Rogue Studios - Artist Exhibition

I visited the opening Preview Night of the latest exhibition at Rogue Studios, celebrating artist over 3 floors in one of the largest creative communities. Artists included Anna Frew, Rob Bailey, Paul Cordwell and many many more. Some of the highlights below - the exhibition is open this weekend only, so don't miss it as it is well worth a visit! 

AND - An exploration of the city Art galleries

Manchester this weekend was taken over by the AND festival - the city was buzzing with music, theatre, film and exhibitions and I am glad to have experienced it.

I visited the Manchester Art Gallery for the 'Recorders' exhibition - by electronic artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, a fantastic and interactive experience with the installations as they responded to your pulse, voice and prints. See below image - the lights pulsed to the rhythm of your heart beat to create a surreal discotheque atmosphere that systematically erupted. Very interesting!!


Then I visited Cube Gallery - 'Designed Disorder', which radically proposes absurd and practical solutions into how we behave, mass consume, self meditate and travel, making the design of human experiences an altogether uncomfortable experience.
I blogged several weeks ago about the 'The Toaster Project', Thomas Thwaites, and it was incredible to see the real life objects that were used to create the experiment - it really does make you question have we forgotten how to make everyday items or is this proposition absurd?

Next was the Corner House - 'Unspooling', artists and cinema featuring 19 artists gathering work from the last decade that use or abandon the usual convention of cinema, such as celluloid, digital video, motion and time.







The images above correspond with the Artists work from the exhibition:

-Elizabeth McAlpine - Hyena Stomp, 2006, C-print on plexiglass.
-Stefan Zeyen - Farewell, 2009
-Ming Wong - Life and death in Venice, 2010
-Sheena Macrae - Odyssey, 2009
-Michael Borremans - The German, 2004-2007

It is definitely a must see - it is on till January so no rush!!

It has begun ..

The AND - Abandon Normal Devices Festival has already to taken over the city in preparation for the big weekend, 1st to 3rd Oct. This is my first acknowledgement of it.
The festival has everything to inspire all age ranges, from bike rides, to boat rides, to chocolate tastings, to being shrink wrapped I am sure it'll keep everyone happy!

Get involved - it is a must!

EXHIBITIONS: Archiving time and place

Conor McGrady

Mary McIntyre

Rita Duffy

Sandra Johnston

Conor McGrady

Conor McFeely

The Holden Gallery has been home to 'Archiving time and place' exhibition for the last four weeks. It is based on artists from Ireland and how their experiences have influenced their artwork. I have been invigilating the exhibition along with a few peers and it has been a great place to do some of my own work whilst being in the vicinity of artists.

One of my favourite artists was Conor McGrady whom did the two Gouache on paper pieces and Mary McIntyre. The exhibition was full of history and memories, mostly haunted with some form of war and hatred but it was very interesting not only sit and stare at, but to absorb the sounds that some artist's work included.

EXHIBITIONS: DIM SOME: 3RD YEAR SCULPTURE

The projection onto the cast knees were shadows of twitching and movement.

The artist 'Dan' used his own body to record the movements.

The figures were static and moved ever so gracefully.

I did foundation with this artist and he still couldn't explain what it was all about.

It basically is showing the use of 'angles'.

Hand sewn type onto canvas.

Ryan Lockley - Spray paint image.

The exhibition is a way of teaching the younger years how to set up a show.

The Holden Gallery is a lovely space and especially with the Link Gallery it really flows through the Art School.

Although I find this type of art very abstract and full of expression, I sometimes question the work as I never really understand it. Obviously we are all creative and can see the potential in it but seriously what is it all about?...

The hot toddies were amazing though! Thanks guys.

WORKSHOP: JOHNNY HARDSTAFF: Object/React

Johnny came up this week to do a two day workshop with us, whatever we produced we could continue as the personal project. I wasn't actually able to make this workshop but then plans changed and I really wanted to do it. I am glad I did it now.

Johnny is such an honest, easy to talk to designer that really pushes you to think creatively. He has had a lot of experience and this shows through clearly, with this brief he has ran it many times, so us expectations were high!

The brief: object/react was based on Museums and how objects like artifacts don't communicate to us or allow us to interact with them. How can we change this? How can you make them speak and be experienced? He wanted us to choose an object within Manchester Museum, understand it, learn the history thus allowing me to design an idea that would allow the object to speak/communicate with us in society today. The problem with Museums is that the objects are housed in cases, mainly to preserve them but in doing this they become distance and static moments in time. Also, many museums don't allow viewers to touch or experience artifacts so it is a challenging brief as this is a major problem now.

