After the Manchester Art Gallery Zine Fair I decided to investigate the Taboo exhibition being held at 2022NQ by other Interactive Arts students. The premise of the exhibition was to explore the notions of 'taboo' within our culture and the pieces covered a diverse range of topics including sexuality, mental health, feminism and dreams.
piece in centre by Saffina Bhatti
Although I missed some of the more performance based pieces by being at the Zine Fair, I thought they still retained their intrigue after their initial display and were interesting just as abandoned objects or displays. My favourite pieces were the two sculptural works, coincidentally both dealing with issues of feminism, by Saffina Bhatti and Emily Rusby respectively, and the illustrated narrative by Nat Dunning.
by Emily Rusby
There was also a mostly architectural illustration exhibition being held in the room next door which I really enjoyed. They were taken from practitioners from a variety of disciplines and were mostly by graduates from a number of different universities. My favourite piece on display in this room was the comic by Zac Gorman which had a gorgeous use of colour.
For my Contextualising Practice summative essay I've chosen to write about 'Feminism and the Fairy Tale', looking at the portrayal of women in traditional folk tales. After spending the last couple of months actively looking for graphic novels / comics either written by / aimed at women or with a female protagonist, I have decided to research this further with the possibility of discussing some of these issues in my essay. I borrowed From Girls to Grrrlz: A History of ♀ Comics from Teens to Zines by Trina Robbins from the library this week as a first point of reference, and I'm aiming to read Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics by Hillary L. Chute afterwards. The culture of comics, especially the more mainstream titles / publishers has always seemed been incredibly male dominated both in terms of producers of comics and the consumers and I would like to explore the various reasons behind this.
I'm currently thinking of staging a kind of mini exhibition probably on the ceiling of one of the uni buildings or hanging from trees in the park. The exhibition would show some major northern hemisphere January / winter star constellations that the viewer would be able to look for in the sky straight above their heads. I would probably redraw the map myself and simplify it to only include stars visible with the naked eye (maybe a challenge as Manchester has so much light pollution!).
I started thinking about what I'd like to produce / think about for the Site project by first thinking of things nI've been interested in recently, mainly mythology and basic astronomy. I first looked at some pieces of English folklore to see if there were any I felt I could relate to a space around university. I then decided I'd like to be a bit more specific and looked to see if there was any old myths relating to Manchester but I only managed to find a list of old Lancashire folklore. There were a number of interesting stories such as the trials of the Samlesbury witches and mythical creatures such as the 'Gytrash' (ghostly black dog said to haunt quiet roads in Northern England and mentioned in Jane Eyre). None of these really clicked or made me want to look into them further though. Currently thinking of coming up with my own myths to relate to this project, currently thinking of using either a bench or a tree in All Saints Park but I'll see how things progress as I do some more research.
I included a lot of 19th / 20th century illustrations from fairy tale books in my Fairy Tales and Feminism zine (that made up part of my fomative assessment before Christmas) and have been looking at them again recently, thinking of using them as an influence on my own current work.
Some good and extensive examples can be found here by Kay Nielsen and and here by Arthur Rackham.
Arthur Rackham
I also noticed a bit of a similarity between these classical fairy tale illustrations and Yelena Brysenkova's work that I was looking at a few days ago.
I've been reading loads lately and have decided to occasionally record some of my favourites on this here blog.
Recently I've been dipping in and out of National Geographic's 'Essential Visual History of World Mythology'. I've had an interest in mythology since i was in about Year 3 and got obsessively into The Egyptians when we studied them at school. I learnt an entire alphabet of hieroglyphs off by heart. (I know the ancient Egyptians didn't use a Roman alphabet but come on, it was Year 3). Egyptian mythology is still my favourite to read about although I've also enjoyed learning about Norse mythology (I had a primary school Viking phase too). I think studying up on mythology will also help with my Contextualising Practice summative essay which i'm going to write on 'Feminism and the Fairy Tale'. A lot of what I'm going to be reading / writing in the next few months will concern European folklore and mythology but it can't hurt to have a basic understanding of the rest of the world's myths and legends either as many of the stories are similar but with slight variations on names / places.
In relation to this I've started reading Grimm's Fairy Tales and plan to read Hans Christian (sadly my copies doesn't have as amazing covers as these ones do!)
