Chaos vs Order

Despite the fact that I have been a member of Young Arnolfini for nearly a year now this is my first blog post! I thought I would kick off with a little sneaky preview of some recent work.

I’m currently in my final year studying BA (hons) Drawing and Applied Arts at UWE here in Bristol. My obsession with achieving perfection in my practice has lead recent work to focus on themes of repetition and the multiple.

Inspired by the work of artists like Yayoi Kusama, Tess Jaray, Bridget Riley and Agnes Martin I have produced a series of hand cut paper nets. The pieces that I have posted here show examples of some of the very early experimental stages of my final project. I hope that throughout my final year at university they will develop in to beautiful visually seductive works that play on the balance between minimalism and excess with a haptic sensibility.

Resetting stereotypes

Try typing “indie game” into Google Image Search.

Unless I’ve overlooked something, you should notice that all results look similar to this:

Now take a look at this indie game:

Reset is a first person puzzle game with “a grippingly haunting but beautiful story and an unparalleled immersive atmosphere”. Players must travel back in time to solve puzzles co-operatively with themselves.

In this case, it seems the high-detail graphics are not just a selling point but exist, more so, to surround the player with a rich, breathing atmosphere. When I watch the trailer my initial response wasn’t “damn, those graphics are SICKKK FAM” but rather “damn, that robot seems sad! Everything seems sad and now I feel sad. Can I save them?” Not only is this an example of independent studios eradicating certain stereotypes but also an example of how graphics do have more of a justifiable purpose than to solely be a wow factor.

But in order to save the game from time limbo, the developers need to raise an additional 30,000 euros on crowdfunding website indiegogo! The deadline is Christmas Eve :O.

In other news:

And now for something completely different

I enjoy doing art, and I have a very specific way of doing it. Portraits are my “thing”, so I do a lot of them and have done so for one or two years now. But that doesn’t mean that I like to spice things up a bit. I’ve done other things as part of my sixth form, and to try things out. But recently, I’ve been creating something different. A while ago, I made several small “doodles” in some of my more boring classes, and after a discussion with a friend, they think that it would be good to draw them up as proper pieces, and make prints out of them. So these past few days, I’ve been creating a this surreal explosion of patterns and shapes. Which is quite different to simple portraits.

I began to think about how I could create something like this. Firstly, I wanted to find some inspiration for it. I found that there are a couple of other artists that use a similar style, and they create some amazing pieces of work in it! The first artist I found was Lei Melendres (His Facebook pages are here and here). He creates these amazing doodles that are both cute and awe-inspiring! I just love the variety of shapes, patterns and characters he includes! So I was off to a good start!

The next artist I found was Peter Draws (Probably not his last name, but it didn’t say anything else!) (His youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/Palivizumab) His work seems a lot more mature than Lei’s, but its still really interesting! I like how he creates such complex and detailed patterns! As well as creating different themes within his work! So its all really interesting to look at!

I love both of these Illustrators, and they both inspired me for my latest piece! Which is coming along nicely. Its been a lot of fun experimenting in this different style. Its funny how you can start something thinking “this might be interesting” then end up thinking “I actually love creating pieces like this!”. I’ve even began including this sort of style in a portrait I’m doing! So I suppose that the lesson I’ve learnt from trying out a different style is that trying something new can mean that you discover something that you really enjoy!

University

So I am coming up to my last semester at University. Thinking about my last project at the moment, I’ll be carrying on from something I’ve been working on the last few months. I’ve been focusing on memories, and how we react and imagine peoples memories. I have created an installation based on a counselling room as this is where you talk about your problems and past.

This is the main middle screen, and 2 screens are presented either side of the room to show other places we think of these things. Voices of peoples memories are presented over in the room, and the closer to each screen the more you hear of certain memories. It was a very hard thing to get done in such a short amount of time, but I feel I got to my aim, just feel like I want to expand and move into the project in the theme of nostalgia, as a new defined focus to this.

Electric December- Film festival + How to embarrass your mother

Hello!  Billie here. Just thought I’d bring your attention to a certain film festival based in Bristol, which goes by the name of Electric December. A film festival which focuses on showcasing the talent of young film makers from all over the world…

The idea is that 24 films are short-listed, and turned in to a sort of advent calendar, featuring on the Electric December website and being shown on Millennium Square on a particular date leading up to Christmas. So yes, just like an advent calendar except you get a short film made by a young person instead of chocolate.

I found out about this not because of my initiative in taking an active interest in my local arts, I’m afraid to admit, but because my film teacher sent me an email saying how he’d entered my coursework from last year, and it had been short listed as one of the 24.

Brilliant! That is pretty brilliant I agree. But I was at first a little mortified by the fact that the film featured my mum playing a homeless man, and pretending to sing to rather terrible dubbing.

