Colossal Centipede at the Lighthouse Project Space
In July we welcomed Colossal Centipede at our Project Space after they won a free day's use by completing our annual survey. We asked them to share with us who they are and how they spent the day at the Lighthouse Project Space.
“Colossal Centipede is a zine collective of eight graduates from the MA in Sequential Illustration at the University of Brighton.
Through a mixture of comics, creative writing and mixed-media techniques, our illustrated zines explore topics ranging from reflective practice, illness and mutual aid to playful tributes to aliens, B-movies and charity shop finds. Our zines celebrate self-publishing as a space for both serious inquiry and fun. Many are riso-printed, some lino-printed and others knitted!
We are Basil Hutton, Eden Brackenbury, Emily Robbins, Katie Broderick, Luoan Liao, Molly Fuller Abbott, Molly McKenna, and Thomas Max McGuire and we come together to make zines and sell our zines at fairs in Brighton, London and other parts of the UK. Our collective zines are one for each letter of the alphabet from A-Z.
A was for “Aliens,” B was for “B-Movies” and right now we are creating C for “Centipedes.” It might take us a few years to get to Z but we’re excited to see it all come together. Colossal Centipede has been an inspiring vessel to explore our skills and creativity and is a fun thing to do with friends.
It's been extremely valuable to have this day to create at the Lighthouse Project Space, it feels like a mini residency.
Basil focused on developing a series of personal zines, while I designed a Pride window display for Amnesty International’s Brighton bookshop and worked on my page for our upcoming collaborative zine, C is for “Centipedes.” Molly led a group activity making segments for a centipede-shaped bunting project that will be used at our first birthday celebration. Thomas designed a flyer for this event, and we also held a reflective group meeting to share highlights from our first year and hopes for what’s next.
It's the first time we’ve been together to create things since university and now that we are at this one year marker for our collective, it's been great to be in the same room collaborating and planning what we want to do for the coming year.
We’re celebrating our first birthday of Colossal Centipede this summer by putting on a birthday party for friends and family. This will feature a double screening of James and the Giant Peach (1996), which features our namesake, and The Fly (1986).
I’ve always been a bit obsessed with zines and comics and getting into that world of DIY through the MA was super exciting and keeping that passion up through Colossal Centipede has been great.
Our next market will be:
RTS Zines x Look Again, Newhaven zine fair on Friday 29 August, 3pm until 7pm. Location: The Sidings, Newhaven, BN9 0DF
If you’ve never been to a zine fair, we hope you can come and experience the DIY and self-published world, and support emerging artists. " Eden Brackenbury
ABOUT
@colossalcentipede | linktr.ee/colossalcentipede | @edenbrack | www.edenbrack.com
