Jonny Hannah – The Gang’s All Here – Signed Limited-Edition Screenprint 24/50 – Cakes & Ale Press – 2005

Description

A large, exuberant and particularly characteristic original screenprint by Jonny Hannah, entitled The Gang’s All Here, dating from 2005.

The work measures 41 × 58.2 cm and was produced in a limited edition of only 50 impressions. This example is number 24/50 and is signed by Jonny Hannah in pencil, with the edition device and Cakes & Ale Press imprint incorporated into the lower right-hand area of the design.

Printed in a tightly controlled palette of deep blue, orange, yellow and pale blue-grey, the composition is constructed as a densely populated graphic collage of musicians, actors, entertainers, slogans and fragments of hand-rendered typography. Across the top Hannah announces:

THE GANG’S ALL HERE!

while the lower section is dominated by the emphatic phrase:

BETTER GIT IT IN YOUR SOUL!

Between these two declarations is Hannah’s imagined gathering of twentieth-century popular culture: portraits, names, musical references and graphic fragments arranged with the visual energy of an old record sleeve, entertainment poster, fan magazine and hand-printed broadside combined.

Music, Film and Popular Culture

The Gang’s All Here is essentially a celebration of the personalities and imagery that populate Hannah’s personal cultural universe.

Among the readily identifiable written references within the composition are Jane Russell, John Garfield and “A Young Johnny Cash”, alongside further musical and entertainment imagery. Elsewhere appear phrases such as “Rocket Man Says”, “Mystery Action Society” and other fragments that operate almost like snippets cut from old records, advertisements and popular magazines.

Hannah does not arrange these elements as a formal historical survey. Instead, they function as an associative collection — a cast of characters drawn from music, cinema and American popular culture and brought together according to the artist’s own visual logic.

The result is closer to an enthusiast’s scrapbook or imaginary wall of fame than a conventional group portrait.

“Better Git It in Your Soul”

The prominent wording “BETTER GIT IT IN YOUR SOUL!” adds a particularly strong jazz resonance to the composition.

The phrase closely evokes Charles Mingus’s “Better Git It in Your Soul”, one of the bassist and composer’s best-known compositions, first recorded at the end of the 1950s and closely associated with his landmark album Mingus Ah Um.

Its appearance here is entirely in keeping with Hannah’s longstanding engagement with jazz, blues, country music and the graphic culture surrounding recorded music.

Within the print, however, the phrase operates visually as much as musically: oversized typography becomes part of the architecture of the composition, functioning almost like the headline on an old concert poster.

A Young Johnny Cash

One of the most immediately recognisable references is the portrait labelled:

“A YOUNG JOHNNY CASH”

Hannah’s interest in Cash fits naturally into his broader fascination with the visual culture of American music — particularly the worlds of country, rock and roll, blues and early recorded popular music.

Cash appears not as an isolated celebrity portrait but as one member of Hannah’s broader “gang”, surrounded by actors, musicians, slogans and invented graphic devices.

That mixture is central to the print’s appeal. It captures not merely individual personalities but an entire imagined cultural landscape.

Typography and Graphic Design

The image is a particularly rich example of Hannah’s use of hand lettering as an integral part of picture-making.

Different type styles collide across the sheet: condensed capitals, rough scripts, decorative lettering, star-bordered banners and hand-drawn display type. Words and pictures are given equal prominence and frequently overlap or compete for space.

This layered approach recalls the visual language of record sleeves, cheap entertainment posters, fan magazines, advertising ephemera and commercial packaging, but Hannah recreates that world through his own deliberately handmade aesthetic.

The restricted palette of orange, blue, yellow and pale blue-grey gives the work considerable coherence despite the density of information.

Screenprint Technique

This is an original colour screenprint, not a later photographic or digital reproduction.

The process allows Hannah to build the image through successive layers of flat colour while retaining the lively imperfections of his hand-drawn source material.

Slight changes in ink density, textured printed areas and irregular edges form part of the original screenprinted surface. These qualities are particularly effective in The Gang’s All Here, where the work deliberately evokes inexpensive commercial and entertainment printing without attempting to imitate it mechanically.

Date and Edition

The work dates from 2005, placing it comparatively early within Hannah’s independent printmaking output.

This example is:

24/50

from an edition of only 50 impressions.

The combination of an early date, small edition, substantial format and especially rich music-and-film subject matter gives the work considerable appeal within Hannah’s graphic output.

Artist

Jonny Hannah is a British illustrator, painter and printmaker whose work combines music, hand lettering, folk art, film, old advertising, commercial ephemera and vernacular graphic design.

Music is one of the strongest recurring threads within his practice, and Hannah frequently approaches it through the surrounding culture of record sleeves, typography, personalities, clothing, shops and printed ephemera rather than conventional portraiture alone.

The Gang’s All Here is therefore an unusually concentrated Hannah image: part musical homage, part film scrapbook and part imaginary piece of vintage graphic design.

Condition

Very good to excellent condition overall.

The colours remain strong, bright and well balanced, with particularly good contrast between the orange, yellow, deep blue and pale blue-grey printed areas.

There is only minor natural handling and paper irregularity visible, consistent with the age and handmade nature of the screenprint. Small variations in ink density and printed texture are characteristic of the process rather than subsequent faults.

The pencil signature and edition number 24/50 remain clearly visible.

Please study the photographs carefully as they form an integral part of the description.

Artist: Jonny Hannah
Title: The Gang’s All Here
Date: 2005
Medium: Original colour screenprint
Edition: 24/50
Edition size: 50
Signed: Yes, in pencil
Size: 41 × 58.2 cm
Imprint: Cakes & Ale Press
Subjects: Music, cinema and twentieth-century popular culture
Format: Original limited-edition artist’s screenprint
Unframed: Yes
Modern reproduction: No

Authenticity

This work has been handled, inspected and catalogued in-house at Hornseys before being offered for sale.

The pencil signature, numbered edition 24/50 and Cakes & Ale Press identification are present on the work.

It is an original signed and numbered Jonny Hannah screenprint from an edition of only 50, not a later reproduction.

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