Hasta La Ideas

Why Not Associates has collaborated with the artist Charming Baker on a series of artworks whereby old film  and wrestling posters have been reprinted with new drawings…

Why Not’s Andy Altmann is a keen collector of print ephemera but it is perhaps more unusual for him to raid his plan chest in order to use old material in the creation of new work.

But digging out a series of film posters from the 1950s, Altmann decided to silkscreen new images onto them, and so produced a test poster which just used typography.

“It worked really well and then I thought I’d take them a step further by seeing if Charming Baker would be interested in printing some of his drawings over the top of the remaining posters,” says Altmann.

The pair have known each other for around 20 years and Baker has collaborated with Why Not on a number of projects. For the new posters, Why Not and Charming worked with Jealous Print in Shoreditch in east London.

“It was fascinating to see how the ink of the silkscreen reacted with that of the old posters,” says Altmann. “Some colours bled through, some didn’t. Various colours seemed to intensify – it was quite random and we were never sure what would happen. But that was the fun of doing them.

“As each was an original poster we were then creating a unique one-off poster – there was no going back once the ink was down!”

Altmann also looked through his collection of 1970s British wrestling posters and some of these were selected to be overpinted with knights drawn by Charming.

The prints will be exhibited by Jealous Print at Art 14 London (stand F6) which opens at Olympia’s Grand Hall at the end of the month and runs until March 2. More details at artfairslondon.com