L’artiste malaisien Tang Yau Hoong nous livre sa vision de l’espace dans sa série « The Art of Negative Space ». Sans délimitation réelle, ses illustrations confondent le plein et le vide, le ciel et la terre, donnant à voir non pas un mais des espaces qui se complètent et s’opposent au sein de chacune de ses créations.
by Mya Stark It’s not an exaggeration to say we’re living in a golden age of the art of food. Handcrafted, molecularized, sourced from every corner of the globe or as close as our own backyards, the contemporary flourishing of creativity in the…
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by Stefano Caggiano A few years ago, Giovanni Delvecchio and Andrea Magnani worked together on a thesis project in Product Design in Faenza—a little northern Italian city famous for a long tradition of ceramic manufacturing. What…
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Over the course of this year’s degree show season, CR readers will be guest blogging reviews of shows up and down the UK (and beyond). Here, Andy Welsh of MBL Solutions visits the Newcastle Fine Art Degree Show
I was lucky enough to visit the biggest-ever Newcastle Fine Art Degree Show, at the beautiful Hatton Gallery. What I discovered was a complete takeover of every available space, with paintings, sculptures, film and more. It is no surprise that these exhibitions are the most visited in the gallery’s annual calendar.
It is worth noting that the students have curated the show, created and managed the publicity and also part funded it. This level of professionalism and dedication was even extended to ensuring that this year’s event had its own branding, a beautifully designed catalogue (shown above), promotional posters and a useful microsite.
For those in London, a selection of work will be on show at the Embassy Tea Gallery at the end of June.
Freya Cromarty
If the Hatton Gallery was just about managing to accommodate the huge amount of student’s artwork on show, Freya Cromarty’s silver pin sculptures refused to be contained. Like a futuristic, ever-expanding organism, her work could be seen emanating from ceilings and in corridors throughout the exhibition.
Ellie McCulloch
One of my favourite spaces at the show was by Ellie McCulloch, which included several mirrored Perspex shapes, beautifully lit and incorporating intricate patterns and text. Centered around the notion of memories, Ellie successfully created a space that encourages you to remember and reflect.
Martha Aynsley
One thing that I did reflect on while in Ellie McCulloch’s space, was the fact that my wife and I have recently had our first child. Martha Aynsley was able to capture the beauty of pregnancy perfectly, with huge oil on canvas paintings. Having photographed my wife throughout her 9 months, I can understand the desire to document this experience. However, not only did Martha do that, I think her paintings were also able to convey some of the intimate emotions that people can feel during this time.
Harry Peck
In a side room, halfway down some stairs was Harry Peck’s “Philanthropic Fun Fair”. In a grubby and run down setting, stalls included Donation Darts and a Wheel of Misfortune. The whole thing was a bit unsettling, thought provoking and successfully played upon my own self-satisfied feeling towards the random and sporadic donations I’ve made to charity.
Georgina Witts
With a quote by Andy Warhol to introduce her work, Georgina Witts takes a fresh look at those controversial figures in the news that are enjoying more than their 15 minutes of fame. Her most successful piece in my opinion was a crate of 6 black milk bottles emblazoned with the words “Thatcher’s Milk”. As we reflect on Margaret Thatcher’s life and career, this simple, striking and timely piece of work, perfectly illustrates the demise of free school milk; one of her most controversial decisions.
Hannah Denney
Readymade lines is an incredible concept by Hannah Denney. Through the use of some simple black electrical wire and clear nylon thread, Hannah has taken line drawings away from their simple existence on a flat surface and brought them to life, existing as their own floating structure. This provides a unique opportunity to view an artist’s drawing from any angle and distance that you wish.
Adam Laing
I am a huge fan of artwork that incorporates grids and repetition so Adam Laing’s work had a good chance of appealing to me. He creates really interesting juxtapositions, by diligently ordering the messy, random bits of waste he finds around studios.
Rebecca Blessington
The decision to display Rebecca Blessington’s “Elusive Ground” on a huge scale was definitely a good one. I found myself getting completely lost in each image, trying to work out why everything seemed to be so familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Somehow, Rebecca has managed to turn what could have amounted to nothing more than a series of medical images of the human body, into something so much more.
