UKRAINE: REMEMBER ALSO ME with George Butler on Wednesday 11th June | 7:00 - 8:30pm
The award-winning reportage artist George Butler has gathered artwork and testimonies of people, he has met in Ukraine during the last two years of war. Some of these drawings are in the V&A Museum but the testimonies are in this book called UKRAINE: REMEMBER ALSO ME.
The artwork is testimony to heartbreak, resolve, love and destruction across Ukraine. It is made of everyday Ukrainian people, sometimes on the front line of war, in underground shelters and bunkers, hospitals and on the move.
George is an award-winning illustrator but has reinvented the role of the Artist Reporter drawing conflict zones, climate issues, humanitarian crises and social issues for the news. His drawings are done in situ – in pen, ink and watercolour.
The title of this book was inspired by a poem by Taras Shevchenko (1814 – 1861), an important poet in the Ukrainian language. Shevchenko’s poem “My Testament”, the last line of which is translated as “Remember also me” has significance when read today.
“George Butler is in the front rank of chroniclers of our troubled times. His work shows the power of paper and ink in the digital age.” — JEREMY BOWEN
“Reportage of aching beauty – Butler’s gentle engagement draws out stories of profound sadness, but also courage and strength.” — LYSE DOUCET
The award-winning reportage artist George Butler has gathered artwork and testimonies of people, he has met in Ukraine during the last two years of war. Some of these drawings are in the V&A Museum but the testimonies are in this book called UKRAINE: REMEMBER ALSO ME.
The artwork is testimony to heartbreak, resolve, love and destruction across Ukraine. It is made of everyday Ukrainian people, sometimes on the front line of war, in underground shelters and bunkers, hospitals and on the move.
George is an award-winning illustrator but has reinvented the role of the Artist Reporter drawing conflict zones, climate issues, humanitarian crises and social issues for the news. His drawings are done in situ – in pen, ink and watercolour.
The title of this book was inspired by a poem by Taras Shevchenko (1814 – 1861), an important poet in the Ukrainian language. Shevchenko’s poem “My Testament”, the last line of which is translated as “Remember also me” has significance when read today.
“George Butler is in the front rank of chroniclers of our troubled times. His work shows the power of paper and ink in the digital age.” — JEREMY BOWEN
“Reportage of aching beauty – Butler’s gentle engagement draws out stories of profound sadness, but also courage and strength.” — LYSE DOUCET
The award-winning reportage artist George Butler has gathered artwork and testimonies of people, he has met in Ukraine during the last two years of war. Some of these drawings are in the V&A Museum but the testimonies are in this book called UKRAINE: REMEMBER ALSO ME.
The artwork is testimony to heartbreak, resolve, love and destruction across Ukraine. It is made of everyday Ukrainian people, sometimes on the front line of war, in underground shelters and bunkers, hospitals and on the move.
George is an award-winning illustrator but has reinvented the role of the Artist Reporter drawing conflict zones, climate issues, humanitarian crises and social issues for the news. His drawings are done in situ – in pen, ink and watercolour.
The title of this book was inspired by a poem by Taras Shevchenko (1814 – 1861), an important poet in the Ukrainian language. Shevchenko’s poem “My Testament”, the last line of which is translated as “Remember also me” has significance when read today.
“George Butler is in the front rank of chroniclers of our troubled times. His work shows the power of paper and ink in the digital age.” — JEREMY BOWEN
“Reportage of aching beauty – Butler’s gentle engagement draws out stories of profound sadness, but also courage and strength.” — LYSE DOUCET
George Butler is an award-winning illustrator but has reinvented the role of the Artist Reporter drawing conflict zones, climate issues, humanitarian crisis and social issues for the news. His drawings are done in situ - in pen, ink and watercolour.
In August 2012 George walked from Turkey across the border into Syria, where as a guest of the rebel Free Syrian Army, he drew the Civil War-damaged, small and empty town of Azaz.
A decade later he spent several days in the Metro in Kharkiv, Ukraine recording the lives of those that lived underground to avoid the Russian bombardment. These drawings can be seen in the National Archive at V&A Museum. (London).
Over the last 15 years George has been commissioned to offer a deliberately slow alternative to the headlines. He attaches his drawings to the personal testimonies of those that he meets and records their resolve and resilience alongside the vulnerability of their situations. This has included in a Leprosy Clinic in Nepal, a militia in Yemen, the Mass Graves in Bucha, a caesarean-section in Afghanistan, the artisanal oil fields of Myanmar and most recently for the Guardian documenting the aftermath of the Earthquake in Turkey and Syria. (22/2/23)
“In Ukraine I learnt that the stories of those I was trying to draw, were in fact, far more significant than my attempts at figurative likeness on the page. The drawings became an introduction to something and someone more meaningful that we would have otherwise never known”.
His drawings have been published by The Times (London), Monocle, New York Times, the Guardian, SZ Magazin, VQR, BBC, CNN, Der Spiegel, ARD television (Germany) and NPR. His work has been shown in the Imperial War Museum North, Lambeth Palace and is in collection at the V&A Museum and the National Army Museum.