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Nishant Choksi

Major update of the Rod Hunt portfolio website, including all my work for the Hot Rods And Hairy Beasts exhibition & other recent projects

Robot Love for Hot Rods & Hairy Beasts


Fishy Sub for Hot Rods & Hairy Beasts


The Hot Rods And Hairy Beasts exhibition took place last week, featuring work by Linzie Hunter, Rod Hunt, Nishant Choksi & Allan Sanders. You can view pictures from Hot Rods And Hairy Beasts private view on flickr here

Photography © Russell Cobb 2008

HOT RODS AND HAIRY BEASTS
Illustration Show
Opens Monday 29th September 2008

Coningsby Gallery, London
Monday 29th September until
Saturday 4th October 2008 10am-6pm
Further info www.hotrodsandhairybeasts.co.uk

Hot Rods, Hula Girls, Hairy Beasts, Himalayan Head Hunters and the Holy Bible are just some of the subjects under discussion by illustrators Linzie Hunter, Rod Hunt, Nishant Choksi and Allan Sanders. No subject is too small for this group of seasoned professional illustrators and adventurers. With clients spanning the world of advertising, publishing, design and editorial this band of battle scarred buccaneers are prepared for the eventuality of just about anything. Their motto is simple : to illustrate the obscure ...and beyond!

And here's an exclusive preview of some of the work from the show


Meet the Hairy Beasts

Linzie Hunter The terrifying Linzie Hunter originated from the barren highlands of Scotland but now resides in a North London suburb where she feasts on worms and grubs whilst working for clients including Random House, BBC, The Guardian & Little Brown. Linzie recently hit the headlines with her lettering work based on the spam e-mails in her inbox. Her book “Secret Weapon: 30 hand-painted spam postcards” is published by Chronicle Books in Autumn 2008. www.linziehunter.co.uk

Allan Sanders Born in the frozen tundra of the Northern wastelands, the horrendous Allan Sanders, a mostly hairless biped, now resides near the water in a settlement known as Brighton. Existing on a diet of rock pool delicacies, Allan has produced quirky, character-based and often humorous illustrations for clients including New Scientist, The Economist, The Guardian and The LA Times. Last year Allan became the poster boy for The Oregon Humane Society’s “End Petlessness” campaign. www.loopland.net

Nishant Choksi The monstrous Nishant Choksi originated from a murky lagoon in the centre of London and is now often found foraging in the wooded areas of Crouch End. A real life B-Movie monster, Nishant is inspired by advertising of the 40’s and 50’s and has worked for The Washington Post, The Guardian, JWT, Macmillian and others. Nishant recently worked on a prominent print ad campaign for Vodafone and has just completed work on his first TV spot for them. www.nishantchoksi.com

Rod Hunt Born in rural Dorset, the diabolical Rod Hunt now inhabits the swampland of Greenwich, South London where he feeds mostly on shrubs and berries. Rod has developed a reputation for retro tinged illustrations & detailed character filled landscapes and among his client list he includes FHM, Maxim and Vodafone. Notably Rod illustrated the cover of the best selling environmental book “Change the World 9 to 5” published by We Are What We Do. He is also Deputy Chairman of the Association of Illustrators. www.rodhunt.com

Hot Rods and Hairy Beasts
is showing at the Coningsby Gallery from Monday 29th September until Saturday 4th October 2008

Private View Thursday 2nd October from 6.30pm

Sponsored by Tinymeat www.tinymeat.com

For further information
Web: www.hotrodsandhairybeasts.co.uk

Coningsby Gallery 30 Tottenham Street, London. W1T 4RJ. United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)20 7580 7017 Email [email protected]
Web: www.coningsbygallery.com

Nishant Choksi and HOT RODS AND HAIRY BEASTS

Hot Rods And Hairy Beasts
An Illustration show - Coningsby Gallery
Monday 29th September until Saturday 4th October 2008

Hot Rods, Hula Girls, Hairy Beasts, Himalayan Head Hunters and the Holy Bible are just some of the subjects under discussion by illustrators Linzie Hunter, Rod Hunt, Nishant Choksi and Allan Sanders. No subject is too small for this group of seasoned professional illustrators and adventurers. With clients spanning the world of advertising, publishing, design and editorial this band of battle scarred buccaneers are prepared for the eventuality of just about anything. Their motto is simple : to illustrate the obscure ...and beyond!

Hot Rods And Hairy Beasts website



Meet The Hairy Beasts...