Well why cast your own mother as a homeless  man in the first place, you may ask?

The thing is the initial casting call was for an old man, and seeing as we were filming on a dodgy old cannon I’d got for my thirteenth birthday, we just didn’t have the resources we’d have liked, and quite frankly I don’t know that many old men.

James playing the part of Fergus, the poor soul being stalked by my mum.

So my mum agreed to be in it as long as we didn’t show it to anyone other than our film teacher. And I can’t fault her on enthusiasm, but bless her, she was meant to be playing a busker ( we were dubbing a man’s voice in afterwards), and quite often she’d forget to even pretend to play the guitar, let alone sing anything resembling the right lyrics.

So, after promising her no one but us was ever going to see it, telling her it was going to be on Millennium Square today (my day was the tenth), was rather hilarious. That and all her relatives have been sharing it on facebook.

My film is called ‘Fergus’, my mum’s the bloke in the hat with the guitar.

Young Arnolfini at The Station

 

6th December 2013 was the preview night for our exhibition at The Station Bristol. After months of preparing what themes we wanted, people’s jobs and roles within the making as well as helping put the exhibition up, it finally arrived. We decided on the theme of perfectionism because it led on from our second issue of the Zine. This was a slightly different angle, looking at how we would put on our so say perfect exhibition, so exhibiting the planning rather than the actual thing.

The preview went well, due to the wall team doing a fantastic job on the painting on the walls, it looked professional and ready to exhibit on the night. The projector was one issue for a little while, but temporarily sorted the issue out and was ready to also exhibit at the preview. I was in charge of the catering for the night, so kept an eye on the drinks and food and kept topping everything up so it was available for our guests. I was also meet and greeter with the Zines as well as working with Fiona on this as she gave them information on the exhibition.

The preview was overall a success. Guests seemed to really enjoyed looking around and especially were drawn to the film which was placed near the entrance in a little section so it was off away from the wall art. The comment book was placed next to the film in the entrance, so on exit then they could write something about their experiences in the exhibition. We had people re posting our Twitter post, which hopefully made people more aware of the exhibition being held, so will take a look at some point in the month it is open. This was fantastic for marketing, social media really helped us out here. We had some interesting feedback from university students who have been working on this theme for dissertations which was great feedback.

One thing I think would need to be improved on would be the length of film. It is 18 minutes long which in my opinion is to long for an audience to stand and listen to people talking about their favourite films. We had some great feedback on the film, but I just think it could have been slightly more interesting if was shorter and snappy.

I am looking forward to hearing and seeing more comments being made about the exhibition, and will be planning our next event very soon.

Station Exhibition – Perfectionism

Last week we were working in collaboration with The Station in Bristol. The Station invited us to curate and produce an exhibition of our choice in one of their rooms. The space was a really nice blank canvas for us to project our ideas onto. We had recently produced the second issue of our zine/small publication called YA and decided to use the subject of that, which is Perfection, as the starting point for our ideas. What we wanted to covey in the space was the thought that the ideas you have in your head are the perfection of what you want something to look like. We also wanted to physically react to the space we were given so we combined the two and tried to create as simply as possible but still retaining a bold aesthetic, something that showed our perfect ideas of how we would utilize the space. The exhibition will be on throughout December until the 4th of January.

Fiona:

I felt the exhibition was a great opportunity for us all to work on something together, and to produce this collaborative exhibition as a team. I really enjoyed the set up, especially the painting onto the walls – I think we managed to produce a really innovative and interesting exhibition, and to a certain degree we have to thank The Station for allowing us to paint onto their walls!

Charlie CT:

I really enjoyed the entire process of putting on the exhibition from beginning to end. My favourite thing was meeting and having a blank space in which we could do (nearly) whatever we wanted. Being able to realize an idea and watch it change and grow was really cool. I want to thank the station for giving us the opportunity and I hope if you get the chance to go and see it then I hope you enjoy it. If you can’t make it, here are some images of us working:

Cai:

I think that the most interesting part of the exhibition was the contrast between what we had written and the space it was in. They were pretty much opposites! Our perfect space had “blacked out windows”, “diffused light” and “grey fabric” – none of which the station had. It was almost as though they were directions for how we could change the station into our perfect space

This was my first chance to experience the process of creating an exhibition. It was interesting watching it develop, and getting a chance to create parts of it! Looking at the finished exhibition was great because it showed all the work we put into it.

Becky:

My absolute favourite part of working on this exhibition is that each member of YA seemed to step out of their comfort zones to work with words.

We are all more of a visual group, primarily made up of photographers, fine artists and graphic designers and not particularly sterling at writing. Or so we thought.

