Hang-Up Collections

Original Post: http://www.cassfashion.co.uk/hang-collections/

I recently came across a gallery called Hang-Up while exploring the ever great world wide web. It is located at number 56 Stoke Newington Highstreet and I have decided to share it with you guys as they currenty have an exhibition on called ‘Hang-Up Collections’ which seems pretty interesting.

“Hang-Up is a London based contemporary art gallery located in the vibrant and bohemian neighbourhood of Stoke Newington. The gallery presents a dynamic exhibition program of fresh and forward thinking work from our roster of artists, photographers and makers. We show both young artists at the early stages of their careers alongside established names from the art world. We tie it together by seeking out and showing only those who are inherently creative, artists whom in some way break the mould from the traditional, pushing the boundaries either in terms of their work, their message or both.  
Hang-Up Gallery is delighted to introduce the launch of a new series of exhibitions entitled ‘Hang-Up Collections’. Expect to see key works from leading international urban and contemporary artists alongside super-fresh releases and exciting rare finds from the Hang-Up artist roster. 
Adopting a slightly unconventional approach to the traditional exhibition format, new work will be added and removed throughout the exhibition duration allowing it to evolve and change over the weeks.  Whether it’s straight from the artist’s studio, a unique and rare piece from Banksy or from the gallery’s own private collection, Hang-Up Collections will promise to bring you something new, different and exciting each time you visit. 
The first ‘Hang-Up Collections: Volume 1’ will exhibit previously unseen work from talent such as Stanley Donwood, Mark Powell, Lauren Baker, Joe Webb, Russell Marshall, Magnus Gjoen, Mason Storm and The Connor Brothers, as well as rare pieces and one-offs from artists including Banksy, David Choe, Futura, Faile, Herakut, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Jeff Koons and Sir Peter Blake.” www.hanguppictures.com

I competely love finding new galleries, visiting interesting exhibitions and discovering new artists; especially in such an interesting part of town. So, hopefully I will manage to get around to the exhibition before it closes! Below are a few peices of work from Hang-Up’s website and they should be able to give you an idea of what sort of stuff you can expect from the exhibition.

Russell Marshall, Elvis Gun Cheque on Canvas.

Mark Powell, Carbon Emotion (KAR-ben).

Banksy, Toxic Mary Unsigned.

Chapman Brothers Supreme Skate Decks.

 

The Connor Brothers, End of a Dream

 

It's a Stick UP!

Original Post: http://www.cassfashion.co.uk/stick/

So what exactly is it that makes the sticker so alluring to the creative type? You see an influx of creative’s in a specific area, because of cheap rent and large spaces or whatever it may be, and you will inevitably see the clean street signs alongside pretty much any flat surface, become collaged with a myriad of adhesive backed printed paper and vinyl.
Street stickers have obviously been around for way longer than I have even been alive, so I’m not going to sit here for starters and claim to be some kind of sticker bombing assassin, but more just explore the idea a little and look into how it all started and how it developed. I find it quite interesting and hopefully at least one other person who is remotely interested in street art, skate culture or design will too!

 So I’m going to begin with Shepard Fairey. It seems that almost everybody on the planet is aware of Shepard’s work, even if they don’t know about the whole Andre the Giant revolution they would definitely recognise the Obey logo. Shepard explained in his book ‘Supply & Demand’ that as a youngster with an interest in punk rock and skateboarding he found the occasional sticker sighting as ‘an encouraging sign that there were more dedicated proponents of punk and skate culture lurking in the city. Stickers were a sign that I wasn’t living in a total void. I wanted stickers as badges of my culture.’

 Stickers can give you a feeling of belonging and allow you to share or even force your interests and the type of stuff that you like onto other people, especially in aspects to graphics related to punk rock and skate culture, which is something that is still not completely socially acceptable, even though it is becoming a lot more commercial. Plastering the front of your shiny new nondescript branded laptop or whatever personal effects with an awesome collage of stickers suddenly differentiates your stuff from all the millions of people who have that exact same one, it also looks totally awesome and makes you feel pretty cool, individual and slightly rebellious.
Going back to the Obey stickers here is Shepard fairey’s Obey ‘manifesto’.
Have a read, its really interesting stuff.
A nonsensical visual pleasure or an underground cult? I urge you to go buy Shepard’s book, or do a good bit of research on the internet (theres a number of really interesting documentary’s about Shepards work) because theres so much more interesting stuff in relation to Obey that I can’t even begin to cover in one blog post and then you can make up your own mind!

