My Brutal Life

My Brutal Life: Exploring the human side of artistic work with brutalism, environments and people.

Displayed in the iconic Moore Street Electricity Substation.

The exhibition includes work by Bill Stephenson / Mick Jones / Mandy Payne / Martin Dust / Scott Amoeba / Richard Davis / Jen Orpin / Alun Cocks / Human Studio / Sean Madner / Helen Angell / The Black Dog.

Click Here For Tickets

Sheffield In Ruins By Denzil Watson

We’ve always planned to put out other peoples work on R23, so it’s with great pleasure that we can present the first book by Denzil, Sheffield In Ruins.

Situation District Volume 1: Park Hill

I think it’s been clear for a while about my love of Park Hill, so it was an absolute pleasure to work on this. It’s still one of my favourite places to photograph.

New Publishing Company

Today we launch our publishing company with a fantastic book by Denzil Watson; Sheffield In Ruins. You can back the project here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/revelations23press/sheffield-in-ruins Please share the message so we can get the project going with a bang. #kickstarter #sheffieldinruins #photography #books

The Black EP

I’ve been playing around with scripts, narration and making videos to help explain things, it’s much hard than I thought. I’m not 100% that I’ve nailed this one but it was testing to do on an iPhone!

Little Sheffield

My new book is finally out, you can check it out HERE

OMPH Magazine

Spydee Gasmantell of Coum fame created Omph Magazine to help raise money for charity. It brings together many different artists and writers into a fantastic analogue format of an A4 magazine.

Includes work from Skot Armst, Benjamin Brood, Martin Dust, Ian Evetts, Margareta Goyk-Galvin, Jane Hoodless, Vic Malz, James Norton and Ben Waddington.

All the money from this magazine will go to Save The Children to help kids in Ukraine.

Newsletter

If you want all the latest info, early news and publishing dates just sign up above and we’ll email you when we have some news, don’t worry we won’t be spamming you at any point.

Something|Somewhere 02

I love doing this magazine, being back doing print and supporting other artist’s is a great reward. These pictures from Mick Jones are amazing, I’ve spent hours just looking at them and recalling it all. Please support the project if you can.

Brutal Yorkshire

Feels great to have the second book out and what an adventure it was, the book could have easily been 500 pages but I had a page limit to deal with. You can find the book in the Store and thank you for all the support.

3 Chord Wonder

Self-publishing a book is no easy thing these days, beyond the actual psychical thing of setting the book up and getting it printed, it’s the endless thought of promoting it and thinking people must be sick of hearing me bang on about it.

 99.99% of people have been brilliant, posting images on social media with positive comments, it really helps so if you’ve bought one please do it, I think that kind of thing really does help sales and I’m grateful for the effort.

 Unlike the music I do, I don’t have a distributor or publishing company to help with the book, everything is basically run from one website and a 12 by 8 room, the DiY vibe is strong here. I pack the books, print the labels and stand in the queue at the Post Office.

I mean, who release a book when all the shops are shut? Me, that’s who!

 Brutal Sheffield, to be fair, has gone really well, so well we had to ship stuff early and put another print run in, I really expected it to be a slow burn throughout the year but it started with a bang and has been burning steady ever since, great news and thank you for the support.

Looking at what is coming next makes me think about if I should stay DiY, as great as it is being listed on the big sites is and I admit it’s a buzz but the downside is 90 days to pay and 60% off doesn’t really spell a great future if that’s the route I want to take, maybe a mix of both will be idea but we’ll have to wait and see what happens.

At the minute I’m loving doing the DiY and dealing with people directly, I think it’s something myself and The Black Dog are good at, we’ve always done it and for the better part it always pays off.

 But let’s talk about the .01%, you’ll never please everyone, we all know that but don’t one of these people and knock peoples ducks off. Some people think I’m Amazon but the reality is, I wait until there are enough orders and then I pack them to send off. No-one thinks the price of postage is a rip off than me but I don’t make any profit from the postage, that’s what it costs to send something First Class, it’s not like I have any influence over it.

I’ve already seen Brutal Sheffield advertising with 20% off and free postage and I’m sat here thinking fuckers how do I compete with that! The answer is I can’t I’m not a massive box/book shifter but it has made a shift in my consciousness to order the books I want directly from the author or publisher because I’d rather they make the most profit they can so they can carry on doing what they do.

 Looks to me like the DiY spirit is back with a bang. Here are three words: Write A Book now go out and do it.

Now Then Interview

I did a short interview with Now Then magazine about Brutal Sheffield, always loved the magazine, I have fond memories of reading the mag in The Harlequin with a pint of some hop bitter IPA. I’m missing those days a lot due to the pandemic, I’d love a pint and the smell of fresh print right now.

Read the interview HERE

New Magazine: Brutal Dissident.

Work In Progress

So, I’ve been working on a magazine idea for a while now because I see a lot of great work that would look so much better in print than on a small screen.

The current thinking is to do two magazines a year and to taken in all things Brutal, some modernism with a hint of minimalism. I’ll be paying a small fee to the selected photographers because we all know that working for exposure sucks big time, this of course will effect the cover price but I think that’s a small price to pay.

If you are interested in getting involved you can contact me HERE.

Interview About Brutal Sheffield

I did a short interview with inn8 magazine, you can read it by clicking here.

First bit of Coverage

Although the journey has been over a year, I’ve just had my first bit of coverage here:
Click Here

Always nice to get a helping hand from other.

New Website

The problem with all websites is they are never finished but it was about to time to make a fist of it and get this thing launched.

Test Prints

After months of work and worrying I’ve finally started to get the test prints in, pretty exciting times.

Brutal Sheffield

Perhaps one of the most difficult things I’ve ever set out to do, 90 pictures of Sheffield with some blather from me as well. Hoping to have the pre-sale up soon.