Cloth and Culture Now, Whitworth Art Gallery

Cloth and Culture Now at the Whitworth Art Gallery has finished now but it brought work by contemporary textile designers from around the world.  There was work particularly from Eastern European countries that you don't usually see such as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as well as works from the UK, Finland and Japan. They were really interesting works that were original and yet also had a certain charm.

Cloth and Culture Now can be found at this link with really beautiful images of the designers' work and lengthy statements by the makers about their education and inspiration.

I think this is the most interesting and eclectic exhibition I visited all year.  

Erica Wakerly - Urology Ward at Guys

Erica Wakerly in collaboration with Greenhill Jenner Architects designed a modern mural that is a 40 metre digitally printed formica wall for the Urology Ward at Guys.  Erica Wakerly is an exciting textile designer that mostly designs in geometrics and black and white.  However, for this collaboration for the Urology ward at Guys the design is pale greens and blues to create a soothing and tranquil hospital environment.

This mural was commended in the 2008 Health Business Awards.

Putting on the Glitz, Whitworth Art Gallery

Putting on the Glitz at Whitworth Art Gallery, curated by Christine Woods is the current wallpaper exhibition on display until October 2009.  I went along to Christine Wood's talk about this exhibition and the wallpapers on display.  This exhibition charts early seventeenth and eighteenth century "gilt" leather panels to present day wallpapers such as "Dominoes" by Tracy Kendall which was specially commissioned for this show.

The history of the early leather panels was to demonstrate the wealth of the residents and their luxurious standard of living.  Only in Europe's wealthiest homes could afford them and the embossed and decorated calf leather panels were intricately made using a silver foil and then varnished so that they would look like gold.  In the seventeenth century you could also have flocked canvas too which although very fragile was cheaper than cut velvet textiles.

You take these things for granted now but you couldn't buy paper backed foils until the late 1960s when they were developed in the US.  You also forget that feature walls that we regard as a recent thing have been around for along time too.

Out and about in London

New things seen out and about in London from Frank Gehry's pavilion at the Serpentine, to the scultpure on the spare plinth in Trafalgar Square, digitally printed deck chairs in Hyde Park to decorative shoes spotted at London fashion week.

Paint combats Superbug

A new form of super paint could be able to combat superbugs.  This innovative paint contains titanium dioxide nanoparticles could eradicate superbugs in hospitals.  Biochemists and researchers at Manchester Metropolitan University are still researching but they are hopeful of finding a solution soon.

Runa Islam, Whitecube, Hoxton

Runa Islam at the Whitecube is showing film and video surrounded by installations by Tobias Putrih.

Norma Starszakowna, Whitworth Art Gallery

Norma Starszakowna has a hanging, Shadow of the Wall, Gaza now on display at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester.  It was bought by the Whitworth with by the Art Fund.  It's a combination of experimental print and dye techniques.

Tanja Devetak

Fashion and textile designer, Tanja Devetak has a showroom in the heart of Llubljana, Slovenia.  She prints her own fabrics before making them into garments.

Bread Project

The Bread Project in Llubljana, Slovenia, has travelled around 6 other cities in Europe and Russia.  This exhibition at the Slovene Ethnographic Museum connects different aspects of bread into a varied and stimulating display.  Thirty international textile artists from thirty traditions and backgrounds unified by the theme of bread.

Sculptures by Gwon Osang

Deodorant Type Exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery by Gwon Osang shows recent sculptures by the Korean artist.  These lifelike sculptures are made up of photographs.  He usually takes photos of his model for three hours totalling 300 hundred frames.

RCA Degree Shows

These are the shows I particularly liked at the RCA show this summer:

Matthew Holloway - his project byte sized memory was particularly cool and with beautiful colour.

Mark Bereza who created re:voice.  Re:voice is an electronic musical instrument that you can play with your voice.

Ella Peters a printed textile designer

Chapman Brothers White cube

If the Chapman brothers have a new show on then you know there is going to be a big hoo ha whether it is warranted or not.  Their latest exhibition at the White Cube has created the usual storm.  The question though is are they saying anything worthwhile with their work?

Installation Display

This collection of 9 cabinets portrays different scenes of war...a bit like giant and macabre toy soldiers displays.

If Hitler Had Been A Hippy How Happy Would We Be

The Chapman brothers bought some of Hitler's paintings at auction and have then painted on to them.  A technique that they used with Goya's prints in 2003 with Goya's Disasters of War series. The difference here is the quality of the original works that the Chapman brothers are working with.  The title of this collection and the works on display do pose an interesting question.

