Nick Morley's Amazing World of Beards, Permanent Gallery, Brighton, Aug 31 to Sep 9

1:03pm Thursday 30th August 2007

This Saturday, Brighton plays host to the 2007 World Beard And Moustache Championships. For the uninitiated, this charitable event takes place biennially in order to promote good relationships between members of moustache and beard clubs throughout the world (yes, there are such things) and celebrate standards of excellence in the growth, design and presentation of facial hair.

Some 250 contestants from the likes of Sweden's Mustaschklubben, Germany's Snorrenclub, Norway's Den Norske Mustachclub and America's Whisker Club will descend upon the city to compete in various categories in front of more than 1,000 spectators.

It's sort of like Crufts, but with men.

One man who wouldn't miss it for the world is artist Nick Morley. In 2005, he attended the Berlin championships and had "the most amazing day of my life", and he has spent the intervening two years making portraits of the competitors from the hundreds of photographs he took. Collected together in Nick Morley's Amazing World Of Beards, they provide an accessible insight into the obscure and obsessive world of competitive beard-growing, and a perfect introduction to the Championship.

"I think my favourite has to be Elmar Weisser," says Morley. "He's the world champion in the Freestyle Full Beard category, which seems to be the most prestigious. He won that with one side of his beard sculpted into the shape of the Brandenberg Gate with little German flags on top. It's gravity defying, you can't quite work out how it's done.

"I like the really long, natural fullbeards, the Rip Van Winkle look. In Berlin there were a load of really chilled-out old guys who looked like they'd invested their whole life in their beard. One of them was actually dressed as Father Christmas."

An up-and-coming printmaker, Morley has just completed his first Penguin Books commission (for Albert Jack's Ten Minute Mysteries) and had his work (in this case a print of a pair of blue turkeys having sex) singled out by Viv Reeves at the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition. He likes the idea of crossing traditional techniques with contemporary images, which he often finds on the internet or in newspapers.

"Printing suits a slightly obsessive personality because you can be very, very careful and detailed," he explains.

"But at the same time there's a lack of control because when you print it the image reverses. It doesn't matter how many times you do it, when you peel the print back from the plate it's always exciting. Sometimes it's a total disaster and you've wasted two days, sometimes it exceeds what you hoped for."

Sometimes the printmaking technique can bring a sense of gravitas at odds with the seemingly frivolous nature of Morley's subject matter. Sometimes the subject matter is deeper than the simple outlines and cheerful colours immediately suggest. It's no coincidence that the artist is a big fan of Raymond Briggs, in particular the author's tribute to his late parents, Ethel & Earnest, in which he uses the picture-book genre to confront his loss: "It has a childlike innocence in the way it's drawn but the scenes he's tackling are so raw".

In the past, Morley's warmly witty etchings and woodcuts have included portraits of wrestlers and hunters.

His work, he says, is often about "masculinity and the way people express their identity by dressing or behaving in a certain way".

"Some of the Beard Championship competitors are professional beard growers with business cards and everything but a lot of the men are actually quite shy. It's a little bit like a beauty pageant but it's a lot more than that, there's a real feel of community and breaking down barriers."

In line with past exhibitions of Morley's in which members of the public have been invited to print and colour their own woodblock sumo wrestler or decorate cup cakes bearing a screen-printed image of the Queen, Nick Morley's Amazing World Of Beards will also include an interactive element in which gallery visitors who "feel a bit inadequate" can cut out and construct their own beards from a screen-printed poster. Morley, it emerges, already has his own.

"I've been growing it for 18 months,"

he reveals. "I grew it for about five weeks before going to Berlin, thinking that I might enter, but it didn't get anyway near the kind of length worth going on stage for. This time I've taken it a bit more seriously. It's a goatie and the length isn't anything to shout about but it's ginger, and I haven't got ginger hair, so that's its main selling point. I'm going to enter the Natural Goatie category - that's the one where you're not allowed styling aids like wax or hairspray."

Needless to say we're rooting for him.

The exhibition is at the Permanent Gallery, Bedford Place, Brighton from August 31 to September 9. Times are: Thur, Fri, Sun 1-6pm, Sat 11am-6pm.

A hand-printed beard activity book will accompany the exhibition.

The World Beard And Moustache Championships take place at the Brighton Centre on Saturday. Visit www.worldbeardchampionships.com or call 0870 900 9100 to book.