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Safari Festival 2017 Brings Anya Davidson, Charles Forsman And Lane Milburn To The East End Of London

Published Thu, 13 Jul 2017 03:30:36 -0500

Following on from the previous three years, Safari Festival 2017 continues to champion the new wave of alternative and art comics and display them in the East End of London. The 2017 line up promises to showcase the best UK-based and international cartoonists and illustrators, whose work pushes the medium of comics forward.

The 2017 line-up features American cartoonists, Anya Davidson, Charles Forsman and Lane Milburn as special guests. All three have found critical acclaim with their own self-published works as well as with releases from legendary North American publishing house, Fantagraphics. Forsman's popular graphic novel, The End of the F**king World, is currently being adapted into a television series which will debut internationally on Netflix in Autumn, 2017.

Publishers debuting new work at the show will include Decadence Comics (UK/Denmark) and Landfill Editions (UK), alongside International publishers 2dcloud (USA), Bergen Street Press (USA), Black Hook Press (Japan), Super-Structure (France) and Uncivilized Books (USA). Other guests exhibiting their own works include Laura Callaghan (Ireland), Jon Chandler (UK), Aisha Franz (Germany), Joe Kessler (UK), Roman Muradov (USA), Wai Wai Pang (UK) and many others. Alongside these, festival organisers Breakdown Press will be debuting new graphic novels, Showtime by Antoine Cossé (France) and The Good News Bible: The Complete Deadline Strips of Shaky Kane by Shaky Kane (UK), alongside the Risograph-printed Klaus Magazine 3 by Richard Short (UK) and Berserker, an anthology of comics and writing examining the relationship between contemporary art and genre narratives, with contributions from Adham Faramawy, Joey Holder, Lando and Benjamin Marra.

The festival will also host three satellite events over the preceding week. The first of these will be will be held at legendary Soho comic shop Gosh! on Wednesday 9th of August at 7.30pm, with Charles Forsman discussing the upcoming television adaptation of his work with director Jonathan Entwistle and writer Charlie Covell. Then, on Thursday 10th of August from 6pm at venue TBC there will be a launch event for Berserker, showcasing work from the anthology, and a live audio visual performance from Dane Sutherland and Joey Holder, "The Exegesis of Swamp Brain". On Friday 11th of August there will be a pre-party, launching the newest titles from Breakdown Press, held at Gosh! from 7pm with free drinks and the authors in attendance.

I'll be there. Will you?

As always, the Festival, and all of its satellite events, will be free to attend. The festival itself will take place at Studio Two, the Shoreditch gallery space of creative agency Protein, on Saturday 12th August, within walking distance of Old Street, Liverpool Street and Shoreditch High Street stations. The after party will be held at the Shacklewell Arms in Dalston. DJs will provide music throughout the day and evening.