Shop Window at Harvey Nichols

Matthew Ritchie, White Cube

White Cube's show for Matthew Ritchie utilised the whole space of the gallery, but I'm not really sure that that was really warranted.  Just because you can do something doesn't necessarily mean that it is appropriate...The space somehow felt cluttered and the noise of the guitarists at the opening just lessened the experience too.  A shame, because the paintings on their own said as much to me as all the other stuff and Ritchie is very talented.

D&AD Black Pencil

The internet gets more and more interesting... from reporting about it, to visuals to innovations such as twitter...

This is an interesting technology article about the D&AD's 2008 Black Pencil awards.

Firstly Apple won 2 pencils this year and secondly Projector Inc won a a pencil for their site they designed for Uniglo the Japanese retailer.  I have to admit to spending a few minutes transfixed...

Twitter, is a word that now describes a new kind of internet activity...it's mobile and web microblogging, you are only allowed 140 characters to give updates.

Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats

Edward de Bono's thinking technique based around 6 differently coloured hats is always interesting, partly from how you can use this technique to problem solve, but also the type of thinking ascribed to a particular coloured hat.  The colours chosen for the hats are based upon the colours used in printing maps.  This technique of using symbolic hats is meant to remove any blocks in problem solving by going through the process logically step by step.

White hat - neutral and objective - pure facts

Red hat - anger/rage/emotions

Black hat - gloomy and negative - why it cannot be done

Yellow hat - sunny and positive

Green hat - creativity and new ideas

blue - control and organisation of thinking process

I've never used this technique myself but I do find it fascinating, almost as fascinating as Luscher's Colour Test, but more on that and colour another day.

Biomimicry - Morphotex

Morphotex is an interesting fabric developed by a Japanese company, Teijin. It is based on biomimicry as it is inspired by the South American butterfly called Morpho.

As part of its camouflage the butterflies wings reflect light.  Morphotex doesn't use any pigments or dyes as it is made from very thin fibres so it is also environmentally friendly as less energy is used to create it.

Morphotex is a highly innovative fabric as it is the first of its kind that doesn't use any pigments.

Intelligent Colour, Professor Ozin

This posting is as much a reminder to pursue this as anything else.  It's something I've been trying to look into since January.  I missed this talk, by Professor Ozin at UCL on Intelligent Colour which was a really stupid thing to do.

However, his talk was filmed so you can still see Professor Ozin talking - 22 January 2008 on Intelligent Colour.

To encourage you to download it and watch it here is the blurb:

"Not all colours in nature originate from pigments.  Colour can also emerge if the microstructure of a material is fashioned into a grating that allows optical diffraction.  In nanotechnology, this 'structural colour is now within our grasp, and it is easy to imagine how it can be intelligently integrated into jewellery and artwork, vehicles and buildings.  Beyond 'static' structural colour is 'dynamic' form that could enable a full colour display, where one material provides an infinite range of colours - for use in security devices for identification and authentification, and military vehicles with active camouflage for example.  Opportunities for intelligent colour are truly boundless."

Matthew Williamson, Urbis, Manchester

(images, top digital print on tyvek 1999, examples of prints, mood board done especially for the exhibition)

The Matthew Williamson exhibition, Urbis, Manchester was originally on at the Design Museum in London in 2007 to celebrate Williamson's 10 years in fashion.  

It's a comprehensive exhibition moving from his interest in art and design at school up to the present with his plans to develop an accessories range of bags and shoes and a shop in New York.  There are lots of show cases with his dresses, drawings and sketches, furniture and information about his progress.  The colour and decoration in his fashion show how much he is inspired by his frequent trips to India.

As a student he worked for Zandra Rhodes for 3 months which he found to be very inspirational.  He used the off cuttings of lace that he scooped off the floor from the pattern cutters when he was there for his final degree show collection!  An example of sustainability from necessity!

There is also an interview which shows him to be passionate about what he does.

Notes from the filmed interview.

• If you work from the heart then the work is effortless
  
• Fashion is hard, but the cyclical and relentless nature of it makes him disciplined and gives him structure, so it suits him.
  
• He likes developing ideas and concepts into an end product.
  
• He is passionate.
  
• 100% committed to his own vision, without a vision there is nowhere to go.
  
• It's unusual to find one person with the balance of creativity and business sense, he was lucky to meet his business partner so soon.
  
• His collection would be eclectic as he is like a magpie if left to his own devices.
  
• Has a kaleidescope of different influences.
  
• Now he hopes his collection happens in a much more sophisticated and pared down sort of way , that as he has progressed they have become more polished.
  

More Videos - Hamish Morrow

Two films really caught my eye on Hamish Morrow's site:

Digital Echoes: this is fantastic and it explores the idea of virtual prints.

