The Fly

This is my piece for the Sentence exhibition.
It is based on a short story written in 1922 by Katherine Mansfield.
The plot is about an office 'boss,' an aging gentleman but still 'going strong', showing off pictures of his recently deceased son. The boss talks of his two sons who died in World War I, he appears deeply perturbed of this memory of his son but does not seem to weep. He then notices a fly has fallen into his ink pot, he watches the fly struggle for a while, then rescues it, placing it on a piece of paper. After the fly manages to clean itself of the ink, the boss drops another drip of ink on the fly, covering it again. He does this repeatedly until the fly dies, and then throws the paper and fly with it into the rubbish.
The underlying themes of the story is about the inevitability of death and man's unwillingness to accept it. It can be read as an indictment of World War I. The boss is a symbol of malignant forces, and representative of the generation that sentenced their sons to slauhter by sending them to the war.

The idea i had behind this piece was to represent the strenght and willingness of the fly after repeated distress. The fly stands out on the page, with the white to hightlight and show significance. I hand drew the type, wanting it to appear rushed to show the ink marks on the paper, and the movements the fly undertook to free itself from the ink. This piece was purely my response to the story, with an opporunity to do some illustration and play with digital editing.

Sentence

To Be Continued.......

Museum of Childhood -One Day Project

The idea behind this one-day project was to create a 'timeless toy' using typography.
The toys that usually get given the titles as 'timeless' are things which are used from babies and generally kept and re-used for years to come.
These things tend to be things like:

• teddy bears (unisex, for comfort)
  
• dolls houses
• building blocks

These are 'timeless' because of their adaptability to be played by all ages, boy or girl. The toy that withstands all this playing would surely be the most beneficial. Teddy bears get worn down, fabric tears, eyes fall off. A building block, on the other hand, would be more durable; usually made of wood.
An extract i found from http://hubpages.com/hub/Wooden-Blocks-A-Timeless-Toy
"The best ones are made of a hardwood most commonly, Maple. ABC blocks are educational and children can start spelling words with them very early. With all the toy safety worries today, wooden blocks are safe and durable."

'Design a Dictionary' sketchbook

This is the book i made to keep all of my research, influences, development and commentary.
I hate sewing like that, i have the bruised hands to prove it.
I like the outcome though, the hessian fabric is perfect to keep with the 'organic' theme.

Map That presentation film

(The quality of the film on here is a lot mre jumpy, in the real presentation, the lighting and transitions between each object was a lot smoother.)

This was the film that accompanied our presentation. The film and audio were supposed to create an atmosphere to the room, to convey what we felt when visiting Dungeness. The blackness and orange light are to show the aging process that had occurred to all the items, along with the discolouration of the decay.
The audio is recorded from BBC7 Shipping News. It is the response from Lily to her feeling about Dungeness, and we thought it was an appropriate background for the film because of the monotone voice. After a while, this would become a dull drone sound to someone that maybe wasn't listening anymore, and this then starts to represent the sound of the wind from Dungeness. This is where the individual boxes are introduced, and you start to hear the next dimension of our installation, our own responses to the objects, so it's up to the listener to make up their own mind about what is the 'truth', or what they want to believe.

Grand Day Out.

A one day project curated by Peter Anderson and Johnny Hardstaff.
We were given 4 addresses in London and told to go to each one and create a graphic icon that clearly communicates the nature and purpose of the place. We could not use typography or existing imagery.
A) The Mall SW1Y 5AH
B) Belvedere Road SE1 8XX
C) 80-82 Whitechapel High Street E1 7QX
D) Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS






Another part of the project was to collect items from each place, things which can only be found at that specific place! to try and eliminate any cheating!
We 'acquired': -a postcard of the Queen bout in Buckingham Palace Gift Shop.
-a builders helmet from the site at Whitechapel High Street, which used to be
Whitechapel Library and is now under construction.
-a delivery notice from The Hayward Gallery for delivering staging.
-a sign from inside the Barbican with the Barbican logo on.

We were the winning team!!
We successfully communicated 2 out of the 4 posters: the Barbican, and Buckingham Palace.
Wer'e still waiting for our prize......................

Mark Wallinger curates 'The Russian Linesman' at The Hayward.

This was my first visit to the Hayward Gallery, strange, considering. I don't much appreciate the architecture of the outside, or the stench when you walk up or down the stairwells. But the inside was much better than expected! Its postmodern, box rooms are a great space, giving enough area for separate mediums of work. 'The Russian Linesman' was much more my style, as opposed to the Annette Messenger exhibition. Her's was fun, a bit eerie in places, disturbing in others. The collection of dead birds dressed in knitted clothes to represent aged people, was strange. This ran alongside an undertone of childlike humor, e.g swapping heads of stuffed toys.
The Mark Wallinger exhibition included a collection of chosen pieces from history following the theme of the title; 'Frontiers, Borders and thresholds.' The interactivity of the exhibition was really engaging; little binocculars through walls to see photographs, a reconstructed corridor.
While we were here, we were set a projects by our visiting tutor Christian......... to redesign the exhibition poster, using our reactions and experience to the collection.
My main feelings from the day was that it was a random collection of works throughout history, all brought together under one title, so instead of people being able to interpret each piece how they want, it is all here because of Wallingers associating each with 'boundaries.'
The pieces range in location from all over the world, enabling us to experience pieces of alternative cultures/styles/contexts.
My most memorable part of the exhibition were the installations and statues, the 'tardis,' the reconstructed corridor, the films. I also read on the Daily Telegraph website about Wallinger constructing a 'white horse, taller than The Statue of Liberty,' to be placed in Ebbsfleet International. (www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/4638431/Mark-Wallinger-The-Russian-Linesman-at-the-Hayward-Gallery-review.html)
I wanted to mimic this as my poster design, constructing a white horse in New York. I was interested in another quote I found about the exhibition, "a ragbag of a show, jumble of artworks, artefacts and bric-a-brac." This interpretation would be suitable in the form of a montage, so i decided to use a mixture of photographs, hand illustrations and digital text to convey my reactions to the exhibition.