Each issue of Gong! gives carte blanche to an artist to appropriate the space of the magazine. For its first publication, Gong! invited illustrator and fanzine publisher Mirena Ossorno.
The first issue was published in the summer of 2014 and was devoted to illustrator Mirena Ossorno. Mirena decided to fill all 48 pages with abstract patterns exclusively designed for this publication. It was also her idea to restrict the use of colour to just two shades (yellow and black) and to mix all sorts of different formats together, from collage to Chinese ink brush to Photoshop airbrush or Artstudio features. Some of the designs were even photocopied and printed with risograph. For this issue, Victor Ginesta Rodríguez made the interview and Alba Yruela took Mirena's portrait.
Gong! is a periodical monograph. Each issue is exclusively devoted to a single artist who is given 48 pages, plus cover, to do whatever s/he wants, with the least possible interference from Terranova. On a separate identical in format 1-colour insert we include a thorough interview of the artist with an overview of her/his career and an explanation of the motivations that lead them to do what they did with the issue of the magazine. The magazine's masthead included on the insert changes with every new issue and is also designed by the artist.
Mirena Ossorno (born 1987 in Denia, lives and works in Barcelona) is a graphic artist who after finishing illustration studies at La Massana art school immersed herself into the world of self-edition. She's responsible for the fanzine
Sueño Samoano, with four published issues so far, and also for the renowned feminist fanzine
Bulbasaur, co-edited with Andrea Alvarado Vives and Blanca Miró, on which they combine a focus on fresh aesthetics with poignant essays, reviews and dissemination: a political oasis of lipsticks with razorblades. As artist and illustrator, the work of Ossorno is eminently
Pop, based on
re-appropriation and
conceptual playfulness. Inspired by 80s aesthetics as much as by 70s art direction, her style has evolved from the dirty lines of her first creations to an much more subtle line used on her current work which comprises gags, patterns, interiors and posters inspired by her own day-to-day experiences.