The second is Fashion in Zero-G, that is zero gravity.  It is set in space so as well as the technology aspect there is also the recycling element.

Alexander McQueen video

One of my tutors suggested I look at this video today by Alexander McQueen - very impressive it is too.

Tzuri Gueta- Textile Designer

Tzuri Gueta is an innovative textile and jewellery designer.  His work has very interesting use of materials with particular use of silicone.  Why I'm writing about him is his use of sound at the intro to his site.  His use of sounds really makes his site intriguing and interesting, I'm beginning to understand the point of these sensory exercises a little more.  Eventually everything seems to make "sense".

Julia Lohmann

Julia Lohmann runs the gamut of the design field from product design, illustration, graphics to photography.  Her sites, for her own work and her studio, show how varied her work is and how she questions the world around us with her use of ideas and materials. 

So often writing about successful artists/designers it sounds gushing trotting out trite cliche after cliche.  I don't want this blog to get bogged down in detail, so to spare the gushing look up the sites. 

She was in the top 50 of UK Design voted by the Guardian on 1.09.07.

Julia Lohmann

http://www.julialohmann.com

Studiobec

http://www.studiobec.com

Animation by Prada: Trembled Blossoms

This a sublime presentation from Prada called Trembled Blossoms for SS08.  Having seen this a few days ago I can really seen the benefit of an animation both artistically and also to communicate a collection.  The drawings, graphics, music and story are really unbelievable.

The animation is drawn by James Jean and he also keeps a blog.

I mentioned earlier in this blog about an animation from adidas. I can now see that animations are really useful presentation techniques.

Howard Hodgkin & Marc Newson at the Gagosian Gallery

[Howard Hodgkin's paintings - 

Top: Hello

Middle: Where Seldom is Heard a Discouraging Word

Bottom: Blushing]

Howard Hodgkin's latest paintings at the Gagosian Gallery are beyond superlatives.  They are recent paintings on wood during 2007 and 2008 and they are the first he has exhibited for a while.  The most recent exhibition of his work in London at the Tate Britain was a retrospective,which was also very memorable and affecting.

His paintings look like visceral responses in colour, but they are actually painstakingly created, or should that be "paintstakingly", many taking years to complete. 

Hodgkin talks about his paintings: "My pictures are finished when the subject comes back.  I start out with the subject and naturally I have to remember first what it looked like, but it would perhaps also contain a great deal of feeling and sentiment.  All that has got to be somehow transmuted, transformed or made into a physical object, and when that happens, when that's finally been done, when the last physical marks have been put on and the subject comes back...well, the painting is finished." 

The gallery is a perfect space and the paintings just look beautiful, if only I lived there with them.  My two favourites were Ozone and Blushing, but all were very powerful. 

The Gagosian gallery is offering a double whammy at the moment as there is also Marc Newson furniture on display.  Newson's use of materials is very clever.  Newson says, "Sometimes I start with the material, sometimes the idea.  In this case the materials were the inspiration.  Often the context of materials strikes me more than the materials themselves.  Context is new, not materials."  

You could effortlessly live with all this furniture and gaze all day with awe at the lines and shapes.  Again beyond superlatives.  

I've never been to this gallery before.  It's just tucked away near King's Cross station, it's worth making a note to pay a visit.

Howard Hodgkin: 3 April -17 May 2008

Marc Newson: 4 March - 19 April 2008

Surelight - electroluminescent wire

Surelight are a Sheffield based company that specialise in selling electrical wizardry.

They have a gallery on their site to highlight what artists and designers have done with their products around the world to inspire your creative imagination to run riot...

Apple: Professional Profiles

Apple's website has a section on professional profiles, these are 2 that I thought were particularly interesting and beautiful.

Top image is from a company called Trafik.  They are a french design company specialising in graphics and computer programming and their work is worth a look.

The bottom is image is from a photographer called Tcherevkoff and he takes photographs and turns them into wonderful creations.

Podcasting

Today I learnt how to do a podcast.  It is surprisingly simple, lots of fun but quite embarrassing.  I think it is going to be a very helpful way to present information though and think about ways to communicate...

TED talks - Norman Foster and Malcolm Gladwell

These are two talks I found interesting from TED talks.  TED = Technology, Education and Design, so these talks, of which there are 200 archived to listen to are released on a creative commons license.

1st is the architect Norman Foster

2nd is the author Malcolm Gladwell 

Malcolm Gladwell has written 2 of my favourite books, Blink and The Tipping Point.  He also has his own website, www.gladwell.com with info on these books and his archives for The New Yorker. 