Linzie Hunter The terrifying Linzie Hunter originated from the barren highlands of Scotland but now resides in a North London suburb where she feasts on worms and grubs whilst working for clients including Random House, BBC, The Guardian & Little Brown. Linzie recently hit the headlines with her lettering work based on the spam e-mails in her inbox. Her book "Secret Weapon: 30 hand-painted spam postcards" is published by Chronicle Books in Autumn 2008.

Rod Hunt Born in rural Dorset, the diabolical Rod Hunt now inhabits the swampland of Greenwich, South London where he feeds mostly on shrubs and berries. Rod has developed a reputation for retro tinged illustrations & detailed character filled landscapes and among his client list he includes FHM, Maxim and Vodafone. Notably Rod illustrated the cover of the best selling book “Change the World 9 to 5” published by We Are What We Do. He is also Deputy Chairman of the Association of Illustrators.

Nishant Choksi The monstrous Nishant Choksi originated from a murky lagoon in the centre of London and is now often found foraging in the wooded areas of Crouch End. A real life B-Movie monster, Nishant is inspired by advertising of the 40’s and 50’s and has worked for The Washington Post, The Guardian, JWT, Macmillian and others. Nishant recently worked on a prominent print ad campaign for Vodafone and has just completed work on his first TV spot for them.

Allan Sanders Born in the frozen tundra of the Northern wastelands, the horrendous Allan Sanders, a mostly hairless biped, now resides near the water in a settlement known as Brighton. Existing on a diet of rock pool delicacies, Allan has produced quirky, character-based and often humorous illustrations for clients including New Scientist, The Economist, The Guardian and The LA Times. Last year Allan became the poster boy for The Oregon Humane Society’s “End Petlessness” campaign.

Hot Rods And Hairy Beasts is showing at the Coningsby Gallery, London from Monday 29th September until Saturday 4th October 2008.

Coningsby Gallery 30 Tottenham Street, London. W1T 4RJ. UK.
Tel: +44 (0)20 7580 7017 www.coningsbygallery.com

I was completely unfamiliar with Pierre Loti before reading Barbara Hodgson's gorgeously illustrated collection of travel essays, Trading in Memories. I was intrigued by Loti just on the facts of his life: a Victorian era French naval officer who traveled widely and became especially captivated by Turkey in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire. Loti (whose real name was Julien Viaud) wrote about the places he visited, the women he loved and the mysterious aspects of life in Tahiti, Turkey, and even the Basque people. He was so consumed by the Basques that after marrying a proper French woman and having two sons with her (one of whom died shortly after birth) he found a suitable Basque woman, set her up as a mistress for life and had two sons with her (he wanted to mix his blood with the noble Basque bloodline).

The guy was a fascinating piece of work, no doubt about it.

A quick look into his life revealed that a biography of Loti was written by Lesley Blanch and that made me quite happy. Blanch is one of my all time favorite writers and a perfect fit for Loti (both are undying romantics). She passed away last year at 104 - here's a bit on Blanch from her official bio:

Blanch says, “I like to travel alone, to just go, the excitement of not knowing where you will doss down for the night or what might happen next. I have never felt frightened anywhere, however dicey the situation. I feel among friends, as I do in Russia; even with wild Muslim tribesmen in the Balkans. I was never raped, and I was very rapeable then!” She wishes she could travel again, “I long, I long to go to the Sahara; I would love to go back to Oman; I yearn for Afghanistan, and ache for Central Asia — Kashgar, Turkoman, and Chinese Turkestan which is to me the most interesting still.”

Lesley Blanch is in the tradition of the romantic English woman traveller who falls in love with the East and goes off, enduring all sorts of living conditions and experiences.

Contrary to general belief, her inspiration was never Lady Hester Stanhope — she does not consider herself to be remotely similar: “Hester Stanhope had a romantic life, but she was not really a romantic in herself. A formidable lady, she came from an aristocratic family, and ended up in a castello in Lebanon draped in Arabic robes and smoking a narghile, receiving the distinguished personalities who came up the mountainside to call. She was a picturesque rather than a romantic figure.”

Pierre Loti: Travels With the Legendary Romantic is a traditional biography in that it follows Loti from birth to death with much discussion not only of his romance with the Arab world, but also his French childhood and family, his navy career and his accomplishments as a professional writer. As Loti wrote so much (and kept journals) there is more than enough of him out there to fill a biography. His daughter-in-law also spoke to Blanch and contributed access to his private papers.

