The 22-year-old Kingston University graduate has worked with clients such as The New York Times, Hermes, The Guardian, Tate, and The British Council on projects ranging from illustration to curation and everything in between.
Within Joey, there is “an inherent need to make work and make creative things,” combined with a sense of confidence, a shapeshifting outlook, and a boundless potential that radiates across the table between us.
She chose the most accessible word to describe what she does – ‘illustration’ – as her art form. This seems to be part of an ingrained drive to get people engaged with art and open up the exclusivity of the art world. Her work is full of colour, of angled people, far-flung buildings, exotic landscapes, warm hues, slithers of light, everyday actions, familiar gestures, and surreal composition.
ArrayThis knack for capturing the aura of her environment stems from her ability to simply sit and draw in public without anxiety or trepidation – to zone out from the cares of the people around her, to really focus on the faces, places, buildings and conversations that constitute her surroundings.
This ability to control her nervousness was most clearly evidenced on December 4th, 2015, when she was booed off stage at Tate Britain interviewing Kurupt FM from the show ‘People Just Do Nothing’.
This would have been haunting for most people, but instead of being overcome by unending embarrassment and shame, it made her feel alive. “It made me look at myself and think it means nothing,” she says. “In that role, I was the presenter, and people had no interest in me or the entertainment. It made me really discard the sense of nervousness around myself.” She took heart and light from the darkness of that disaster, positivity from a negative experience, and is applying these to her life and art.
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She realised that “you’re so malleable as a person, you can be whatever you want to be,” you can change to fit any scenario and achieve anything you put your mind to. Joey takes this malleability into the uses of her art, taking it from illustration and animation into the physical world of T-shirts and jeans and accessories and vases.
“I love the 3-Dness of clothing,” she explains, “I love seeing my drawings in the real world. I have an accessories collaboration coming out next year that has my drawings in a physical way that you can use.” As her portfolio grows more impressive, she masters ever more artistic spheres, gleefully blurring the distinctions between where one practice stops, and another begins.
Similarly, in live-drawing sessions, Joey has to be talking to and drawing many people in a short space of time. She must quickly find a connection with the person opposite to spark the art. “I’m turning into a different person each time”, she explains, “it taught me to be really liquid. I feel like it’s giving me skills for something, but I don’t know what that is yet.”
ArrayJoey relishes these moments of uncertainty, of being thrown in the deep end, and seeks them out in everyday life. “I’m a really basic adrenaline junkie in the most mundane way,” she laughs, “I’m always trying to find normal thrills.”
“Every day I try and do slightly daring things” – things to change her mindset, things to change her environment, things to spark ideas. “It’s not particularly daring, but I’m going on a hike with my sister soon, just as something to throw me off a bit, to keep me thinking.”
In another daring move, Joey has started moving away from autobiographical subject matter and begun leaning towards other ways to tell stories in her work. “I always wanted to tell grand stories. When I was learning what I wanted to do I used my own life as a jumping point, so a lot of my work was naturally autobiographical, yet now the work I want to make is more outward-facing stories.”
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Lobster Main Spot
An example of such stories involves a collaborative short film about encounters in a Chinese restaurant in the vast emptiness of middle America, “when a girl pulls up… it’s about what happens next.” It explores the bizarre and the familiar, constructing more elaborate and surreal situations, all in her own unique style. The film is due to come out this year, alongside a series of other exciting projects she is working on.
In the meantime, Joey will “keep experimenting, keep moving forward, keep trying new things” – her natural way of being.