Manifesto

“The OBEY sticker campaign can be explained as an experiment in Phenomenology. Heidegger describes Phenomenology as “the process of letting things manifest themselves.” Phenomenology attempts to enable people to see clearly something that is right before their eyes but obscured; things that are so taken for granted that they are muted by abstract observation.
The FIRST AIM OF PHENOMENOLOGY is to reawaken a sense of wonder about one’s environment. The OBEY sticker attempts to stimulate curiosity and bring people to question both the sticker and their relationship with their surroundings. Because people are not used to seeing advertisements or propaganda for which the product or motive is not obvious, frequent and novel encounters with the sticker provoke thought and possible frustration, nevertheless revitalizing the viewer’s perception and attention to detail. The sticker has no meaning but exists only to cause people to react, to contemplate and search for meaning in the sticker. Because OBEY has no actual meaning, the various reactions and interpretations of those who view it reflect their personality and the nature of their sensibilities.
Many people who are familiar with the sticker find the image itself amusing, recognizing it as nonsensical, and are able to derive straightforward visual pleasure without burdening themselves with an explanation. The PARANOID OR CONSERVATIVE VIEWER however may be confused by the sticker’s persistent presence and condemn it as an underground cult with subversive intentions. Many stickers have been peeled down by people who were annoyed by them, considering them an eye sore and an act of petty vandalism, which is ironic considering the number of commercial graphic images everyone in American society is assaulted with daily.
Another phenomenon the sticker has brought to light is the trendy and CONSPICUOUSLY CONSUMPTIVE nature of many members of society. For those who have been surrounded by the sticker, its familiarity and cultural resonance is comforting and owning a sticker provides a souvenir or keepsake, a memento. People have often demanded the sticker merely because they have seen it everywhere and possessing a sticker provides a sense of belonging. The Giant sticker seems mostly to be embraced by those who are (or at least want to seem to be) rebellious. Even though these people may not know the meaning of the sticker, they enjoy its slightly disruptive underground quality and wish to contribute to the furthering of its humorous and absurd presence which seems to somehow be antiestablishment/societal convention. Giant stickers are both embraced and rejected, the reason behind which, upon examination reflects the psyche of the viewer. Whether the reaction be positive or negative, the stickers existence is worthy as long as it causes people to consider the details and meanings of their surroundings. In the name of fun and observation.”
Shepard Fairey, 1990, WWW.OBEYGIANT.COM (go check it out!)

All images used are Copyright© 1989 - 2014. All Rights Reserved by OBEY GIANT.

Street Sketchbook

Original Post: http://www.cassfashion.co.uk/street-sketchbook/

This post is to introduce you to a selection of my favourite illustrators, artists and designers. All these images are pages from my final major project sketchbook and are my own reproductions of the artists work. I find that it is very important to keep researching, finding and being inspired by new artists as your own work develops. You will probably notice a similarity between the works of those that I will introduce you to below; I am very much a fan of the black line. Reproducing and dissecting the work of some artists I find inspiring helps me think of new ways to work with the black line myself and understand how other artists work with their images and create their own unique style and texture within their art.
The majority of the artists I am going to introduce you to are featured in a book called ‘Street Sketchbook’ my Tristan Manco. I purchased this book during my second year of studies because it featured some sketchbook pages of some artists that I like, many of which are below and others such as Banksy, Blu, Showchicken, and Andy Rementer to name a few. As I mentioned in my last post, Juxtaposing Cessation, I am a diehard lover of the sketchbook. I could spend hours upon hours simply sketching out images, doodling and creating reproductions in my sketchbooks. I think the process of the sketchbook is incredibly important as it gives you as an artist a massive insight into your creative direction, and also works as a really easy way for you to experiment, and create some interesting starting points for something potentially awesome!
Here is a little extract from the introduction of Street Sketchbook and then I shall fire away with my little list of great artists and have inspired me and I think you should know about.
“You are about to enter the secret world of the sketchbook… we are lucky enought to have been granted access to book that usually remain private, were anything and everything goes. Declarations of love, typographic experiments, travel journals, mythological creatures, u-boats and pandas are just some of the visuals gems set loose of the pages ahead.”

Erone 

 San

 

Guy McKinley

Hello Monsters

Fumi Nakamura

Tim Burton

 

Juxtaposing Cessation.