Siti Munirah Yusop
Finally, Siti Munirah Yusop’s collection of miniature paintings of everyday life provided a fitting end to my time at the exhibition. With such a tiny canvas to work with, I was really impressed with what Siti managed to convey in each painting and the unusual colours and slightly abstract style somehow worked well together. It would be a series that I would be interested to see develop into a full visual diary of Siti’s life.
Many thanks to Andy. If you would like to review a degree show in your area, please let us know here
Pink Floyd fans may recognise the cover of our June issue. It’s the original marked-up artwork for Dark Side of the Moon: one of a number of treasures from the archive of design studio Hipgnosis featured in the issue, along with an interview with Aubrey Powell, co-founder of Hipgnosis with the late, great Storm Thorgerson. Elsewhere in the issue we take a first look at The Purple Book: Symbolism and Sensuality in Contemporary Illustration, hear from the curators of a fascinating new V&A show conceived as a ‘walk-in book’ plus we have all the regular debate and analysis on the world of visual communications.
You can buy Creative Review direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe, save money and have CR delivered direct to your door every month.
CR for the iPad
Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app updates with new content throughout each month. Get it here
The After Hours exhibition at the Jerwood Space on London’s Bankside is a diverse compendium of personal projects from graphic designers working without a client or a brief. But are there any common threads to be found?
Running until June 23, After Hours is curated by Nick Eagleton of The Partners. The exhibits in the show are deliberately diverse – driftwood sculptures, clocks, chess boards, flags, films, prints, wardrobes and remote control drawing machines – the idea being to celebrate the variety rather than imposing a single narrative.
(Some of the After Hours contributors will be talking about their work tonight at a free Pecha Kucha event at the gallery, 6.30pm-7.30pm – places can be booked here.)
But there are inevitably some common themes that come up when you look at the work, and which arguably keep it closer to ‘design’ than ‘art’, or at least give a clue that the people behind it come from a design background. Perhaps the main one is this sense that, in the absence of a prescriptive brief, many designers tend to create their own.
This is literally the case with Michael Johnson‘s Arkitypo project, which sprang from a relationship with Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication. They approached johnson banks suggesting they’d like to do something to showcase their 3D prototyping skills.
Johnson explains what happened next: “Once we’d had the initial thought of using 26 different letters, our first explorations were, well, just a bit weak,” he says. “There seemed to be no genuine substance to it – it was just 3D prettification.
“But then we worked out how to tell stories within each letter (where a letterform came from, how it came about, why it existed). So we’d created a limitation that made the idea stronger.”
This instinctive aversion to “prettification” and tendency to gravitate towards rules and structure is arguably a classic designer trait. According to Johnson, “We’re so used to limitations that we build them in when they’re not there.”
Jim Sutherland of hat-trick design has a self-confessed obsession with rules. One of his exhibits is Deck (above), a set of typographic playing cards developed from an idea he sketched out while on holiday.
“I started doodling a few ideas,” he says. “Very quickly, I found it necessary to lay down a few rules. No repeated typefaces. No redrawing of typefaces. It’s the rules that bring the whole thing into focus.”
Another of Sutherland’s exhibits is an ongoing project called 8×8, exploring the the different configurations that are possible if you rearrange the 64 squares on a chessboard (example shown, above): a case of exploring the creative possibilities within tightly defined limits.
Although superficially miles apart, it’s not dissimilar in spirit to Found Folk – a series of driftwood sculptures by Phil Carter of Carter Wong, and one of the exhibition’s highlights. Like Sutherland’s 64 squares, it’s the prescribed nature of the source material that defines the project. Each sculpture is shaped by whatever the tides happen to throw up.
Carter says he never consciously imposed any parameters on the project, but some have naturally evolved.
“Nearly all the figures are made entirely from found pieces from the same place of origin, because it feels more authentic that way,” says Carter. “What is really noticeable is the variations in colour in different parts of the world – beachcombing on a Greek island or Malta yields much more colourful finds than the drab colours of UK beaches and rivers.”
