with marker pen. Arrow point is emphasised with a white line.

arrow pointing down. The head feathers out. White lines delineate the edges a little.

Narrow lines. The first line of page text reads: 'No.' She was only going back to the housework.

Picture: An elephant Text: Balanc (runs off the edge of the page)

Cartoon bear drawn in permanent marker with mouth open. Strip of tram lines behind.

Mills and Boon community page covered in scribble. Some text is left. One is 'Befriend other users'

Red and blue blobs behind the words 'Begin again' written in tippex. Below is a black square.

The word 'Behold' edged with colour. There's a black square beneath.

Snow White with a blank face. The words of the page scribbled out.

Blob formed of lines from a thick marker pen.

Parallelograms formed by diagonal lines through straight lines. Some at the bottom are in colour.

Non pattern formed by different diagonal lines striking through straight vertical lines.

Cafe Wall Pattern - rows of tiles out of sync with each other make an odd effect.

Thick marks strike upward. The page is starting off Chapter fourteen.

Remaining text: CHAPTER THIRTEEN Still, she said nothing. Still, she said nothing.

Vertical black lines with flashes of tippex in them.

Circles with sets of lines running through. They look like the top of a group of screws.

Marker pen circles with tippex circles inside. Zig zag lines behind. Colours between the lines.

Marker pen circles. Lines connect them. There are coloured splats surrounding them.

Circles and lines running across the page

Pattern of two columns of parallelograms out. One side filled with colour. The other trammed lines.

A line runs up the middle of the page. Arrows shoot off. There are colours between the arrows.

Black marks strike upward. There are primary colours on the end of them.

Thick black lines and thinner black lines connecting them. Patches of colour in the gaps.

Words struck out on the page with some colours

Zig zag with thinner lines coming from the sides. Coloured splats in between the lines.

Vertical lines and thinner lines connecting the lines.

Words crossed out looking themselves like an odd form of writing or alien language.

A black frame with thin lines runs down the page's left side. A diagonal flash of lines runs across.

Black frame with thin lines along the bottom. Diagonal lines run up from the bottom.

Three columned pattern with shapes transitioning from thicker ot thinner.

A diamond pattern with wavy lines between the diamonds.

Diamond shapes with wave forms between the shapes.

Vertical strokes in marker pen. Tippex on top of those. Some red pen underneath.

'Drawn to a close' is the text at the bottom of a page mostly blacked out by marker pen.

Face on page with text circled: Easy silence

Eight written in splattery text. Scribble around that.The page had begun Chapter eight anyway.

Text: 'Equal inference' in white pen. Picture: Stylised cat.

Marker pen runs across two edges of page. Remaining text: 'Everything was going to be alright.'

Sparse line drawing of face. Circled Text: Except here

Chapter ending. Solitary person in wasteland below. Remaining page text: 'The fairy tale was over'.

The title page of the novel 'For richer or poorer'. A black mark looks like a vortex.

Black spots connected by sets of thin lines.

Lines on the page look like a grill. There is neon yellow highlighter behind the grill.

Diagonal half squares arranged in a pattern.

Coloured parallelograms make a harlequinesue pattern.

Text blacked off. Remaining text: He stood back, his brow furrowed in obvious frustration.

Remaining text: I am with the woman I love. Me? - Two tippex people looking at each other.

interchange - Lift icon in marker pen and tippex.

More marker pen scribble with some red escaping out. Remaining text: It's real

More Franz Kline plagiarism. This time quite minimal.

Another Kline tribute. This time with lines running across between two vertical lines.

More minimal Kline page. Blank to start with and one simple line runs off at the edge of the page.

Blue and red layered squared lines pattern.

Text: Legacy of lies - Parallel lines run at an angle.

Another vague face person with stroke over their head.

The lines of voting are not open yet. Telephone icon. 0800 1234567.

Line drawing of person looking down. Odd colours fill some patches to lighten the mood.

