Blank Media Collective

BlankPages: Issue 17

Blank Pages Issue 17 Download blankpages: Issue 17

Featured Track

Our featured track this month is Still In Late June by Oskar Hallbert

This month our magazine is re-imagined by the exemplary Henry Roberts, a Manchester-based graphic designer who we're very lucky to be working with. Our cover artist this month is Mario Sughi, an Italian illustrator, cartoonist and historian, living and working in Dublin. His featured images are just the striking surface of his wide portfolio and experience.

This month's mp3 comes from deep in the woods of Northern Sweden. Oskar Hallbert's minimal melodic music should be a soothing backdrop to your page turning experience. Our showcased poets are JEA Wallace, Nick Iles and Bethan Townsend. Each has an original, different voice and chosen subject matter, but each displays an element of escapism; much needed in this season's plummeting temperatures and supermarket saturated festivities. This month's fiction is a rambling reminiscence from Robert Monroe, his first piece of published fiction, looking at the uncontrollable, unchanging urges of passion through generations' gaps.

The Blank Media Collective Exhibitions team took a day trip to AirSpace Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent in October – you can read about this contemporary art space in this month's feature. All this as well as our usual blankpicks of cultural happenings, and monthly review of Blank Media Presents... at Fuel Café Bar in Manchester.

Issue 17 Featured Artists

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    Mario Sughi

    Mario Sughi is an Italian illustrator, cartoonist and historian, living and working in Dublin , he is a member of the Associazione Illustratori and the author of nerosunero. In Rome, at the end of the Seventies, he worked as an humorist in the last year of IL Male and then for Zut, Italian satirical magazines. He moved to Dublin in the late 80s where he studied Medieval History and in 1995 he was awarded a PhD by Trinity College Dublin. His illustrations and cartoons, satirical in humor and minimalist in style have been published on international exhibition catalogues. "My illustrations are meaningless, colourful images. And within those images reality and joke mix freely and happily together. I would like to think that my work has been inspired by the playful novels of Milan Kundera, and the work of two very imaginative figurative painters: Francis Bacon and David Hockney. But possibly this is not the case, only a playful trick of my imagination." Mario Sughi for C-Heads Magazine, London Wien, Dec. 08.  For further information please visit www.nerosunero.org

  • Nick Iles

    Nick Iles recently graduated from Nottingham Trent University where he studied English with Creative Writing. He is about to start training as a teacher and currently teaches creative writing at a school in Berkshire. He says “I don’t really know what kind of writing I ‘do’ yet so I kind of change my style with every piece I write. For further information please visit http://allthethingsinmyattic.blogspot.com

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    Michael Thorp

    Michael Thorp is a Fine Artist and Illustrator, recently graduated from Coventry University with a degree in Fine Art and Illustration. For more information on the man and his work visit www.michaelthorp.com. His illustration in this issue trailblazes his guest visual design post for the next issue of blankpages.

  • J.E.A. Wallace

    J.E.A. Wallace has had poems and stories published in Volume Magazine, Brand Magazine and Irk Magazine among others. He has also written and produced a film about runaway East German circus clowns, and composed a short album about busting a wolf out of a zoo... For further information please visit www.myspace.com/jeawallace

  • Oskar Hallbert

    Oskar Hallbert is a composer who makes minimal melodic music, released among others on the Zymogen net label and Manchester-based Heat Death Records. He lives deep in the woods in the north of Sweden, cut-off from city life, and has alot of musical instruments at his disposal; but that doesn’t stop him using field recordings and found sound as addition to his arsenal, often as a backdrop to the sweet, slow-motion guitar melodies that typify his style. For further information please visit www.myspace.com/oskarhallbert

  • Robert Monroe

    Robert Monroe has been writing for some time but this is his first piece of published fiction. He lives in North East Lincolnshire where he is constantly depressed by the state of his local football team but cheered up by listening to The Cure. He’s funny that way.

  • Bethan Townsend

    Bethan Townsend is no longer 21. She lives in North West England but changes location too frequently to pinpoint a particular ‘home'. She is still (unfortunately) a student and finds most her inspiration on the two hour train journey to university. She blogs at Is There Anything Wrong With Plastic Rosaries: plasticrosaries.blogspot.com and has been published by Read This Magazine, Gloom Cupboard, The Glasgow Review and various other lovely people.

  • Henry Roberts

    Henry Roberts, freelance graphic designer, doodler, violinist and all-round decent chap, is Guest Visual Designer for this month's issue of blankpages. Born in Rome (bilingual), raised in the home counties (a bit posh) and well traveled (neo-hippy), this rake of a man has gathered influences like fallen leaves, and composted them together into his current nutritious style. Having studied Art & Design in Bedford and Graphic Design at Nottingham Trent, he moved to Manchester on a whim, spent four years rebranding a youth fitness company and now works promoting ramshackle drinking establishment, the Ram & Shackle. Oh and he still doesn't have an online portfolio but you can email him if you like.

Send Us Your Work!

We are always looking for new voices to feature in blankpages, our monthly online magazine.

To submit work to blankpages simply join Blank Media and select the "Publish in blankpages" option when you add work to your Portfolio or drop as an email using the form below. Please read the Submission Guidelines before submitting your work.

Having problems with the form or want to submit more than one piece of work? Email us directly at editor@blankmediacollective.org.

BlankPages Team

  • Editor: John Leyland
  • Music Editor: Dan Bridgwood-Hill
  • Visual Editor / Designer: Michael Thorp
  • Visual Editor / Designer: Henry Roberts

We would love to hear what you think about blankpages - drop us an email and let us know at editor@blankmediacollective.org.