 Original Post Here: http://www.cassfashion.co.uk/juxtaposing-cessation/

As a continuation from my last post ‘Bam. You’re a Graduate.’ I decided to create a post, soon to be a series of posts, which I hope collectively will give readers an insight into my creative process and how I personally work from turning an idea into a finished product. I want to introduce you all to some of my sketchbook drawings, as in my opinion these small experimental, development pieces are just as interesting as the final outcome. I really enjoy seeing the journey the artist has gone through and I like to try and understand different creative processes and see how they work in relation to myself.
I began the project looking at surrealism and explorations of the unconscious.
“The surrealists aimed to liberate the human imagination, and their vision, expressed in the works of some of the greatest artists and writers of the twentieth century, has had a major influence on modern life.”
Surrealism explores ideas behind and including, objective chance, dreams and eroticism and aimed to depict and visually explore the deeper recesses of the human psyche, especially the sexual aspects.
As I began looking at surrealism I began to notice the careful use of juxtaposing imagery and how it was being used to tell a story. It was at this point that I decided that I wanted to create some imagery that told a story and had another meaning beyond its aesthetic. Therefore I had the idea to take two juxtaposing objects, in this case bones and flowers and see how they could work together to tell a story. The first thing that came to me to explore was that of life and death, so I tried playing around with the imagery in different ways such as within a tarot card or within a circle  (which I will explore further in another post).
It was very important to me from the beginning of this project that all the work was hand drawn, as I wanted to try and create a collection of prints as hand-made as possible.
I created these line drawings from a collection of photographs I took at Kew Gardens. I tried simplifying the structure of the flowers as much as possible without losing too much structural detail, so that I could potentially create some more abstract prints using the line forms and so that it would create a clean and graphic image.

 The following drawings are from photographs of some interesting animal skeletons that I took recently at the National History Museum. As explained above after doing some research into the surrelists I wanted to find some imagery that was juxtaposing in relation to form, colour and meaning to the flowers above.

I began drawing these skulls in a similar manner to the flowers but then developed them by beginning to explore different lines and textures in order to see which I felt represented the texture of the skulls best and worked well alongside the line drawings of the flowers I had created.
I then created some sketches and illustrations placing the images together. I wanted to place them together in a way that represented a process or cycle. After looking at images of Tarot cards I began to notice a repetition of circular imagery, as the circle ‘commonly represents unity, wholeness, and infinity’ and so it emphasises the idea of having a narrative behind my images. I also began to develop some of my own tarot card images, which I can also explore in another post.

BAM. you’re a Graduate.

Hi all! Shock Horror, I'm back on the blog.
I had a notably long 'break' from blogging, while which I was busy stressing and ripping my hair out during my last year of uni, trying to remain sane while creating a final collection which I could hopefully graduate with and be proud of.
Well now I can say that I successfully completed my degree, remained sane, and while I have the most awful habit of in hindsight never being completely satisfied with anything I have done, I made a collection that I was very much proud of. I also want to point out that as much as my need to nit pick work I have done, I very much like to view this a good thing. It simply means that I have this kind of personal expectation that each 'next thing' I do, which I might not be completely aware of at the time, will be a progression and improvement on my last creation and ultimately on my creative self so to say.

If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, there's links in the side bar if you don't and would like to (I'd very much like it if you did too) you would know that I started blogging with three of my uni colleague's on our university's Fashion and Textiles Blog 'Cass Fashion'. We were selected by the course leader and were given pretty much a free reign to create content on pretty much anything we wanted, obviously bearing in mind the purpose and function of the blog we didn't decide to write articles on horse riding and astronauts.

Anyway, I have decided to post the content that I created on the Cass Fashion blog here to as a way to get myself back into the flow of blogging! We will only be blogging there for a short period of time anyway so I would like to continue blogging here thereafter as I create my new works and collections! Enjoy!

Original post: http://www.cassfashion.co.uk/bam-youre-a-graduate/ 

Writing this post for the new Cass Fashion blog just one day after graduation and whilst also just beginning to come to terms with the fact that my time as a student at London Metropolitan University is officially over is a slightly strange mix of feelings, somewhere between incredible excitement, achievement and slight disbelief. The past three years of my life spent at London Met have been undeniably rewarding. Studying has provided me with some of the most incredible moments, and unquestionably some of the most difficult. It has been three years of some incredibly hard work and a few sleepless nights, and for sure with this in mind graduation is a huge relief.

