While waiting for my prints from Service Point, I decided to have a look at Less and More, Dieter Rams at the Design Museum. Wonderfully restrained work, and a great exhibition design by Bibliothèque. See their post about it on the Eye Blog.
Archive for January, 2010
Less and More, and More
Sunday, January 31st, 2010Don’t Sit So Close To Me
Sunday, January 31st, 2010
Letters are Things (and Pictures of Things That Look Like Letters)
Sunday, January 31st, 2010Eric Gill once wrote “Letters are things, not pictures of things.” Something that I am interested in is the ‘thingness’ of language, that language is so powerful despite being so ephemeral. Language takes its written form through letters, so if they are also things in themselves then the whole ‘thing’ that is language becomes extremely thingy indeed.
Colour Value
Sunday, January 31st, 2010For the ‘Egshell Clangwave Oscillator…’, synesthesia themed exhibition, I made a set of screenprints and a film about colour, and its meaning. Here is the accompanying text:
“In the age of plastic goods and digital surfaces, colour is ubiquitous, bright, and seemingly interchangeable, but to a synesthete, sounds, letters and numbers may have specific colours which they cannot be separated from. Although colour seems to be a free value for general use, that may be selected according to taste, colour is not so simple. To see, or even here the name of, a colour, triggers strong associations, and they are used in many sayings and common metaphors. Altering the combinations of colours and their uses produces uncanny effects, and perhaps in some cases, this process reveals underlying ideology.”
I Am A Rock
Sunday, January 31st, 2010Using the stones in the Camberwell College car park, I have made a book as a tribute to lost causes and abandoned sculptures. Download the pdf here.
Snared Die Cut Plug Wiring
Sunday, January 31st, 2010Mark Pawson makes books, badges, t-shirts, and other collectible multiples. These include road maps with weather symbols overprinted on them, and a book of plug wiring diagrams. Finding inspiration in the everyday and making what would otherwise be junk into something approaching outsider art is something great. It makes me wish I was more of a hoarder. Maybe if I had a garage or a shed, I like collecting things to use in my work, but too much of it and I start to feel slightly panicky, all that stuff. The artist Daniel Spoerri possibly had the solution, making his ’snare’ pictures. These objects which could have described as sculptures, consisted of all the detritus left on a table, usually after a meal, being attached to a board, or a real table top, and mounted on the wall.
Art Piles
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010Why would an artist use the form of a pile? Contemporary artists Daniel Eatock, Martin Creed and Katerina Šedá all have recent work involving piles of humble objects. For example Work 878, 2008, by Martin Creed.
New York, New York
Friday, January 22nd, 2010Through a ‘note in a hat’ random selection process, Sam Winston set the task to research an artist once again. These were suggestions from the students rather than the teacher, so it will be interesting to see which names come up. I drew Kieth Haring and it occurred to me that there may be a resurgence in interest in his work as I have noticed a few instances of his work around recently on t-shirts, bags, badges and profile pictures. Is there a big retrospective on somewhere I missed? Well, I do like his work, who doesn’t? On to the 1-page summary:
Synesthesia Concept
Sunday, January 17th, 2010The official introduction to the show, which I co-wrote with Zuleika Testone:
The neurological condition, synesthesia, challenges conventional views about perception. Those who experience it are able to perceive a richer version of reality, in which certain senses trigger further, otherwise separate, senses. The name synesthesia literally means ‘joined sensation’, or ’sensation together’, as different senses combine, this seemingly irrational coupling will shape the ‘Eggshell Clangwave Oscillator System Looking Quiet’ exhibition.
Derek Birdsall
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010As part of his typography workshop, guest tutor Sam Wintson set a task for each student, to research a particular artist or designer, and prepare a single page of text and image to share with the rest of the class. The choices were wide ranging, including as diverse talents as Dieter Roth, Jenny Holzer, and Derek Birdsall, I was assigned the latter. The text that follows is my summary, biographical information came from the Design Museum website.