UNMISTAKABLE LABEL: Interview with Galia Pike of Kent's Westwell Wines
Artist and musician Galia Pike talks microscopic creatures, no-fear labels and Westwell Wines
With the sound of crisping haggis popping and hissing in the background, Galia Pike explains the captivating illustrations that adorn the bottles of Westwell Wines.
Her husband Adrian (who is doing the cooking) was the founder of Moshi Moshi Records - known for producing the likes of Bloc Party, Hot Chip and Florence and the Machine - before stepping away from the music industry and into the vineyard… specifically at Westwell (@Westwellwines), near Ashford, in 2017. But that’s another story.
Galia, who is arguably better known as Galia Durant, is one half of multi-award-winning duo Psapp - who put ‘toytronica’ firmly on the map when they landed the theme tune to Grey’s Anatomy and a plethora of TV shows and commercials as well as releasing five critically-acclaimed albums, plus countless EPs and singles.
“I think, coming from the music industry and working on lots of record-sleeve art, we were used to the idea of intriguing covers that don’t have very clearly the band name,” she says. “You have to pick it up and explore it and kind of engage with the object to see who it’s by. So yeah, that was kind of our angle, really.”
Westwell has certainly become recognisable because of its ‘out there’ labels that, the pair point out, have helped eradicate the fear factor of not putting the vineyard’s name on the front.
“From a branding point of view, slightly risky, but it seems to have come good,” she says. “We don’t really have a problem with people not knowing who they are.”
With ever more independents opening up, the wine industry and its whole feel is moving in a more creative direction in both taste and branding.
“... under a microscope, chalk looks absolutely incredible!”
“There’s other producers that are being a bit more daring,” says Galia. “I think, initially, especially for the sparkling wines, people played it safe and went for quite simple, clean designs, but it’s definitely evolving and interesting things are happening visually. I like the Titch Hill [Sussex] labels and Ham Street Wines [Kent] are doing really cool labels.”
Although having studied only ‘briefly’ at art school, Galia followed her creative passions both in music and events, with the early noughties Craft Night at the Notting Hill Arts Club - which celebrated crafting for clubgoers - featured on the BBC Culture Show and The Guardian.
“I’m sort of one of those people that’s had about 30 careers,” she says. “Just always swapping things up. And in about 2013, Adrian went out for dinner with some friends and he tried some English wine and came back and said ‘Right, that’s what I want to do next’. And I came along for the ride.
“We moved to Sussex thinking we’d set up something there and, as it happened, it ended up being Westwell, which is pretty far from Sussex, but it was a great site.
“But we were doing everything on a shoestring, so I said ‘Well, I’ll do the label’. So it was all quite organic.”
ZOOMING IN
The images that feature on the wine labels are intriguing, to say the least. Guessing what they are is part of the fun.
“It came from quite a literal thought process, which was ‘What can you see in the vineyard? What is the wine actually made out of?’,” says Galia.
“It’s made out of the earth, you know, it’s made out of the vines themselves. We found this photographer in Switzerland who takes pictures of wood under a microscope, so I drew from those photographs microscopic parts of the Ortega vine wood.
“So there’s a few elements that are kind of abstracted and others that are just like incredibly literal: the grapes, the skins, the vine, the tiny little fossilised creatures that make up the chalk that we grow the vines on - under a microscope, chalk looks absolutely incredible!”
One particular piece, which displays the ‘magic of the ferment’ for a Pinot Noir and Meunier blend, Galia has drawn thousands upon thousands of tiny bubbles grouping and dispersing to form different frothy parts of the brewing mixture. It must take bloody ages.
“It’s always longer than I anticipate. I’ll have something in mind and then I’ll sort of mock it up and think ‘Yeah, I can probably get that done in a day!’. But it always takes a lot longer. The drawings are done slightly larger than they appear. And it probably takes about 20 hours – so like three or four days’ work. And yeah, there’s always quite a lot of wrist pain at the end!”
With so many tiny touch points on the page, the concentration levels have to be high to ensure no mistakes in replicating these microscopic forms.
“It’s actually really fun, though,” says Galia. “You sort of enter this weird meditative state, where kind of nothing else exists but getting the drawing done. It’s quite an antisocial process. I don’t really want anyone around and become a bit of a recluse when I’m doing them.”
Galia has also enlarged some of her work, going into even more microscopic detail, and placed it around the winery, while many of the labels are requested as standalone art in their own right. And there could be many more on the way.
“I’m always hoping there’ll be more wine. I get so excited. Like this harvest, Adrian said he was going to make 11 wines. I mean, whether those will all see the light of day remains to be seen. But I just hear the opportunity to draw more labels, so I get very excited about that.”
Wine buffs are probably hoping for a glimpse into the future, to know what new wines Westwell will be putting forward in the months to come… but the haggis is ready and it’s time to go.
INSTA: @monstrouspencil