When it comes to painting the pieces, Carter has similarly inclined towards authenticity, leaving most of the pieces untouched by brushes, although he has recently taken to using a blowtorch on some to give a blackened finish. “It tends to unite the parts into a whole.”
That said, Carter sees all these projects as being mainly about creative release rather than limitation – finding a medium and a language, then letting yourself go.
For him, the medium is wooden sculptures, but it could equally be the joyful letterpress creations of Alan Kitching (above), the delicate screenprints of Alex Swatridge (below), or the mesmerising comic-book illustrations of Robert Ball (below).
Other projects here spring from the enforced limitations of daily life. Journeys to work are a particularly fruitful area for designers.
Steve Royle’s Antigraffiti project (above) arose from countless train journeys last year, where he observed the concerted efforts to cover up trackside graffiti as the Olympics approached. He began to wonder if the roller paint itself could become a kind of language, communicating something despite itself.
Royle explains: “I think a lot of designers are interested in the idea of subversion, or turning things on their head. It becomes a habit of thought, so you find yourself doing it even in idle moments.”
When designers aren’t creating their own limits, they’re often looking for problems to solve. And you don’t need a client or a brief to find a problem – they’re everywhere.
David Azurdia’s ABC Rule is a simple 30cm ruler (below) adapted to contain standard paper sizes – an answer to hours of head-scratching beside the cutting mat.
Fellow contributor Ben Christie produced For a Rainy Day (above) – a money box where the slots double as raindrops – while Jamie Ellul goes for a similar play on a proverb with Time is Money (below).
In the latter two cases, there’s not exactly a problem being solved, but there is a distinctive strain of graphic wit in evidence.
Christie describes it as “a graphic designer’s approach to product design – I like the idea of making people smile with everyday objects.”
This sense of playfulness runs throughout this exhibition – from Craig Oldham‘s philosophical flags (above) to Jack Renwick‘s moth-eaten wardrobe (below), which turned a wardrobe crisis into a chance to celebrate the beauty of moths.
At first sight, this playfulness might seem to contradict that whole obsession with rules, limits and problems. But games need rules, and you have to agree them before you can start playing.
The whole thing is summed up in Joe Phillips’ Remote Drawing (below): a large canvas laid out on the floor, with adapted remote control cars that you direct in order to make drawings.
Phillips says the idea behind the project is to “force people to draw in unconventional and almost ridiculous ways – it removes the pressure that can be felt with drawing, and frees people from their usual inhibitions.” It’s a project about the liberating power of limitations.
Problem-solving, an obsession with rules, a liking for subversion and witty ideas. It’s possible to overstate these as common threads in all the work – you will find many of the same traits in pure ‘art’ projects.
But they are undeniably there, and it gives the exhibition an extra appeal that you don’t always find with art shows. There are ideas to ‘get’, messages to ponder, things to smile at, hooks that draw you into the work.
Anthony Burrill’s wall piece (see top of post) is the presiding spirit of the exhibition, with its larger-than-life message: ‘I like it. What is it?’ Whether it’s design or art, it’s worth visiting the Jerwood Space before 23 June to see for yourself.
Nick Asbury is an exhibitor in After Hours with ‘Pentone’ (Twitter edition shown, above) – an artificial system for dividing language into different tones of voice, with several rules of its own. He is a freelance writer and one half of Asbury & Asbury.
After Hours continues at the Jerwood Space until 23 June, with an evening of talks by the contributors on Monday 10 June. Places can be booked here.
Pink Floyd fans may recognise the cover of our June issue. It’s the original marked-up artwork for Dark Side of the Moon: one of a number of treasures from the archive of design studio Hipgnosis featured in the issue, along with an interview with Aubrey Powell, co-founder of Hipgnosis with the late, great Storm Thorgerson. Elsewhere in the issue we take a first look at The Purple Book: Symbolism and Sensuality in Contemporary Illustration, hear from the curators of a fascinating new V&A show conceived as a ‘walk-in book’ plus we have all the regular debate and analysis on the world of visual communications.
You can buy Creative Review direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe, save money and have CR delivered direct to your door every month.
