In this special christmas episode, the last in this series until next year,
Amanda Blainey talks to Mr Bingo. He is called Mr Bingo because when he was 19 he won £141 at the Gala Bingo. In 2011 he began the project ‘Hate Mail’ on Twitter, where strangers paid him to send a hand-drawn offensive postcard to a name and address of their choice. It sold out within days; since then he has opened it 12 times and it has sold out every time within minutes. Like much of his work, the project started as ‘a drunk idea’, but ended up being exhibited in galleries and gaining notoriety among the global press. In summer 2015, he ran a Kickstarter campaign to fund a high-end art book of his ‘Hate Mail’ illustrations. The campaign, was successfully funded within 9 hours, making it the most successful Kickstarter for a book in the UK ever.
in 2015 after a 15 year career as an illustrator, Mr Bingo made a decision to stop working for clients and go it alone as an artist.
For the last four years he has created in his own words a ‘nudey scratchy festive fun’ christmas advent calendar in which each day in December is represented by a different person whose clothing is printed in removable gold
ink , when you scratch off the ink you reveal them in all their naked glory. This episode was recorded in London in a coffee lounge,
we talk about - Art- Not being too busy and doing nothing-
Challenging the norm of what ‘working’ is.
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Mr Bingo’s gravestone art project- Freelancing- Having fun- How walking is good for you- Can work be a hobby?- What if we live forever?- And of course we cover those small subjects of death and life! This episode contains some swearing.Episode references https://shop.mr.bingo/https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mrbingo/hate-mail-the-definitive-collection