{english below} Joy Gilleard creció en la ciudad industrial de Hudderfield, en el norte de Inglaterra, y ahora vive en Manchester. Lleva pintando con spray desde hace ocho años, firmando como Cbloxx. Recientemente ha entrado en la lista de las cinco mejores artistas urbanas femeninas del periódico The Guardian. Y ahora reparte su tiempo entre la creación de murales y pintar cuadros al óleo. Ella es la mitad de Nomad, junto a Aylo, su pareja.

Este dúo artístico está patrocinado por la marca de pinturas Kobra, gracias a lo que han creado los murales más grandes del norte de Inglaterra, y tienen trabajos encargados hasta 2017. Además, el colectivo ha puesto en marcha un interesante proyecto, tras conseguir los fondos a través de Kickstarter. “Ahora tenemos un montón de trabajo; queremos ir al campo de refugiados de Calais para trabajar con los jóvenes haciendo talleres. La idea es documentarlo todo y luego hacer una exposición itinerante por el Reino Unido para concienciar a la gente de lo que está pasando. Y puede que después consigamos llevar el proyecto por otros campos de refugiados de Europa”.

Al transfondo político de algunos de sus trabajos se unen la profundidad de la lucha personal en otros, pero siempre con un matiz desafiante, espeluznante y surreal, aunque a veces su obra es “extrañamente pacífica”, como ella dice: “Esto se debe a la cantidad de películas apocalípticas de zombies que vemos!”.

Así, Joy compagina su trabajo más ‘gamberro’ con Nomad y sus obras algo más serias como Cbloxx.

English:

JOY GILLEARD 

Joy Gilleard grew up in an Industrial market town called Hudderfield in the North of England and she now lives in Manchester. She could be described as a street artist but he would just generalise himself as an artist. “I have been spray painting for over 8 years under the name Cbloxx and have been recently commended as one of the top 5 female street artists in the world by the Guardian Newspaper! I love to paint big, but equally love to spend hours working on oil paintings. I am one half of a street art duo called Nomad Clan with my partner Aylo, which has really taken off! We are now sponsored by Kobra Spray paint, have painted one of the largest murals in the north and have already got work being booked in for 2017!”, explains.

She likes to start off a work by putting on some sick tunes, get her sketchbooks out (nod to pink pig – our official sketchbook sponsor!) and just let whatever weird visuals flow out. “Usually I will get a few bits of reference material additional to the sketch when I go to paint a wall, especially if I am painting a face, I like to have something with more detail to look at as well. If it’s a commission I will try and bend it into something that I want to paint… I have a lot of ideas and not enough time!”, says.

At the moment Nomad Clan have just spent the last 4 months developing a Kickstarter that they just successfully got the funding for. “We now have loads of work to do making sure the project runs smoothly. The idea is to go out to the ‘Calais Jungle’ refugee camp and run street art workshops with some of the young people living out there. We intend to document it all, bring some of the work back and set up a travelling group exhibition to help raise awareness of the cause across the UK. We hope then that any funds generated will go back into the project so we can take it to other refugee camps in Europe, making the project sustainable”, explains.

The last massive job she worked on with Nomad Clan, it was a 7 story high mural they were painting in Liverpool in the grips of winter. “It was stormy for practically the whole 2 weeks we were working on it, rain/snow/hail/gale force winds and minus temperatures! To make everything worse we were actually sleeping in the building we were painting, on an unused floor that looked a bit like a car park. It was pretty challenging! We had a tight budget and a strict deadline to get it finished”, says.

The inspiration come sometimes from politics, religion and humanitarian issues, other times work that is more personal to her own plight/struggles: “I like to paint things that are challenging, creepy, surreal and sometimes oddly peaceful! Nomad clan watch an unhealthy amount of apocalyptic/zombie films that often have an impact on our work! It’s a little lighter working with Nomad Clan, more animals and fun characters as opposed to my Cbloxx portfolio which takes itself a bit too seriously haha!”.

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