SXSWesteros: Rad Game of Thrones Original Art Show From Mondo

AUSTIN, Texas — Each year, movie nerds flock to the South by Southwest Film Festival for the chance to see scads of movies at the cinephile-friendly, beer-serving Alamo Drafthouse Cinema’s Ritz Theater. This year, however, Alamo Drafthouse is offering something for TV fantasy nerds too — a gallery show of original Game of Thrones art.

That’s right. The brains behind Mondo – the Alamo collectible-art division responsible for all of those rad movie posters– have asked a talented crew of artists to make original pieces based on the HBO show. The result is a series of eight screen prints and nearly 30 pieces of original art – the latter of which, along with two of the screen prints, will be on display at a Mondo gallery event beginning Friday and running through March 14.

Mondo, which was born out of Alamo founder Tim League’s vintage iron-on T-shirt enterprise Mondo Tees, enlisted some of its best and brightest artists for the show, including San Francisco Blade Runner aficionado Craig Drake, on-record Game of Thrones fan Daniel Danger, and rock poster designer Ken Taylor. It also brought on artists previously unknown to the Mondo roster like Sanjulian and Audrey Kawasaki. Some of the artists were already familiar with the terrain of Westeros, but some had to be indoctrinated — not that they minded.

“Everyone else kind of said … ‘I watched one [episode] and I couldn’t stop watching them,’” Mondo’s creative director Justin Ishmael said in an interview with Wired. “People were really into it and that’s what we like to hear when we work with people on a series like this.”

It’s not the first time Mondo has done something with Game of Thrones– the Alamo creative wing did a handful of sought-after posters for the show for last year’s Comic-Con International – but this series is far more elaborate than those done for the conference. The gallery show also brought on interesting challenges like making sure no one made art of an already killed-off character and ensuring the gallery didn’t end up with two dozen Tyrion Lannister paintings. The latter, however, turned out to be relatively easy. According to Ishmael there are a couple Daenerys Targaryen painting and Tyrions, but nearly every character is represented overall.

“Jason Edmiston did a really great Khaleesi [Daenerys] piece and she’s like the most popular character,” he said. “Then you have a lot of people wanting to do The Hound, where it’s not like a character where you think, ‘Oh yeah, The Hound, he’s one of my favorites!’”

In addition to premiering new artwork, Mondo’s gallery show will also be the unveiling of Brewery Ommegang’s much talked-about Game of Thrones beer “Iron Throne” (soon to be reviewed by Wired). While the beer will sadly only be available during the opening, the Game of Thrones art will be on display at the Mondo Gallery in Austin starting at 7 p.m. on Friday and running through March 14.

[Argo by Olly Moss]