Shoreditch In A VICE

VICE is well known nowadays for its creative, playful, sometimes startling articles, but the magazine is also host to a range of unique illustrations. ‘The VICE Illustration Show’ at the Pure Evil Gallery in Shoreditch will be the perfect opportunity to review the best that the magazine has had to offer in its time at the top of alternative journalism.

VICE began in 1994 embedded into the underground scene. Since then it has exploded above the surface with offices across the world and a YouTube following of nearly two million. This exhibition offers the opportunity to explore the importance of VICE’s visual history and the reason it has only been able to build on success, displaying its most challenging and provocative illustrations as well as previewing what’s next from this collection of unusual minds.

Perhaps best about this exhibition is that it gives you an insight into the pre-digitised process, where messy drawings are king. In a tribute to the cutting room floor the exhibition displays original pieces and exclusive side by side, allowing access into the thought process of the modern illustrator and his editorial constraints. The more cutting of VICE articles– spanning from religious conflict to domestic violence – are often accompanied by striking illustrations, part absurd part close to the bone, the like of which helped to make a star of Johnny Ryan the poster boy (literally) of American alternative comics.

All in all ‘The VICE illustration Show’, revealing what it is that has made readers laugh, pause and sit down for a while in thought, is surely an event not to be missed in these last weeks of May. Clear your schedule for a day. Indulge in a VICE.

Friday 17th May – Friday 2nd June