CR for the iPad
Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app updates with new content throughout each month. Get it here
Alan Moore
The Believer magazine is known for producing some of the most distinctive covers around, thanks in part to the portraits artist Charles Burns creates for them. His collected work for the publication now forms a new exhibition in New York…
The Adam Baumgold Gallery is showing Charles Burns: Cover Portraits for The Believer 2003-2013 until July 26 and includes over 300 small ink drawings of artists, writers, musicians, the occasional animal, historical figures and characters.
Burns, a graphic novelist and author of the Black Hole series, usually creates four portraits for the cover of each edition of The Believer, often drawing more for special issues.
And at his new show there’s even more of his work to see, according to the gallery. “Alongside this vast series of Believer portraits is a group of Before & After drawings from Charles Burns’s seminal graphic novel, Black Hole. In these comic grotesque portraits, themes of adolescent alienation and sexual awakening mingle with imagery of mutation, disease, and violence. Each smiling, yearbook-style portrait is accompanied by a Dorian Gray-like counterpart, picturing the same teenager with some troubling facial alteration”.
Tracey Emin
David Byrne
Ahmir Thompson
Kristen Schaal
A Jawa
Two pairs of ‘Before & After’ prints from Burns’ Black Hole series, also on show at the gallery
The full series of Believer portraits can also be viewed at adambaumgoldgallery.com.
The Adam Baumgold Gallery in at 60 East 66th Street, New York, NY 10065. Gallery hours are Tuesday – Saturday 11:00am – 5:30pm, during June, and Tuesday – Friday during July.
Pink Floyd fans may recognise the cover of our June issue. It’s the original marked-up artwork for Dark Side of the Moon: one of a number of treasures from the archive of design studio Hipgnosis featured in the issue, along with an interview with Aubrey Powell, co-founder of Hipgnosis with the late, great Storm Thorgerson. Elsewhere in the issue we take a first look at The Purple Book: Symbolism and Sensuality in Contemporary Illustration, hear from the curators of a fascinating new V&A show conceived as a ‘walk-in book’ plus we have all the regular debate and analysis on the world of visual communications.
You can buy Creative Review direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe, save money and have CR delivered direct to your door every month.
CR for the iPad
Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app updates with new content throughout each month. Get it here
Since 1998, the Venice Biennale of Art and Architecture is no longer a traditional exhibition of national artists, but is instead a real international showcase where the single invited countries…
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Over the course of this year’s degree show season, CR readers will be guest blogging reviews of shows up and down the UK (and beyond). Andi Rusyn of Space + Room visits the University of Wolverhampton show
Most of the best work at this year’s School of Art & Design show was in Fine Art, for which the students produced a small newspaper as a guide. The ‘Conceptual Times’ carries the headline ‘It Ay What Yow Think’ which made me laugh. Even though I don’t speak like that… (mostly…)
The best piece was Laura Onions‘ installation which was simple yet mesmerising. It consists of a projector projecting light onto a screen through suspended A4 sheets of acetate printed with pages from ten year old Laura’s school books. The effect is an ever changing green-tinged image on the screen surrounded by an immersive changing purple pattern created by the projector light reflecting off the acetate sheets. The overall effect is mesmerising and a little melancholic, much in the way re-awakened memories can temporarily take you over. An ambient soundtrack with the sound of chalk on a blackboard completes the ‘time travel’ and immersion.
Next door to Laura’s installation was Thomas Heather, whose hypnotic video was almost as good. It’s a series of ‘shards’ of yellow light moving serenely across the screen to a incredibly atmospheric sound scape created by slowing a guitar riff to the point it becomes something altogether different. The lights themselves were created by shooting through a prism. There’s a test of the movie on Heather’s Vimeo page
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Another piece in the fine art show which caught my eye was a ‘clockwork’ heart by Stephanie Bannister entitled ‘Cor’. It’s both creepy and witty and is quite fascinating. The very real looking heart expands and contracts seemingly driven by a chain which is connected to a hidden motor via two sets of cogs. It’s an engrossing piece which makes you think about your own physiology.
Caroline Bailey‘s line sculpture didn’t take me back to childhood, but it is very well conceived and provoked me to stand a while and ponder the dynamics of space.
