Hasta La Ideas

The AV Studio show is a collaboration between 14 designers; seven from Bath Spa University and seven from UWE in Bristol. The students have taken over an old audio visual shop in Bath, creating work in response to objects that might have been sold there when it was open.

To promote the show each of the 14 designers involved created a custom letterform that could be read as an A or a V depending on its orientation. The UWE designers’ letters are in red and Bath’s in yellow. The letters were then screenprinted onto A (or V)-shaped paper with the details of the show, so that the posters could provide 49 different combinations when paired together to create an AV in normal poster format.

In the show itself, Myles Lucas’s piece (above) involved him taking a picture using five cameras. Each one was focused into the preceding camera’s viewfinder, to create an eerie image of Ashton Court Park in Bristol.

Romilly Winter‘s contribution was a series of type specimen posters for a font based on one found on an old Goodmans portable tape player. Winter used silkscreen and foil-blocking to create the posters.

Jono Lewarne (whose work CR has previously featured in this Monograph) created two silkscreened instructional diagrams found on an old Rolls Automatic 8 Electric Eye Movie Camera, one for the placement of reels of tape and the other for the batteries. The original diagrams were screen-printed onto the camera itself so it seemed a logical solution for the show.

Rowan Caney‘s piece was a double-sided print entitled Worry as Light Entertainment which featured the word worry writ large on one side and a ten minute interview from the Alan Titchmarsh Show transcribed on the other as a comment on the crossing over of news and entertainment and the lack of analysis found on news programming.

Kenneth Shaw collaborated with a sound designer, Joe Cowton, to create a bizarre audio visual piece that imagined the sounds certain fruit would make if able to. An old tape recorder played the sounds while a french-folded book displayed images of the fruit.

Garry Cook brought along an old Atari console, complete with Cosmic Arc to play on it. He hosted a private view competition with the opportunity to win a range of limited edition screenprints.

Luke Archer and Jack Maxwell presented a carousel of over 200 miscellaneous 35mm slides which were edited, sorted and reissued as Rotary, a projected magazine .

James McCann created an eight-page silkscreen publication called Gulliver’s Travels which was based on an old 8mm film reel he bought. The piece is a visual journey exploring the four voyages of Gulliver in the story by Jonathan Swift.

Richard Jarrett created Virus – the first volume of a directory of computer viruses together with abstract interpretations of selected Worms and Trojans acting as illustrations within the book and as promotional illustrations.

Robin Cox‘s piece, Dusk Till Dawn is a pair of light sensitive silkscreen canvases. A UV torch was supplied with the poster so that people could create their own artwork that would slowly fade. Here Ollie Kay, another Monograph contributor, is seen tracing his hand.

The AV Studio is at 7 Lower Borough Walls, Bath.

The complete list of designers whose work makes up the show is

UWE Bristol
David Gibson
Jono Lewarne
Kenneth Shaw
Liam Randall
Myles Lucas
Romilly Winter
Rowan Caney

Bath Spa
Garry Cook
Jack Archer
Jack Maxwell
James McCann
Luke Archer
Rich Jarrett
Robin Cox