Looking up - circle with eyes looking upward. Remaining text: It's no problem Craig said.

Long vertical lines with tippex inside cover up more doodled mess.

Minus symbol on blank page made by a simple strike from a thick marker pen.

Mixed pattern of parallelograms. Some filled in at the top. One lower down, to unbalance things.

More in black grey and white running over each other.

Another network of lines in biro between spots

Red and blue and green and blue lines run out forming perspective impression.

Vertical lines run up the page in black frame. Remaining text: I'm not going anywhere without you.

An old fashioned robot. Text: 'I am not your robot. Circled page text: Old poverty and new wealth.

Oblique lines run over horizontal lines. White lines highlight those lines a little.

Blacked out. Clear area has a drawing of a small tower. Remaining text: Old forts. Magical worlds.

A circle drawn with marker pen. It is lined inside with white pen.

Picture: Triangular pattern. Green and purple with one yellow triangle. Text: Ongoing malfeasance.

Patchwork of coloured lines. Over the top is written 'OWXD 9742'.

Parallelograms stack up to form layered triangles.

Pink and green parallelogram pattern. One yellow and one blue parallelogram break the pattern.

Shouting man. Circled text: 'I need rescuing' 'I didn't say that.'

Loosely drawn face with diagonal lines behind in rectangular frame.

The words 'Positive/Negative' running up the side of the page.

Scribble over the page. Text: Primitive values.

Tippexed face looks down. Remaining text: 'Quest' in large letters. '&' at the bottom of the page.

Tried looking graffiti style rabbit. Text: He needed her. All of her.

A woman drawn in duplicate with red and blue lines on top of each other

Marks cover the text on the page. Some red biro pokes out. Text: REDEMP

Patterned and scribbled marks cover the original text. Text: TION

Bambi has two red arrows above him. One pointing down, one up. Remaining text: Replace Bambi

Black diagonal stripes with a coloured stripe right next to each one.

A man in a park under a streetlight. Remaining text: 'They say... you're a ruthless playboy.'

A moon in the sky drawn with old marker pen. Text: same moon.

Text: Same River in hollowed out letters.

Mostly blacked out. White text: a sea of variables.

No drawing. Near the bottom of the page this circled text: She kissed him. Hard.

Black marks linked up by lines. Some words circled: earthquake survival party / she murmured

Six cirlces filled with colour and joined with diagonal lines.

Scribble, a big black square and the text 'Somet'.

Hand drawn spirographs with spaces filled with colour.

Rough spangle shapes filled with colours.

Blobby spangle shapes filled with colours

Pattern made of repeating star snowflake design

Odd marks have lines coming off the edge of them. Gaps filled with bright colours.

Diagonal lines in black with coloured lines next to them. The black lines have white lines on top.

Face. Neck and bottom half detailed and colourful. Toward the top it disintegrates to blankness.

Pattern of triangles poke in to the top of the page. The triangles are different colours.

A face surrounded by electrical charge. inside a rough soft tippex fuzz.

Remaining text: The moment distance vanished.

Original text covered over with old marker pen. Remaining text: The mountain was dark.

Black marks shoot up. On the top right running downward are the words 'The other'.

Old marker pen covers most of the page. Beneath: 'THE SECRET' in capital letters near the top.

Biro softly strikes out from the words 'the shock'.

Thin lines strike out form the words 'the silence'.

Two badly drawn people running off the page. Above them a sign says 'THIS IS NOT AN EXIT'.

Black square. The words 'THIS THAT THE OTHER' run upward from that square.

A repeating set of spots with biro lines joining them up.

Diamond shapes filled with hatched squares.

Klinesque stripe flashes across teh top of the page.

Triangle pattern where the triangles sit in the bottom right of a pattern of squares.

End of chapter page so there's a lot of blank space. Remaining text: Trust me.

Two roughly drawn circles. Bright colours fill some of the blank spots.