Julie Price‘s ‘piles’ of upholstery foam off-cuts precariously balanced on old side tables also made me think, and took me right back to my childhood. We never had tatty cushions or the like, but I do have strong memories of bits of foam, for some reason… Where they came from, I do not know, just as I don’t know where Julie Price’s foam comes from, except it does, somehow, come from my own memory.
Of the rest of the show, Illustration was the next strongest discipline with some particularly lovely pieces by Amy Louise Evans, especially the charming ‘The Erl King’, and the Bluebird album booklet by Amber Rushton (below) which is a lovely moody combination of illustration and hand-drawn typography.
I also liked Anja Istenic‘s ‘Be visible’ quartet in the Photography show. It’s another piece which makes you stop and think; this time time about your own place in the world and how others perceive you. Or don’t…
These are the highlights for me. Overall, I thought it was a reasonable show. The only shame for me, as a graphic designer, was the graphic communication show. It lacked any real imagination or adventure – a creative degree is surely the time to be adventurous.
Many thanks to Andi. If you would like to review a degree show in your area, please let us know here
Pink Floyd fans may recognise the cover of our June issue. It’s the original marked-up artwork for Dark Side of the Moon: one of a number of treasures from the archive of design studio Hipgnosis featured in the issue, along with an interview with Aubrey Powell, co-founder of Hipgnosis with the late, great Storm Thorgerson. Elsewhere in the issue we take a first look at The Purple Book: Symbolism and Sensuality in Contemporary Illustration, hear from the curators of a fascinating new V&A show conceived as a ‘walk-in book’ plus we have all the regular debate and analysis on the world of visual communications.
You can buy Creative Review direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe, save money and have CR delivered direct to your door every month.
CR for the iPad
Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app updates with new content throughout each month. Get it here
Greek mythology is the inspiration for the Russian Pavilion at this year’s 55th Venice Art Biennale, which is seen in “Danaë”—a provocative installation conceived by conceptual artist …
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In his latest sculpture project, James Dive of The Glue Society has compacted an entire fun fair – including rides, dodgems and even prizes – into a four metre cube.
The work, entitled Once, is on show at Scultpture by the Sea in Aarhus, Denmark, until July 1. “The project is about the finality of a missed moment,” Dive says. “Creating [it] was undoubtedly the most violent process I’ve ever embarked upon.”
Photos: Nicolai Lorenzen
For the previous Sculpture by the Sea event in Aarhus, Dive created I Wish You Hadn’t Asked, a large house, where it rained on the inside (see our post here)
He was also behind God’s Eye View, in which four key Biblical events were portrayed as if captured by Google Earth
And Chance of a Late Storm, a comment on global warming in which a melting ice cream van oozed across the promenade and onto the sand at Tamarama in Australia (the work will be touring Australian beaches later this year)
Also featured at Sculpture by the Sea this year are a giant message in a bottle (see swimmer for scale) by Vibeke Nørgaard Rønsbo
Qian Sihua’s Bubble no5
USE Flotsam by Bureau Detours
Sputnik Returned by Brandon Vickerd
Tree-Guy by Susanna Hesselberg
Randi and Katrine’s The House in Your Head
And Jesper Dalgaard’s Vandmodul a 1 og b2 fase 1
Images: Clyde Yee
There are works by 64 artists on show at the free exhibition. Details here
See more of The Glue Society’s work here
Pink Floyd fans may recognise the cover of our June issue. It’s the original marked-up artwork for Dark Side of the Moon: one of a number of treasures from the archive of design studio Hipgnosis featured in the issue, along with an interview with Aubrey Powell, co-founder of Hipgnosis with the late, great Storm Thorgerson. Elsewhere in the issue we take a first look at The Purple Book: Symbolism and Sensuality in Contemporary Illustration, hear from the curators of a fascinating new V&A show conceived as a ‘walk-in book’ plus we have all the regular debate and analysis on the world of visual communications.
You can buy Creative Review direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe, save money and have CR delivered direct to your door every month.
CR for the iPad
Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app updates with new content throughout each month. Get it here
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