Books at the Institute: An Evening with George Butler
October 10, 2024 @ 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
Books at the Institute presents an evening with George Butler, award-winning illustrator and reportage artist. Butler will be discussing his recent book, Ukraine: Remember Also Me.
Thursday, October 10, 2024 at 6:30 PM
A book signing and light reception will follow the program. Reservations are recommended.
Ukrainian Institute of America
2 East 79th Street (at Fifth Avenue)
New York, NY 10075
TICKETS
George Butler 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 watercolor.
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 small, civil war-damaged 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 in 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 a Leprosy Clinic in Nepal, a militia in Yemen, the Mass Graves in Bucha, a cesarean-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.
“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, The 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.
In 2014, with three friends, George set up the Hands Up Foundation. The aim was to remind the people they had met in Syria that they had not been forgotten. The Hands Up Foundation supports salaries of professionals inside Syria and has to date raised £7.8 million.
For further information: Please contact the Ukrainian Institute of America at (212) 288-8660 or mail@ukrainianinstitute.org.