The FEATHR Creative Director, Oli Green, is a creative polymath whose fertile mind has produced hip-hop, books, sitcoms, art and interiors. As the ultimate arbiter of the work that goes out under the FEATHR banner, he wanted to share some of his thoughts on what we look for and why. So we guessed what a few of you are thinking, made some questions up and put them to him.
More art & less decoration is a phrase FEATHR uses a lot. What’s so interesting about this bringing together of art and wallpaper?
Too right. It’s what we have written on our business cards. It’s why we get up in the morning. Google tell themselves not to be evil – we remind ourselves that we are doing this to put more art out there in the Universe. That’s the goal. MORE ART! More colour. More ideas. More expression. But why wallpaper, and why not culture or paint onto a canvas? Well, wallpaper is a subversive tool as a form of modern art. Wallpaper’s known for being banal, so we love the idea that our artists can subvert it and make the medium message – the best art always subverts the norm. It’s a universal artform as well – as accessible as buying some generic knock off print from Ikea, but with us you get to support independent artists and put something original on your walls. So we’re getting more art out there by giving artists the amazing new canvas of wallpaper to work with. By replacing, like for like, decoration with art. And people can too. By buying one roll or a thousand rolls of our wallpapers you’re getting more art into places where there was none and supporting independent artists from all over the world.
What makes FEATHR wallpaper different?
Look, there’s two ways to get anything done. The safe way and the fun way. If you’re hanging a wire between two buildings that you plan on walking across with a friend sitting on your shoulders, or if you’re building a fortress to keep out zombie hordes – then go the safe way. But if you’re creating wallpaper for people’s homes? Then go the fun route. That’s what we’ve done. We’ve asked the whole art world to create designs – and now we’re working with dozens of artist from all over the world, very few of whom have previously designed wallpaper. Tattoo artists, fine art photographers, hardcore graphic designers and a cow. True story. This means our wallpapers are unique pieces created from original minds for original homes. So we’re always proudly independent of the normal ways of designing wallpaper. We believe the world is loaded with design and artistic talent and our job is to be a conduit to get that talent onto wallpaper.
What do you look for in new artists?
More good shit, less shit shit is another of our mottos. It’s just simple, isn’t it? The modern world is filled with enough terrible, plastic, annoying, lame shit that does nothing more than add to the cultural bonfire. That’s why we look for artists to create the good shit. Our wallpapers are proudly and boldly a broach church of styles. We don’t have a ‘house’ style, but we do have a house standard – Originality and Artistry, with goddamned capitalized Os and As. There’s no shortcut. The best wallpaper has that simple formula: good ideas, well executed. Evidence of the artist. An authentic voice. Evidence of craft. In our collection we have everything from hand painted, expressive explosions of colour made with a big brush and mood, right down to witty illustration from the mind of a mad-bastard… and everything in between. The one thing it all shares is the love in the work. That’s the good shit.
Thanks Oli!
For more info on how to submit work to our current collection head go here. There are $5000 in total awards available and a new deadline – 9 May 2016, 12pm GMT.