The art of football
LATE TACKLE takes a look at a business attempting to mix two great passions...
FEW would deny dogs playing snooker holds a certain fascination but it’s been a while since The Tate afforded wall space to art of a sporting nature.
The two worlds rarely collide. LS Lowry’s painting ‘Going To The Match’ is perhaps the most famous anomaly. Painted in 1953, Lowry depicts Bolton supporters attending a game at Burnden Park in a manner that manages to perfectly capture both the match day experience and the urban industrialization of the time.
It won a Football Association competition Lowry was unaware he had entered, before in 1999 it commanded a cool £2million at auction.
Sixty-two years on from Lowry, Last Man Projects are looking to navigate the same bridge that joins art and sport. A creative agency that ‘aims to produce sporting visuals as illuminating as the on-field events that inspired them’, the Yorkshire-based outfit work primarily with artist collective The Studio of Ezra.
Co-owner Alex Dunn explains what they’re all about: “Like all good/foolhardy ideas, our story began in the pub. My background is as a football journalist, but I’d done some work in the past for friends who own a gallery in Harrogate.
“Over a pint we’d talk of how despite the football industry being worth billions, there’s nothing we actually wanted to buy as fans. It became a reoccurring conversation until eventually we put our money where our mouths are.
“My partners Richard and Jon, who own Redhouse Originals, did an exhibition for the Tour de France last year that was really well received and I guess what we’re doing now is an extension of that.
“We’re talking to a number of Premier League clubs about producing a range of prints for them, whilst juggling numerous other side projects. We’ve exhibitions planned that could be toured nationwide and we’re looking into doing some public artworks, which our artists have experience of producing in the past. “It’s hard work but every time I see a fresh piece of work it convinces me even more that we’re onto something.
“I worked at Sky Sports for over a decade and, in truth, by the end I was a bit disillusioned with what we were promoting. My heart was more with the lads at Stand Magazine and yourselves at so I’m conscious of always having a level of prints available that aren’t out of reach for your average supporter. Great art and accessibility shouldn’t be mutually exclusive.”