As some of you Great Leslians are aware, the artwork we’ve been churning out this year with our singles has been somewhat of leap forward in construct. The truth is we’ve been super lucky. I (Ryan) approached my brother-in-law Michael Lisle-Taylor (aka Mick) at his twin girls 15th Birthday meal on Brick Lane (while under the influence) asking him to collaborate with us (The Great Leslie’s) on our single artwork for this year.

Mick agreed that he would be willing, but in exchange, in that moment, he had to have a picture of him riding an elephant statue situated in the historic Spitalfields Market…Of course this as an offer of great magnitude, plus I couldn’t risk the tequila wearing off.

Thanks to this Mick has helped us enormously by lending us his even-more enormous array of crafting talents and creativity!

I’m not sure if this is a spoiler, but if it is – then you read it hear first. Micks helping us do a total of 4 pieces, which means currently you guys have only seen 2 of them! The 3rd was edited and completed yesterday and the 4th will start production in a month. While we can’t show you the 3rd just yet (although let me assure you it’s bloody fantastic, we have to keep that one under wraps for a bit longer).

The singles you Lesliens have seen (and heard) are Liquid Spells and Feel Alive. As is probably apparent, the art is being made through a casting process, which I went into detail about in THIS BLOG about Feel Alive.

For Liquid spells the piece incorporated some actual…organic matter?! I don’t know why I’m holding back. HEARTS!!!!! Yep, those are real hearts…Lamb hearts actually, from a friendly butcher in East London. Although they probably don’t look it, they are frozen – ain’t no way you can cast a floppy heart. Sorry lambs! The good news is that they weren’t wasted and the rest of the corpse was eaten by omnivores, I’m sure they tasted great. The good news is the hearts are still in the freezer in Micks studio along with a lot of other things I don’t wanna know about. I’ve heard rumours of a horses head being in there.

I’m going to round of this entry by letting you in on a little secret. We have some HUGGGEEEEE… LIKE….. TOTALLY MASSIVE news coming your way in the imminent future. Things are really going places at TGLHQ. Please keep checking our socials and website for updates.

Peace and Love

Ryan xxx