 Although, finishing the arguably easy life of a student and being thrown head first into the real world is definitely something of a massive shock. Suddenly you have to refer to yourself as ‘the young professional’ and the immediate pressure to put yourself out there in the real world can be extremely difficult.
From my experience the most difficult aspect upon graduating as a creative is being able to believe in your own work and creative abilities; finally being able to accept the fact that your work is as good as your competitors and co-workers. This is the time to come to terms with the fact that you before anyone else has to believe in yourself as much as you possibly can, there’s no room in the real world for doubting yourself and your capabilities. I have a gut wrenchingly annoying tendency to never be completely happy with pretty much everything I do, but during my studies I have learnt to translate this as a good way for me to push myself and carry on trying to make my work better and better, even if it does at times cause me a lot of stress and pressure. But overall I think as a graduate the most important thing you have to learn is to be confident!
One of the biggest achievements so far is definitely my first exhibition outside of a school show. Exhibiting recently alongside other Cass Students at New Designers was incredible, while networking with other students and people from industry was quite daunting, hearing people talking about, complement and tell you their opinion about your work is really exciting and has definitely helped me to be more confident in showing my work to other people.

Since graduating I have also met a collection of three other recent design graduates and after discussing the daunting feeling of going it alone we have decided to create our own collective called The Feral Line. I am incredibly excited to start working with a collection of such amazing designers. And so alongside looking for a studio (it definitely wasn’t until graduation that I really started to appreciate the awesome printing facilities at the Cass!) and getting ready for exhibiting with the Cass at the London Design Festival in September, we can spread the pressure of both finding exhibitions and the financial pressure that goes in hand. It’s also really great to be able to have some other creative’s to keep you going, we can all work off each other, help each other to keep going in the right direction and keeping this ball rolling!

Project | Pattern cutting for the novice, I mean textiler.

 

Hi all! So this whole weekend I have pretty much dedicated to actually doing some hand in worthy Textiles work! *Insert Applause Here*

I also found out this morning that we have a formative assessment tomorrow, so I am quite happy that I have been a good student and put a load of time in!

If you have liked my page on Facebook then you hopefully would have seen my post saying that I received my pattern cutting book (which I ordered from here).
When I bought it I was pretty skeptical, as I thought that because I have never done any form of pattern cutting before I would be way to out of my depth.

But trying to be optimistic I bought it anyway.
Remembering the advice someone who was doing a pattern cutting course gave me when I expressed my interest in pattern cutting, that 'you can only learn it, by doing it' that a lesson won't teach you anything unless your willing to put time in yourself and that I should by a book and have a go! 

And so after the massive fail of my last attempt at making a body piece for my project, I have nothing to loose. (You can read a bit more about that here)

So far I have managed to make a basic bodice and sleeve block, and edit them to how I want my garment to look, after using a LOT of pattern paper and then moving onto newspaper and five pretty successful toiles.
I also obviously needed some material to create my toiles with and went to the fabric shop to find out just how expensive (in budget student terms) calico actually is and then buy 10 meters of some brownish, not so stretchy polyester, cotton mix (who actually knows?) ugly stuff fabric for £1 per meter. Yay!

The book I bought by Dennic Chunman Lo, has been really useful (it must be good if I have actually managed to create something that actually works) and the step-by-step instructions are super easy to follow and the images and illustrations along the way are so clear and useful!

David Koma | Spring Summer 2013

Have a look at David Koma's Spring/Summer 2013 collection. 

It is a collection of some of the most beautiful fabrics, colours, shapes and textures.

When I flicked through my February edition of Harpers Bazaar, which I recently received in the post and saw one of David's pieces shown on the  page from the S/S Catwalk report entitled 'Collage' (where they state, "there is nothing random about the engineering: in color-blocking or prints colliding, this is design mastery at its best"), I wondered why I hadn't seen it already. 

Although admittedly, I haven't partaken in very much catwalk watching for the new season, so my unknowns of the collection doesn't come as much of a surprise.

Here's what Jo-Ann Furniss from Style.com had to say,

"The tennis dress, the tennis ball, the tennis net, the tennis court, the tennis racket, the tennis shoe… Who would have thought that one ball game could have so much mileage in one collection? And yet, surprisingly, it did in David Koma's latest offering. Citing the influence of professional female players of the past such as Suzanne Lenglen, Gussie Moran, and Lea Pericoli, the designer set out to reinterpret the conventional tennis dress. He did so in the spirit of Teddy Tinling, the quintessential tennis dress designer, who clothed all the great ladies of Centre Court in daring designs before the sportswear companies made the game's outfits just that little bit more tedious.