As Hodgson includes in her book, Loti's house with its infamous museum-like rooms (he built an entire mosque within it) is open to the public and apparently still very cool. (Do follow that link - the text is in French but the pictures alone are amazing!) I don't want to say he is a relic from another time because I don't think that is fair. We shouldn't dismiss great travelers as belonging only to history. I know everyone claims the entire world is laid bare today by the technology - there are no more hidden places. But really, that just is not true. There are places in the US that are as foreign as 19th century Tahiti - there are places all over the world that are under explored, under appreciate and far from well known. Being able to google a location from your living room does not mean that you know it. Loti wanted to know the places he saw; he wanted more than just a cursory glance from a carriage or train. He was certainly eccentric but no less an explorer than those who climb mountains. He brought the people and places he visited to life for thousands of others. He was truly one of the world's wonders, as was Lesley Blanch.

[Top pic of Pierre Loti in his home, courtesy the Pierre Loti Museum. Bottom Lesley Blanch in a Cecil Beaton photo, from her official site.]

So over at Voices I have a review of Martha Field's late 19th century weekly columns for the New Orleans Daily Times: Louisiana Voyages. (She wrote under the name of Catharine Cole.) I thought Field was a total kick - she went all over the state by all manner of transportation and was constantly ferreting out information on turtle hunting, logging, fishing for all kinds of creatures and the glory of swamp life. In one column she would write about a Cajun wedding and in the next she was considering the romantic architecture of antebellum mansions. Her interests were incredibly diverse and she really was pretty much fearless. I would love to read a biography of Field and see how she end up with a job that allowed her to pursue so many elements of Louisiana life.

I have noted many times before my weakness for intrepid lady explorers; there is something about the vision of these women suiting up in the 18th and 19th (and early 20) centuries and just going off to find out more about the world they live in while most women were lucky to spend five minutes outside of the kitchen (or nursery). I think they embody all of those stellar ideas of feminism that have gotten rather muddled over the years - travel was what they wanted to do and so they did it, plain and simple. They also were not anti wife and mother as many were married and traveled with their husbands and many, as in the case of Martha Field, were also mothers who managed to make the travel work with being a parent. (This is part of why I'd like to see a biography of Field - I want to know how she managed that trick.)

The whole time I was reading Field's columns I kept thinking that somebody needed to write a mystery series with her as the protagonist. She was so involved in the research of every community she visited, I'm sure there are ample ways in which plots could be concocted around burglaries, murders and kidnappings in such unusual locales. (Ala the wonderful Rosemary and Thyme series perhaps.) Since Field was clearly the curious sort, I'm sure she would have no problem getting involved and I think it would be most interesting to have a historic series set in late 19th century America that perhaps dwelled as much on rural life as it did in the intrigues of New Orleans. (I'm just saying - a ton of stuff has been written set in England.)

You could even make Field younger and turn the whole thing into a YA historic detective series. I mean really - someone should write this.

All of this has made me think of adult mystery series that would appeal to teens and my first thought was Amelia Peabody because it has Egypt, romance, drama and EGYPT! (Everybody finds the pyramids fascinating.) I blew through a bunch of these books in my early 20s and think they would be awesome for high school. I also was reading a book the other day where a teen interview subject noted his love for the Easy Rawlins mysteries. I read some of them also when I was in my 20s but it's been awhile - seems like they would work too though. So, any nominations of adult mysteries for the You Should Read This Awards?

...possessing in abundance that essential quality that characterizes our species, a ceaselessly enquiring mind."

Dorothea Bate - have you heard of her? In 1898 at the age of nineteen and entirely home educated she walked into the Museum of Natural History in South Kensington and demanded they hire her. For anyone to do that - let a lone a young woman - was unprecedented, but Dorothea backed up her attitude with an amazing amount of knowledge on ornithology and paleontology. She became a well known and highly regarded fossil hunter and worked for the museum for the rest of her life.

A whole scientific career - a whole different life - because she was brave enough to follow her passion and demand respect for her knowledge. It's really incredibly impressive and I'm so glad that I found Karolyn Shindler's wonderful biography of her, Discovering Dorothea.

Nearly all of Dorothea's personal papers were destroyed in a fire at her sister's home after death, so Shindler used her professional journals and letters to write the book. She admits more than once that this leaves her uncertain as to romantic entanglements (some of the letters hint at such but this being the early 20th century, a hint is all you get) and her relationship with her family. Dorothea was close to them, visiting often, etc., but at more than one point her parents physically reined her in, refusing to allow her to travel, refusing even to let her go to London and the museum for months at a time. When her sister got engaged everything stopped so she could assist in the wedding, even though she had boxes of fossils waiting at the museum for detailed analysis and reports. It was only after her death, in 1951 at nearly 70, when the accolades began pouring in that her brother and sister had a clue of what she accomplished. When you think of how hard it must have been for her to craft this career without anything other than cursory support (she never married although she did have many close friendships with others in her profession along the way), it is really amazing. This is exactly the sort of globe trotting adventurer/scientist that I wish more people knew about today - Dorothea's story gives you a lot of faith in the human spirit. She did so much and it wasn't easy, but she did it anyway and her work has stood the test of time. She deserves to be better remembered, especially by the museum she dedicated so much of her life to, but Shindler's highly readable biography is a good start. Wonderful stuff. (Here's a review from the Prehistoric Society.)