Blink and The Tipping Point are aposite for our course, as we are meant to devise things that are possibly about "blink", that is, perhaps being intuitive about what could become a trend and way before the tipping point is reached.  

SDC Colour Museum, Bradford

[Photos - top - illustrating Tungsten filament test for metamarism, 

middle - spectrophotometre (enables accurate colour measurement to allow digital colour communication, 

bottom - different visions - normal, red deficient, green deficient and blue deficient.]

Finally went to the Colour Museum in Bradford today. We spent 5 hours travelling there and back.  It's quite a small museum run by the SDC and it's by appointment only. 

I hadn't realised that the exhibition is primarily aimed at school children with lots of interactive elements, buttons to press, films to watch and dials to turn to make colour very accessible and interesting.  It also covers a wide range of topics from printing colours, dye methods and printing styles. Although it was well done it was a little disappointing for me as apart from some of the tests there was nothing new.  

There was an interactive display board about Max Luscher which I was really pleased to see, but they laid it out as a game which is not really right as the book states it should be treated seriously.

The colour studies by Sydney Harry in their retrospective were particularly well done, beautifully neat and well presented.  There were also display cases about William Perkins an entrepreneur who invented synthetic dyes in the nineteenth century.

Research Planning

I was reading "Professional Practice in Design Consultancy - A Design Business Association Guide" by Lydia Lydiate ((1992) The Design Council) and thought she gave some very good suggestions about research planning.  It is so easy to endlessly carry on researching so here are her tips for research planning:

"...research must be through and systematic and must not stunt its effect by subscribing to false premises.  It is also important to remember that negative information can be valuable, and useful conclusions can be reached through a process of elimination.

A basic plan for addressing and using research could be as follows:-

• assemble, review and assess existing information, e.g. collect all available data relating
  
• establish the proposal to be investigate
  
• acquire necessary additional data - e.g. undertake primary and secondary research on relevance of proposed idea to target client groups
  
• collage and analyse data in relevant ways
  
• make decisions on the basis of information gathered
  
• decide upon required degree of accuracy in results
  
• ensure that the brief does not prejudice the selection of research techniques and procedures."
  

Building up a sashiko pattern

Children's Pictures out of pattern templates

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough and Michael Braungart

A clever book printed on plastic rather than paper about sustainability.  How can we re-think our behaviour?  

This book is far heavier than a traditional book - Is this sustainable?

There are interesting ideas in this book but it confuses as much as it makes useful points and it doesn't really offer a clear way forward, but it certainly makes you  think.  For instance, natural indigo dyes create mutagens, so what is the alternative?

An index would make this book a more useful reference book.  I think there is poor page layout too with very large margins around the text.  More words per page, less plastic so it would be lighter...

Other than those criticisms there is  a lot to think about in this book.

Flock Exhibition at Russell-Cotes Art Gallery, Bournemouth

This is a very comprehensive exhibition about flocking at the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum in Bournemouth covering interiors, fashion, stationery, flooring, toys and fine art.  

Walking around the museum and then walking into the flocking exhibition is a shock.  The house is wood panelled and hung with early twentieth century paintings and artefacts the contrast between this and the stark harshness of the flocking exhibition is unsettling.  The gallery unintentionally demonstrates how our lives have changed in a century and how different our idea of decoration and beauty is today.  

The flocking exhibition is beautifully presented and is very well researched and displayed with anything and everything that has been flocked.

Du Magazine

Our course is going to be represented in the next issue of Du magazine, a Swiss magazine with beautiful art direction.

(The images above are from their website)

Animation

Adidas has a great animation at the beginning or their website.  This is a really good presentation technique.  It's the first time I've seen it done so well and realise how effective it can be.

Environmentally Friendly Products

Tidying up I came across this list of websites I'd written down to follow-up.  Here are some of the best:-

Ecoist - a company set up in 2004 selling environmentally friendly products.

Escama - a company based in US but with handbags made from ring pulls made in Brazil.

Patagonia - organic clothes

Red Flag Design - bags made from recycled sail cloth based in Canada

Ano Ano - bags made from recycled products.

Saving the best until last though,

Sonic Fabric - fabric woven from 50% audio cassettes and 50% cotton.  This is a very innovative fabric and she has made interesting fabrics and products too.  You should be able to get samples at Designtex.

Pattern & Names to come back to

Brain needs a rest - here are some things I need to come back to...no more scraps of paper.

Things to think about further:-

17 plane symmetry groups

islamic patterns

sacred geometry

vedic architecture...

