More than 50 artists, designers and producers from three continents have worked on KesselsKramer’s latest art project. New Tapestry is an updated version of a very old and famous Medieval piece: the Bayeux Tapestry.

The original Bayeux Tapestry showed the news events around 1066 in one enormous strip of cloth. In form, it resembled the Middle Ages equivalent of a comic book or film storyboard. KesselsKramer’s New Tapestry will also record news events presented as a visual story, but this time for 2009. Like the Bayeux it will comprise a vast cloth strip, divided into 52 panels, one for each week of the year. Each panel is drawn in black and white by a mix of fresh young artists and established talent, including Laser 3.14, Joe Morse, and Christian Borstlap, voted one of the top illustrators in the world. In style, the New Tapestry surprises continuously, switching from energetic graffiti to the best commercial art to naïve scrawls to incredibly elaborate pieces.

In total, it’s a topical retrospective of a tumultuous year, featuring the historic rise of Barack Obama, swine flu, the tale of the ailing world economy, and the strange death of Michael Jackson. Each of these subplots can be seen weaving in and out of the larger piece, referenced in different ways by different artists.

The final New Tapestry will be more than 21 meters long and flow continuously around the walls of Amsterdam’s prestigious Steendrukkerij Gallery. In the centre of the space, a miniature exhibition-within-an-exhibition will show sketches and works-in-progress by the best New Tapestry illustrators, helping to show how the piece was created.

The exhibition opens 28  January and runs through 2 February. Click here to view more artwork.

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