Sarah, Stacie and myself visited the Museum before the briefing, taking our time to explore and connect with the objects in some way. I love the museum, I used to come here as a child, and still to this day it feels magical (the film, National Museum comes to mind!!) I almost wish they would move...

I chose two objects: some 2,000 year old buttons and Solnhofen fossils.
After speaking to Johnny, he thought that the fossils had more potential as they are a dying artifact that most people don't appreciate, or rather know!
So I went back to the fossil section, did more research and began to understand them, I had to understand and connect with why they were not interactive or engaging?
So how could I make them interesting, connect with us in 2009...

Solnhofen Fossils- the limestone preserves the animals to a high detail due to the conditions.

Fossils are the remains and imprints of past life preserved in rock, revealing what lived at that time. But because we don't know whether they actually lived or not, what they were, we do not connect with them. As humans, we need to make sense of things in our world before we can make a connection.

Taking this on board, I came away and began to look at how to make fossils alive in the 21st century. What would contemporary fossils look like? What would we fossilise in 2009...a car...a laptop...what? What would document now?

The ideas I came up with were based on the elements of original fossils, (preserving objects in rock) but with a twist! Taking materials of today e.g. plastic, metal, wood and brick what would these look like in 1,000 years time? As different materials deteriorate at different rates, it would a visual representation of how things survive. I also wanted to make the interaction of the museum, come out of the museum...so, having fossils in Manchester city centre would not only get them noticed but would intrigue people.

An example of my idea is: take a human skeleton, imagine they have had plastic surgery e.g. breast implants. Not only does this document the trends of present day but would would it look like to people in another 1,000 years...I can't even imagine what technology would be like then, so how would they interpret it??

Johnny seemed pleased with my response and the outcome so far. Obviously there are many objects that I could fossilise today, so he said a few more ideas would be appropriate. But generally a well done!

I surprisingly liked the workshop, mainly because of Johnny's contribution and attitude, but it was fun and did make me think of time management and how quickly I can create ideas.
Hopefully, we will be seeing more of him...

Gallery: A day in Liverpool

There had been a previous exhibition I had wanted to go to in Liverpool but I had sadly missed the date, but a day trip to see other ehibitions was on the agenda. My 'yellow banana' (my car) took the four of us on a bright but chilly Saturday of the 17 Th Oct, where we first went to the Tate, as obviously this would take the longest!

Liverpool is an undiscovered city for myself, I've been here on days out but don't think Ive ever really appreciated the amount it has to offer to a designer myself. Its full of grand architecture, hidden history and a vast scale of galleries that could take several days to go round. As we only had one day I definitely want to go back to see some more exhibitions and the city itself.

Tate Liverpool: The gallery had three exhibitions on, but we only went to see two.
Firstly Mark Rothko's 'The Seagram Murals'.
As always, I hate to read the description of the work before seeing the work, as I feel it overwhelms my own judgement and opinion. On this occasion, his paintings I did not quite understand, I didnt quite know what I was meant to experience. There was a sense of darkness, depression maybe? Reminding me of being alone, with the illusion that it was moving as I was becoming absorbed into it.
When reading the description I couldn't have been more correct.

For 'The Seagram Murrals' Rothko was influenced by Michelangelo's Laurention Library in Florence, with its blind windows and oppressive atmosphere it was 'Just that kind of feeling I'm looking for'. Rothko wanted the viewer to feel trapped in a room where all the doors and windows are bricked up, so all that they can do is butt their heads forever against the wall. It was an experience of compact space and oppression that disturbed me.

First Floor: DLA Piper Series: This is Sculpture.

Curated by Michael Craig Martin.

There were three rooms to explore; Sculpture the physical world,
Sculpture remixed and Performing Sculpture.
The first room had selected works on display chosen by Craig Martin, whom I love very much anyway. He aimed to challenge conventional notions of sculpture by exploring the relationships to a range of processes and practises within art today, and how they engage with modern life. He selected art that makes people talk and some of the well known artists work on display included Man Ray, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol and many more.

All the rooms were filled with amazing artists and work that did relate to the project I'm currently working on Silence. Ive had to chose my favourite artists, otherwise the list would be endless, so here goes:

Michelangelo Pistoletto - The door

Richard Long - South bank circle

Jeff Koons - The balls represent death.

The ultimate state of being.

Sir Edward Paolozzi - Michelangelo's 'David'
This reminded me and Stacie of a miniature concrete statue
(like the pyramids in Egypt)

Rene Magritte - The future of statues


Carl Andre - 144 Magnesium square

The work that really did influence me was the work of artists Helen Chadwick, John Coplans and Charles Ray. They were personal, and really made me respond to the imagery, I felt like I was interrupting, stumbling in on something from an outer perspective point of view.
Absolutely amazing imagery.