At this year's London Original Print Fair in March, we decided to do something a little different and invited one of our new artists, Corbin Shaw to come along and demonstrate the screenprinting process whilst providing an original, one-of-a-kind artwork. Participants were encouraged to make a minimum donation of £10 before choosing a scratch card of their choice to print onto, with all proceeds raised donated to Shelter. The artwork was then created in front of their eyes!

Below, the artist Corbin Shaw shares the thinking behind the live-printed artworks:

Scratch cards are about as accessible as milk, bread, alcohol or cigarettes in every shop or every street corner of England. Superstition and paranoia fuels the addiction by advertisements that play on your mind.

Thoughts of ‘…What if?’ or ‘Imagine!’

It’s propaganda for the working man. The lottery is a stealth tax for the working class that funds arts, culture and sport instead of taxing the rich.

“The money always comes out the working man’s pocket...”

This is a quote from me Dad.

“No mode of raising Money appears to Your Committee so burdensome, so pernicious, and so unproductive; no species of adventure is known, where the chances are so great against the adventurer, none where the infatuation is more powerful, lasting, and destructive."

House of Commons 1808

The work lures an art crowd into buying an object that if they scratch now, could win them up to 10k but instead, they can afford to keep the art, which in time may increase in value.

- Corbin Shaw