Out of Sight, Out of Our Minds.

Finally I have time to post about me and my housemates' latest and grandest endeavour:

This summer we presented OUT OF SIGHT to an unsuspecting Bournemouthian public; an exhibition in an underground carpark that until now has been unused for three years.

Me and my housemates George Bills, Laurie Ramsell, Nathan Hackett heralded as organisers of the whole kit and kaoodle, enlisting the help of Ashley Peevor & Michael Compton along the way to make a combined force of knowledgable, capable and resiliant fine art and illustration students. 33 proposals were then chosen from entrants spanning our entire university, The Arts University College at Bournemouth, and the resultant exhibition proudly featured costume design, digital media, film, foundation and MA students, alongside both of our courses.

It was a long process, from liaising with various levels of Wilkinsons clearance (owners of the carpark), calling for entries, selecting the artists, cleaning the carpark, adding power outlets, installing the work, making our own work(!) and of course aspects of promotion and publicity as the opening date approached. Exhaustion was a key feeling inside all of us in the house at the end of each day, but such a sense of achievement gripped in turning a disgusting and neglected environment into a house for sophisticated art pieces. Plus, someone told us that when you're tired, you know you're putting your all in.

I myself designed our promotional 'identity', which became applied to flyers, posters, e-invites, and signage. It was based on an eye test, playing with ideas of optical inadequacies taken from the exhibition title 'Out of Sight'.

One key aspect of our exhibition was that we were 'out of the way', slightly off the beaten track; you had to take a sort of leap of faith down some unfamiliar stairs in an unnervingly familiar place, and find something that was hidden to a lot of people who who look past it, making the entrant an explorer of the unknown who had seen something others had not. Our ethos contained lacings of an appreciation for the overlooked: including outsiders within a society, as well as hidden areas within a community, and we wanted to show art's resiliance to unorthodox circumstances - including declines of the economy and lower states of lifestyle. All the artworks were generated as a direct response to the carpark; whether the result mimicked some of its qualities, or juxtapoed against them; made use of its large scale or exaggerated it, none of the objects would exist without the environment.

S from 'Urban Brick' typeface by Bana Toutounjee. Photograph by Denise Poote.

'Residents' by Elizabeth Vazquez. Photograph by Michael Compton.

Inside 'Petri Dish' by Kieran Leonard, Tom Daniel-Moon & Ka Vi. Photograph by Michael Compton.

Assemblage of 'Sustainable Car' by Marta Fjellheim. Photograph by Michael Compton.

'Meltdown' by Hollie Mackenzie. Photograph by Denise Poote.

We received around 1000 visitors across the week-long opening period, largely due to the carpark entrance in prime location on the bustling Winton High Street; having been hidden right alongside the entrance to chainstore Wilkinsons for all this time. Many people who came down to the carpark's depths had used the carpark when it was open, and were happy to see it open again in better nick. It was a joy to see people from all walks of life enter the space without any preconceptions of what they might find.

A big thank you to everyone who helped us in whatever way; swapping keys, making art, bringing a broom, getting up early, being able to drive, folding exhibition guides, handing out flyers, keeping us afloat.~

You are out of sight.

Horsing Around.

(Never has a post title come so easily.)

Once again, I sent a little something over to Peculiar Bliss today, for their newest issue entitled 'Creatures'. I found great joy and satisfaction in drawing it peacefully in my journal, the night after conceiving the idea en route to a buddy's house to change a light bulb - coincidence?

It's nice to genuinely generate a giggle from time to time with something simple, even if it is to yourself. Chortle.

Land Marks.

I recently stumbled across a publication called Hesa Inprint, a bilingual magazine described as a platform for anyone with "a vision and a voice". Fancying this notion, I also found the design to be of a very high calibre; a beautiful and clean finish (no pun), and, rather enamored, submitted a drawing to their latest issue; Europe-Eurooppa. I created a tourist's map of Europe, using only infamous landmarks in order to show the placement of European countries, with some missing all together. This was to show the gaps in people's general knowledge about our world's geography, along with the all-consuming power of iconic images.

Full article and image can be see here on the HESA blog: http://www.hesainprint.com/illustration-kuvitus/2011/08/1851/land-marks

Anew Friend.

I've never been comfortable enough with a book to call it a journal. Even as it grows in notation and decreases in immaculateness, it's still a 'sketchbook' and we don't quite create a journaler's bond. We stay more like co-workers.

