Jacky Winter is pleased to present Graveyard Shift, a large-scale typographic installation by Sydney-based artist Gemma O’Brien. Bringing together a collection of fleeting phrases, notes and ideas conceived between midnight and 5am over the past year, O’Brien will spend four consecutive nights creating a 360° hand-painted mural of bold black and white lettering and illustration, applied directly onto the gallery walls.

Broaching themes of human experience, love and mortality, new forms of modern worship, celebrity, internet culture and the contemporary city, Graveyard Shift follows on from her first solo show at Fremantle Arts Centre, Better Left Unsaid, and reflects upon the myriad of illustrated murals created for various commercial clients in the past year.

On the final day of the exhibition, Gemma will be hosting a workshop that will give participants insight into the hand-drawn processes she uses to create unique lettering designs. The class will give an overview of the differences between writing, lettering and typography before moving into a series of short exercises to demonstrate key principles of letter construction, rhythm, contrast, composition, balance and letter-customisation (swashes, flourishes, decoration). Using calligraphic principles as a starting point participants will spend the second part of the day conceptualising, drawing and refining a custom piece of lettering under Gemma’s instruction.

Gemma O’Brien is an internationally recognised typographer, hand-letterer and illustrator based in Sydney. O’Brien studied a Bachelor of Design at The College of Fine Arts, UNSW and recently participated in an SVA Masters Workshop in Rome through the School of Visual Arts, New York. Recent solo exhibitions include You Make Me Sick, UNM, Sydney (2013); Better Left Unsaid, Fremantle Arts Centre, Fremantle (2013). Select group exhibitions include: Pop, Above Second, Hong Kong (2014); All Your Gold, The Tate, Sydney (2014); Not for Rental, Little White Lies, London (2013); Suburban Legends, The Distillery, Sydney (2012); Sign Language, Lower Fi, Sydney (2012); True Self, Melbourne GPO, Melbourne (2012). O’Brien has presented at numerous design conferences including TYPO Berlin, TYPO San Francisco, Semi Permanent, Field Trip, agIdeas International Design Forum, and Typism. Recently Gemma received the 2014 Award for Typographic excellence from the Type Directors Club, New York.