Two circles with diagonal lines behind them.

An animal skull under the word 'verité'. Underneath some roughly written words crossed out going up

A man wearing a suit walking home from work looking sad.

Pattern looks a little like warp perspective.

Parallelograms filled with lines going in different directions for each parallelogram.

Flowing shapes come out of small circles arranged in a grid.

Wide stripe runs up the page in marker pen.

Grid of diamond squares colouredin rows from yellow to blue.

biggish parallelograms coloured yellow blue and green.

Yes hand drawn in large letters. Below is a big black square with a hole that has remaining text: No.

Scribble. On top of that the text: You & Me.

Pattern of shapes form around narrow diamonds making repeating zig zag pattern.

Columns of zig zags formed by repeating shapes.

Pattern Recognition exhibition wide view

Pattern Recognition exhibition wide view straight

Pattern Recognition exhibition - two grids

Pattern Recognition exhibition - face and yes/no

Pattern Recognition exhibition - when can we go home / bambi

Pattern Recognition exhibition - lines and etcetera

Pattern Recognition exhibition - Many pages

Pattern Recognition exhibition - More pages

Pattern Recognition exhibition - Kline-esque strokes and circles

Pattern Recognition exhibition - Grid of pages on the floor

Pattern Recognition exhibition - Floor pages perspective

Pattern Recognition exhibition - Long strip of paper hits the floor

Pattern Recognition exhibition - the shock

Pattern Recognition exhibition - circles, lines and splats

Pattern Recognition Exhibition

Daniel Fone

I’ve been drawing on the pages of Mills and Boon novels for years now. I had a stack of them lying around. I was part of a group who did art workshops and led one of those asking people to remodel pages from one of these novels. ‘Awaken to Danger’, it was called. We had a fun afternoon. It was largely inspired by local artist Tom Phillips’ project ‘A Humument’. Look it up online, it’s brilliant.

After that afternoon I carried on drawing the pages in my own time. It was nice having a space to explore visual ideas in a contained way. Sometimes I would build on the original page content, sometimes I would just use it as a page of a sketchbook. It was a portable thing and could be done in small compressed bursts, so was ideal for me bearing in mind I was smothered by work at the time. It was a good creative outlet in a period when a creative outlet was barely possible. So far so ho hum.

After a while I started to think about what I was doing. I noticed that there were themes and similarities developing between pages. Some of them were series. I started burrowing in to that. I showed friends what I’d done sometimes and laid some of the pages out. On doing that the pages looked different as a group. Juxtapositions would arise between pages quite accidentally. I started to think a whole room full of these pages would be fun, so this became the goal. I started to draw block group pieces where written phrases would spread across several pages. Many of the pages remained fiercely contained and detail driven. Others are patterns in their own right, formed of separate blocks coming together to create a consistent visual rhythm within their own frame of reference.

It has not been lost on me that this concern with relationships between pages is kind of fun when the base material for the work is Mills and Boon novels. They commonly offer a very particular view of relationships. What can people be when they are together? Much of that seeps out in to the drawings, both from the original text or elsewhere. You may be wondering if I hate the novels. I don’t. Some of them are better than others. I will say that I don’t think I have the right to sneer at them and it’s clearly evolved as a genre. Saying that, before drawing on some pages I’ll spend a minute chewing my fist in horror at what I have just read.

I have some transparent influences. I love Jean-Michel Basquiat because he seemed to munch up masses of information about the world he was seeing and shot it all back out in this extraordinary scattergun melee. The tension in the negative space between Franz Kline’s broad brushstrokes makes my hair stand up sometimes.

But seriously, this is a pretty simple exhibition. I like drawing on the ripped out pages of cheap romance novels. I hope that somewhere in the middle of all of this I have captured a bit of the spirit of these strange times. I also hope you’ll enjoy a few of the pages. Look at them close up, step back, look at them in context. Thanks for coming.