(There's also an utterly obnoxious review from the Guardian that I link to only because I can not believe what some of it says:

Twenty years ago, though, Bate would have been rescued from obscurity with a shortish monograph, published by Virago or perhaps the Women's Press. She might have got a book to herself or she could have found herself in the company of other "pioneering" women, travellers or scientists from the 19th and early 20th centuries. There would have been stories about sloshing through mud in ankle-length skirts and tapping crocodiles smartly on the nose with rolled umbrellas. Disappointing brothers and over-protective mothers would have made a brief appearance, as would a best friend who might or might not have been a lover. Women such as Bate were busy being "reclaimed", not just for their own sakes, but for the growing industry of "women's studies" which required a set of alternative icons to replace the dead white males, such as David Livingstone and Charles Darwin, who ran firmly down the central spine of British history.

The reviewer also refers to Dorothea as "doughty". The whole thing is insulting and immature and completely not related in any way to Shindler's fine biography. Talk about an ax to grind!) I must say that I thought Shindler did a very good job of writing the book without the sort of personal resources many other biographers have. And I didn't think she interjected herself into the story that often - in fact I like knowing how biographers come across their information especially when it is somewhere unusual (like a personal letter from Dorothea found in the professional papers of one of her friends.)

I have just finished reading Pat Shipman's remarkable biography of Lady Florence Baker: To the Heart of the Nile. This is one of those books about intrepid 18th and 19th century female explorer/adventurers that traveled to the ends of the earth in defiance of all social rules and constraints. Florence is even more amazing as she started out life in Transylvania, (born 1845), lost her family in the wars there as Hungary and Transylvania fought Austria for freedom, ended up as a member of harem in the Ottoman Empire and was sold as a teenage slave - although she was immediately rescued from that fate by Samuel Baker, who became one of the greatest British explorers of all time.

Are you still with me?

Along with Sam, who she married and loved all of her life, Florence set out to find the head of the Nile (they were beaten in that although they did name Lake Albert and trace the White Nile) and was involved in a long protracted effort by the British government to eradicate slavery in the Sudan and Egypt. What's really interesting about all of that is if you follow the tragedy of Darfur and the Sudan today then you will be riveted by what the Bakers attempted to accomplish in the region in the mid 1870s. At more than one point they realize that although slavery is morally wrong, it is also what the economy of so much of Central Africa was based on - people preferred slaves in barter to nearly anything else as slaves retained value. They also learned that governments can say all they want but unless they are in for the long haul - and back up the words with hard core effort - then nothing will ever change. (I'm sure there are a lot of people who used to live in New Orleans who would agree.)

Shortly after the Bakers left Africa for the last time a religious leader came to power in the Sudan; a man who was overlooked and ignored for a long time by the British government as it seemed absurd to them that a man could raise up a successful army of followers merely through religious passion. (Shocking, right?) A good friend of Sam Baker's, Charles Gordon, was eventually sent to Khartoum to get the country back in hand but he was given no real military support by the British government, who was trying to deal with this colonial mess as cheaply as possible, and after discovering that yes - the enemy was a serious opponent, he was given no regular organized army with which to fight him. Gordon and his men were massacred at Khartoum in January 1885 - he was shot, speared, stabbed, beheaded and his head was placed on pike. Upon learning of his death Sam wrote:

"I shall never publish another remark concerning Egypt. Now that poor Gordon is sacrificed, I unstring my bow; and remain a passive spectator of the misery and shame that have been the result of British interference."

Amazing how words from more than 120 years ago can have such relevance today, isn't it?

(Oh - and your movie trivia for the day: The Four Feathers, the Heath Ledger/Kate Hudson movie from a few years ago was about the Gordon relief expedition, which arrived just in time to see Gordon's head and not much else.]

This is one of those books that gives off the illusion of being stuffy or dated. What could the life and thoughts of a woman who traveled in Central Africa have in common with the world today? As it turns out, a lot of what Florence Baker and her husband witnessed is still part of how we live in the 21st century. Just further evidence that learning history is the only way to understand the present or predict the future; further proof of how very much history matters. (And it doesn't hurt that Shipman is an outstanding author.)

[Post pic of Lady Florence Baker from the National Portrait Gallery.]