With its profile growing exponentially with each new edition, CURVY has featured and collaborated with over 500 female artists since its debut in 2003 from countries like Japan, Bulgaria, South Korea, Mexico and Australia.  And true to its aims, CURVY 5 is a stimulating look-book featuring all manner of girl artists and illustrators with a diverse range of styles and professional backgrounds.

In CURVY 5, the bold coloured and hyper feminine graf style characters of famed and commercially successful French artist Fafi sit alongside illustrations produced by emerging illustrators who are still completing their design degrees.  The anthology is successful in presenting a complicated understanding of girls visually, through the wide variety of the artwork selected, which are often juxtaposed.

An ethereal image of sleepy and mermaid-like girls in bed, painted directly onto wood is the works of Audrey Kawsaki, a Japanese author who lives and works in the United States.  In contrast, Beci Orpin, an Australian fashion designer, submitted a bold black and green image, depicting skulls with upturned hearts for noses, smiling teeth, buttons, bows and threaded needles. 

And as if being visually good looking is not enough, CURVY 5 has the lovely effect of evoking a sense of community.  I was stoked to discover Sydney designer, illustrator, zine-ster, book-binder and general maker-of-things Michelle Vandermeer’s inclusion, being an avid follower and consumer of her work.  CURVY 5 features an image from her Laundromatic fabric book, ‘The Search for the Impossible Clean’ produced last year and featured in Noosa’s annual artist book exhibition last year.

You can still catch CURVY 5 the exhibition if you’re in Melbourne:

April 17 – May 1

Don’t Come gallery

Royal Arcade

314 Little Collins St Melbourne

The book is in selected stores now.

Image courtesy of Michelle Vandermeer.