But now I have found one. And here are a couple of little things from it, drawn on the Shetland Isles.

Me & the journal made good company up there in the Cold North. I think we're definitely going to stick together from here.

Hooters.

Once upon a time I became noctornal and created an owl overnight. I'd wanted to make an owl out of pencil sharpenings for a while, since seeing a photograph of a particularly smart-looking one in a wildlife magazine. Its overlapping feathers struck me as very similar to the wooden waste of our graphitey friends, so I knew it would make sense to recreate it this way. And here's the result, pre-framing and free as, well a bird.

My boyfriend used a plane to grind down that twig for me, which looked very taxing as I watched on (with bleary eyes and a cup of tea), and he helped me carefully frame the whole caboodle ready for its place within our Crayon 2.0 exhibition at Cafe Boscanova in Boscombe. He can be seen there for the next few months unless someone adopts him.

The owl not the boyfriend. I won't let anyone adopt this helpful fellow.

What I like most about the resulting image is that the whole thing is made from a tree, including the paper.

...Unless you count the blue tac behind all those shavings, shhhhhh. Our secret.

Don't Bottle Her.

My buddy Libby has reached the final of the Musicroom Acoustic Showcase in Portsmouth, and she told me she was planning to sell a little EP at her performance. So I made her this sleeve to pop in the cases, to set it off a bit.

I figure her music is smooth like a good year beer, and suprisingly musky and oaky with a characteristic aged quality within its modern setting. Plus she's always come over a little swashbuckling, with her growls and hats.

I made a little bottle label for each track on the back, to showcase each song's own 'flava'.

Pick a copy up at The Wedgewood Rooms in Portsmouth on 28th July.

Good luck kiddo. And let enough beer flow to sail the HMS Libby + crew, abob!

Wooly Submission.

I stitched a N64 for online magazine Peculiar Bliss, under the theme of Pastimes. It took a long time, and it was one of those things where I figured a drawing 'wasn't enough'. The bright colours and seemingly carefree resultant object hides a contrast with the difficult process I embarked upon to try and make something "good enough" to be considered with some sort of regard.

They included it in Issue #6, even if it was rather a wooly submission if you ask me.
You can see the full magazine here.

Chatter Cupboard.

Having got talking to one Zenobia Southcombe on twitter (@ZSouthcombe) with regards to The Sketchbook Project we are both signed up for, she asked me if I would be interested in doing an artist's interview for her blog.
I was delighted by the prospect, and said "Why I'd be delighted". So we did it.

And here it is: my very own artist's feature.

Be sure to check out the other artist's she 'grilled' too, I found them lots of fun to mull over.

And at risk of sounding like Beyonce, I feel honoured and a little blessed that she or anyone else cared about my humble responses.
She asked some very good questions that made my brain rattle and churn at first and I think I have a perverse taste for answering introspective questions now while trying not to say the word 'I' too much.

Just don't ask me Who I Am. We'll be here until January.

Three Wheeler.

My original idea for my badge entries was to have one type of bicycle split up into three circular sections, to form three seperate badges. This would mean that if someone was to buy the set of 3 they could compile their own little bike right there on their sweater, otherwise hopefully the elements would be of interest if stood alone.

However to exaggerate this, I became more interested in the idea of a hotch potch of different bicycles standing for different characters of riders, all converging up to make up one vehicle. I find the bicycle an intriguing object through the sheer amount of amalgamations it has gone through, and the vast variety of people who use it in their very different daily lives as a result. Invariably slightly disjointed, finishing like a victorian cockentrice of a specimen, I wanted to line up the parts as well as they lent themselves to without becoming forced. I was happy with the outcome, and as ever proud to have got them done on time.

I hoped my design would encourage people to play with badges, and think of their clothes as canvases in the morning.

I myself favour using brooches of airbourne objects like airplanes, baloons and birds to turn my garment into a sky.

Just submitted them to the competition so let's see if they fly.
Good luck to all who entered!

B & Ike.

This morning I finished of my drawings of a Schwinn, a Pashley Britannia and a Mongoose BMX in preparation for my Stereohype badge designs. Favouring different pencils on different occasions, for this set I became enraptured by the smudginess of a 7B pencil, coming out black like charcoal, but in constant need of a sharpen.


The whole page is a smudgy affair, but I like the fingerprints and the little colour tests surrounding the bikes as a part of the drawing itself. Plus they look happier uneditted, I think.
Now to put them in little circles ready to be worn, prospectively.