East as well as west

pattern flows

Names to think about further:-

Amma Eloueini

Onkar Singh

Astrid Lindenmayer

Burle Marx & Juan Grimm

BBC2 has been showing 80 gardens around the world, two of these gardeners from South America were really interesting.  

Roberto Burle Marx (1909-1994) was a Brazilian artist and landscape architect who created the largest abstract painting in the world in Rio de Janeiro.  It is a mosaic covering the surface of Copacabana promenade for 2.5 miles. Above are two photos showing the details. 

According to the New York Times he stated in 1971, "I fear that by the time people become enlightened, there won't be anymore forests in this country." (New York Times, Obituaries, 6 June 1994)

Juan Grimm was also featured in this programme and he is a wonderful Chilean gardener working with nature to create very beautiful landscapes and gardens. 

Recycling

Today's theme is recycling with ideas from  "Recycle The Essential Guide" (Introduction by Lucy Siegle, published by Black Dog Publishing).  It shows very simply what we can all do and how we can do our bit to reduce our impact on the planet.

How To Recycle

The book lists lots of websites all over the world on how to find out and how to join in.  The case studies in the book are as diverse as Cuba to (Tower Hamlets) Hackney, London.  Some of the items made from recycled products in Cuba are surprisingly beautiful...

Websites in the UK from the book:-

Waste Watch - they provide information sheets about materials and how to recycle at home.

Low Impact Living Initiative - a charity aiming to help reduce their impact on the environment.

Recycle Now - where to find your local recycling facilities and how to recycle.

http://www.recyclenow.com

Let's Sort it Sheffield - a highly regarded site.

Shopping

Hmm, this book is really food for thought.  Now we've looked at recycling, perhaps we should consider our shopping habits.  What should we buy and where should we shop?   

Again, "Recycle The Essential Guide" has explained it all, really there are no excuses:-

http://www.ecostreet.co.uk - a web directory for sustainable living.

http://www.ecozone.co.uk - webshop selling detergents-free eco balls and wind-up mobile phone charger.

http://www.insightecostore.com - webshop selling furniture

http://www.recycledproducts.org.uk - does what it says on the (recycled) tin.

Living and Dying, Wellcome Trust Gallery, British Museum

Photograph of section of knitwear by Susie Freeman showing tablets consumed during an average life span.

The Living and Dying Gallery at the British Museum is always interesting to look at as it combines elements to shock, beautiful cultural symbols and rituals, clever presentation with quite shocking facts.

The most shocking exhibit is the innovative knitwear display by Susie Freeman demonstrating the 14,000 tablets of medication we in the west consume in an average lifetime.  It is in a huge display case and along the sides of the two pieces, one depicting a man's life and the other a woman's typical usage are the items used in daily life.

Abstract Photograph

Another light photograph, but this time in a composition...again I'm not going to reveal what it is.

Professor Tom Barker, Smart Slab Ltd - Interactive Architecture

Professor Tom Barker (RCA) talked about interactive architecture and his company Smart Slab Ltd that he set up in 2000.  An impressive and tenacious person he has created a very innovative and interesting product.

Smart Slab was devised during a night out with a drawing on a napkin.  Nine years later they are now working on the Axis building in Manchester due for completion in October 2009.  The skyscraper's facade will be covered in tv screens from the ground up and will be showing a selection from the BBC archive.  

Smart Slab is a very versatile product that can be used internally or externally and it's also very durable.  It is part of the 2.0 revolution with the public creating their own content.  For instance, they have designed a Community Cube in Tokyo, Japan.  It's a 4.8 metre cube which for most of the day shows advertising, but for two hours a day it will show Youtube style films.

Smart Slab is simply a way to cover an area internally or externally with interactive architecture that responds to people.  Advertisers are very keen to use it as technology has now developed so that it can tell whether people are looking at it or not using eye tracking with infra red.

The inspirations for this product came from the Tom Cruise film Minority Reports.

Fabrican Ltd - Dr Manel Torres

Dr Manel Torres gave an inspiring and enthusiastic talk about his spray on fabric-in-a-can product that is now manufactured and sold under Fabrican Ltd.  This is a very innovative and intriguing product that has varied applications from fashion, consumer household and cleaning, automative, petcare to medical uses and it has even been used in films to create costumes. 

Formerly a fashion designer the inspiration for his spray on fabric came from silly string at a party!  Now Dr Torres uses fashion to demonstrate the product in the most interesting and engaging way.  

Not only is it an innovative product, but the application of creativity and science to create something extraordinary is very inspiring.  Science really needn't be boring...

Dr Torres was also an encouraging and enthusiastic speaker describing his journey, his failures, dead-ends and successes and final triumph stating that, "When you really have an interest then things happen".