Johnny Hardstaff's lecture was quite interesting, he made me feel more confident when he spoke about seeing graphic design as art and that its hard to tell the difference between art and design. He also spoke about graphic design being a weapon. People are going to see it, but what will they get from it? What does it mean? This is something I need to think about in my work particularly in my silence project.
"1983 and the streets on the hill in front of the Cathedral were all cobbled and the steps snowy white, scrubbed daily. The terraced houses stretched to the huge doors of the Cathedral, and the inhabitants formed a real community around the splendid architecture of the great church.
Betty lived there and when they decided to demolish the houses she stood firm, or sat firm, taking her sun chair and banner. She didn't wish to leave the community she had grown up in."
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"Forget the Trevi Fountain. No adventure playground, no leisure centre, no wood to play in - just the cool water was enough."
Stephen Shakeshaft, former picture editor and chief photographer of the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo, is renowned for his remarkable and varied studies of people including rich and poor, unknown and famous.
This exhibition features about 70 of his photographs including unpublished gems alongside award-winning images amassed since the 1960s over decades of great social change.
I thought this exhibition was brilliant. I love looking at pictures of real people in real situations and the way hey have been shot gives them so much more them that. it sets the image up for a narrative. I particularly love that the images were in black and white and show liverpool through the times. Ther were qoutes written on the wall which were really inspiring.
"It is a case of looking left and right and not just straight ahead."
"I believe you can find a picture anywhere if you are looking properly."
This major exhibition tracks the career of Bridget Riley, from her exciting beginnings in the early 1960s to the ambitious and powerful works of recent years.
Riley’s distinctive and optically vibrant paintings generate extraordinary sensations of movement, light and space. The exhibition includes eight large scale paintings, with four coming from Riley’s personal collection. Alongside these are around 30 drawings and studies that illuminate her working methods over her five-decade-long-career.
A seminal work in the show is 'Movement in Squares', which was purchased by the Arts Council collection in 1962, the year after it was made. Consistently exhibited in retrospectives of her work, she credits the work as the beginning of her breakthrough into abstraction.
'Do not enter if you suffer from migraines or motion sickness'
This is what you see before you enter the exhibition, and I thought o'god!
This exhibition WILL give you a headache and maybe even make you feel slightly 'quesy'!
I have been aware of Bridget Rileys work for many years now and used her as inspiration in some of my work at college. But this has been my first oppurtunity to see it in person, and the experiance leaves you with a new opinion of the work. Originally I just had a shallow view of her work and my opinion just lay with colour and placement, but when you see them in person on such a huge scale, you cant help but think theres so much more to it than that. To have a physical effect on you is certainly something!
Printmakers in the United States in the first half of the 20th century produced some of the most exciting, original and defining images of modern American life.
Beginning with John Sloan and the Ashcan School of urban realism in the early 1900s, artists adopted a wide variety of print media to depict the American Scene, from the evocative cityscapes of Edward Hopper and Martin Lewis to romanticised views of the rural heartlands by Thomas Hart Benton and the young Jackson Pollock.
During the 1930s the Depression provided a strong vein of socially conscious subject matter, and new techniques such as screenprinting and other experimental media were explored. With the Second World War, America became increasingly international in its outlook, emerging after the war as a superpower, and the American Scene declined in its importance. The arrival in the United States of European exiles such as Josef Albers and Stanley William Hayter introduced geometrical abstraction and experiments with surreaism, culminating in the abstract expressionism that became the hallmark of the American avant-garde in the 1950s.
I found the exhibition surprisingly interesting, I originally thought I wouldnt enjoy the exhibition but I foud the stories behind the pieces really thought provoking. Alot of the pieces were based on life in New York in and around the depression To see the artists vision on these periods of time was really good,I loved the piece by James E Allen with the workers on the rafters, and the piece by Reginald Marsh called breadline with the line of men queing for food.
There was a selection of work at the end of the exhibition by Louise Bourgeois, She printed quite abstract pieces with text framed next to it. I really liked this idea and think it may be quite a useful thing for me to doas a lotof the work I do is usely linked to a piece of writing ive read or a poem or qoute.
A few days ago I bought this IDN issue entitled self-promotion issue. The issue had the biggest feature to date of 25 international artists featuring their most original and personal self promotional work, designed simply to sell themselves I thought that it would be an interesting read and that there maybe some good artists that I could research and maybe get inspiration from. There was loads of really good artists and designers, and it made me think that maybe I should start thinking about designing self promotional pieces particularly a business card, would prove quite helpful. I researched a couple of my favourite artists featured in the book which I think question the boundaries of Graphic design.
Mike Perry’s work really stood out to me for its childlike and ‘doodle’ quality. I love work that is fun, Perry’s work doesn’t fit in one particular branch of art or design and I feel like he does what he does because he likes doing it. Much like...
Aoyama Hina
"How much software do you employ to create your artwork? Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere...All have helped add hitherto undreamed-of level of sophistication to the business of digital design. But Japanese artist Aoyama Hina achieves unbelievable results with just a simple pair of sharpened scissors."
How cool is this!