Except for some rushed coursework evaluations (usually after extensive alcohol consumption!), our individual practices and studies often don’t allow us time to be creative with writing, so this naturally makes us doubt our capabilities in it.

For this Perfectionism Exhibition we wanted to address the truth that imagination of something does not always translate into an accurate reality. To do this we wanted to use descriptions of our ideal exhibition spaces.

From the end result scrawled across the walls of The Station it seemed all we needed was a blank space and a little confidence in our own voices to show how assertive and expressive ideas could look.

We proved to ourselves that we may all be visual practitioners, but language can be visual too.

What Does Culture Mean to You?

My personal initial response was complete utter blankness.

Culture? Wait, what?

In hindsight it’s so utterly diverse, yet such a similar versatile store of a value, after a while I couldn’t stop thinking deeply as if ‘culture’ had always been such a profound element in my everyday life. And funnily enough, after the first Teenage Kicks research project workshop looking into what culture means to young people, I discovered that of course culture does have such intense and deep emotions attached to it because it’s part of what forms an identity.

The culture – the people, activities, places – you surround yourself with are all influential in forming your identity.

So yes, initially I was slightly apprehensive going to today’s afternoon workshop at Arnolfini because I didn’t consider myself to be well astute on the topic of ‘culture’. From academia alone the only form of ‘culture’ I had come across to accept as plausible was that in Religious Education or PSHE lessons about ethics, ethnicity, and religion, but this idea of culture being a form I could associate myself with never really crossed my mind.

‘Culture’ wasn’t something I did, it was something I knew about that happened somewhere else.

But soon enough I discovered I had all sorts to say.

The workshop was built around firstly formulating the idea of culture through word and object association activities that, for me, really helped broaden my concept of ‘culture’ to being able to simply include things dear to me. And most importantly, there was a real emphasis on there being no right or wrong answer to anything because every point was valid for the reason of it simply existing.

Afterwards we were then asked to answer different questions dotted around the room, like ‘which cultural forms or activities do you engage with the most?’, with post-it notes and it was quite intriguing to notice the room verbally quieten as the mental bolts went off on one like clockwork.

It was after this that we were given the chance to discuss the different ideologies and feelings of the intimate group of seven. It was incredible to be given the opportunity to consider and develop differing and similar viewpoints, with this idea of ‘open-mindedness’ being key to everything. Thus, keeping this in mind we discussed everything from academia to the arts to music to fashion to celebrities to social media to communities and cities, and a lot more! And best of all it was fabulous to have different insights to varying and complementary views as it not only helped to broaden my knowledge but was a great way to ascertain my own opinions.

So, I’m pretty stoked for the next session and would like to thank the ever-so-wonderful Kamina Walton for once again providing us Young Arnolfini members with continuous opportunities and Emma Pett and Dr. Helen Manchester from the University of Bristol for arranging such a brilliant interactive project to really voice young people’s opinions.

‘And today we got to paint on the walls’

Yesterday began the install for our exhibition at The Station, entitled Perfectionism. I wouldn’t say that it was a dream of mine, but for a while I’ve had the desire to create something directly onto a wall. I can’t entirely put my finger on why I’ve wanted to do this, but I think it’s something to do with the fact that it feels naughty and feels like we’re breaking the rules.

So when someone’s idea for this exhibition was to paint words onto the wall how could I not jump at it to help out?!

So that’s what we’ve been doing so far, painting onto the walls. Surprisingly not too much mess has been made so far, and it’s looking like we will be all set to go ready for our opening at 5pm on Friday!

Also, here’s the Facebook event for our Private View, the more the merrier!

https://www.facebook.com/events/454463151326856/?ref=2&ref_dashboard_filter=calendar

Gromit Making

So this weekend, I (Cai) had an amazing opportunity where I got to go to a workshop with one of the animators from Aardman Studios! For those of you who don’t know, Aardman Studios are the masterminds behind Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run, Pirates! and much more!

The workshop started off with one of their model makers showing us some of the models they actually use (Including The Golden Carrot from the curse of the were-rabbit!). What was really cool was that he showed us a model that had been cut down the middle. This meant that we could see what was inside their models. They use a metal wire frame that means that they can move it round, which was not what I expected!

After that, we were then shown how we could use very simple shapes to create our very own model Gromit! It was all lots of fun – we pretty much spent an hour playing with plasticine! But it was quite challenging at the same time…

Some of the plasticine was quite hard to work with, and you could accidentally mix in other colours to yours! I was sat with a hairdryer warming up my plasticine, because it was too cold! Since we did it though, I’m always smoothing down little bits, making it even smoother. I don’t think I did too badly!

It was cool to see all the multi-coloured Gromits all together at the end!