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I've recently reread The Hobbit before I went to see this film (both brilliant and full o' Norse mythology) and am currently reading Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami for something completely mythology free.
Before making the cat moon below, i went to see a screening of Dziga Vertov's "Man with a Movie Camera" which was showing in The Holden Gallery as part of their Screen: Artist Film Series week. I thought this film was absolutely stunning; hypnotic, and at the same time both intricate and vast. The whole film (with the 1996 score, the version I saw was the 2003 one I think) is also on Youtube!
I will more than likely be heading down to the Holden Gallery again this week to see some of the other films since this one was so fantastic.
I decided to try out using the large format printers at uni yesterday, so I printed a giant moon and lots of cat faces and this was the result, truly majestic. It is now gracing my living room wall.
As part of my Contextualising Practice coursework for the Narrative Word and Image module I'm taking, I had to produce a map of a well known narrative using no writing. Obviously I chose to do Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone because I am a ridiculously enormous HP geek.
I did this really quick and sketchy but it was super fun to draw.
In the last week or so I've finally started drawing out the first frames of my animation after lots of visual research and planning and learning new software. Here's the first animatic loop which I'm currently illustrating my characters over. I will probably add a few more inbetween frames to the run animatic whilst I'm animating my characters.
Here's a still of one of my characters over the running loop!
For my Defining Interactive Practice module at university we have until February to do basically any project we like, whether it be a continuation of previous work or something entirely new. I've decided to really concentrate on animation (utilizing illustration along the way) and finish off a project I started last year, although changed around a little bit.
So far I've been drawing down a lot of ideas and loose draft storyboards in my sketchbook, as well as trying to teach myself how to use Adobe After Effects. I definitely want to continue with 2D, hand drawn frames scanned into the computer as opposed to experimenting with 3D computer generated animation.
I've also been looking at existing animations to try to work out how they were achieved and put together, here are some of my favourites.
Music video for 'No Turning Back' by Sarah Blasko, directed by Celeste Potter (not sure if shewas responsible for creating all the animation) I think this is just stunningly perfect and wonderful!
'Howard' by Julia Pott. I absolutely adore all of Pott's work, both animation and illustration
'Pipelines: Here, There, Everywhere?' by Daniel Gies / e.d. films. An educational film about pipes and plumbing systems but the animation is totally gorgeous.
Music video for 'Full Moon Reggae Party' by Tigercats by illustrator and Tigercats' lead singer, Duncan Barrett
Music video for 'Hide' by Kris Menace featuring Miss Kittin, animated by Mathieu Bétard, Pierre Ruitz and Jonathan Djob Nkondo.
Music video for 'Feels Like We Only Go Backwards' by Tame Impala directed by Becky Sloan and Joseph Pelling.
I've been wanting to do either a Sheffield or a Manchester postcard for a few months now but had never got round to it until tonight. Going to put this in the end of year exhibition tomorrow I think since the last project was loosely based around Manchester. I guess it's a good piece of work to round off my first year of university with too. It's been majorly up and down (like I guess most peoples' first years are) but overall I've loved it and I totally adore Manchester as a place to live.
(Buildings L-R!: Cornerhouse, Manchester Wheel, Chinatown arch, town hall, Manchester Art Gallery, Salford Lads' Club, Frank Sidebottom graffiti in the Northern Quarter, Palace Theatre, Manchester Museum, Craft and Design Centre)
I was recommended this artist by my uni tutor at my last tutorial and oh my are they lovely! John Dilnot is a British printmaker and illustrator who produces mini artist books and box works as well as larger scale screenprints. I love his use of colour!
I think I'm still a bit surprised that I actually managed to make it to university but anyway, here I am.
For one of the first projects we got set I did a mini-zine called Disguises featuring portraits of people with a set of acetates to lay over the portraits. The acetates had disguises drawn on them, so you could transform them into Robert Smith or a 70s football pundit or whatever.
After not getting onto Illustration and Animation (sob sob sob) I'm now on Interactive Arts. My course has been pretty weird so far, interesting but very jumbled up. It doesn't help that I haven't been in as much as I should either! Depression and anxiety, my old nemeses.
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