Koma seems to have taken it upon himself to solve the plight of the tennis dress and make it interesting, contemporary, and sexy again without making kitsch reference to that ass-scratching seventies poster. What Koma produced was a decidedly body-con version of the dress—something that was more nightclub than country club—executed with a precision and a pop appreciation for his subject matter that was second to none. This was a full-blown tennis fetish sprung to life and explored in a myriad of detail—see the first sentence—with sex added to the sporting quality. The clothes were neat, geometric, graphic, sculptural, and totally contemporary; delineated in patent leather, engineered in thick jersey and silk, with some of the best use of the sheer/solid trend this season. Witness the precision layering of one outfit featuring a cropped green and black silk tennis-net sweatshirt over a see-through counterpart and a tight flesh-pink and green tennis-net skirt. Game, set, and match, as they say. And just think, if Serena or Venus wears any of these designs, it will bring new meaning to the phrase "Girlfriend in a Koma." "

 

 

 

Isa Genzken | Hauser & Wirth | Peace & Plastic Figures

 Hi all! If you have liked me on Facebook you will be aware of mine and Eerika's (http://eerikasblog.blogspot.co.uk/) adventure today, we had to meet this morning at 10:15 for a talk at the WGSN Headquarters near Piccadilly Circus. The talk was incredibly interesting and we were shown through the working of the WGSN website and how we as students cant make the most out of the information that is available to us. To be honest, due simply to its availability to us, (thanks to our amaze-balls uni) I had underestimated the importance of WGSN and to be honest didn't expect some of the brands that were mentioned would want anything to do with something that could alter their creative direction. 

But hey, that's why I am here. Learning!

So, returning to the main purpose of this post. We had a walk and took visits to several galleries (the rest will be covered in different posts, today or not depends on how hormonal my computer is feeling.) including Hauser & Wirth; which is always home to some incredibly interesting exhibitions, and is located on the super fantastic Savile Row. The exhibition was showcasing the works of Isa Genzken, I had no idea what was being exhibited and was very happy to find something (from an artist I admittedly had never heard of before) that was incredibly relevant to the idea's that I am trying to develop within my current project. I understand that I keep mentioning this 'project' and the only inkling I have given you about it is a post about triangles,,, ( http://aestheticsousveillance.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/triangles-are-my-favourite-shape.html  ) back in october... But I will have another post soon.

My head has been slightly overwhelmed and confused by it all, and that would have made for nothing more than a blog post that would have had me sent straight to a mental asylum.

Anyway,,,,,, here's some stuff about the exhibition from the Hauser & Worth Gallery Webpage. 

Yes, I like to leave the hard bits to somebody else. I'm a textile artist not an art critic. 

If you have the chance I would definately go and check this one out,,, I have released that I think I have said that in every single exhibition post I have done so far. I am sure after a while a bad one will come. And I can have a good rant and tell you all to stay away! :-) But for this one, don't.

"Isa Genzken

15 November 2012 – 12 January 2013,

‘I have always said that with any sculpture you have to be able to say, although this is not a ready-made, it could be one. That’s what a sculpture has to look like. It must have a certain relation to reality’
– Isa Genzken in conversation with Wolfgang Tillmans 

Inspired by the stark severity of modernist architecture and the chaotic energy of the city, just as much as by art history, the aesthetics of the great American artists of the Sixties and pop culture, Isa Genzken’s work is continuously looking around itself, translating into three-dimensional form the way that art, architecture, design and media affects the experience of urban life. From 15 November, Genzken will present an exhibition of new and recent works at Hauser & Wirth’s Savile Row gallery. Genzken’s totemic columns, pedestal works and collages combine disparate aspects from her many sources in seemingly nonsensical, yet harmonious sculptural compilations.

The bust of Nefertiti, an ancient icon of feminine beauty, is one of the most well-known and historically significant sculptures. In Genzken’s new series of sculptures, she appropriates plaster reproductions of this bust, which the artist first saw at the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, gives them sunglasses and places them upon tall, white pedestals. She pairs Nefertiti with a reproduction of the Renaissance icon of feminine beauty, the Mona Lisa, whose famous portrait leans against the foot of each pedestal. Genzken then overlays her own self-portrait on to the reproduction of Mona Lisa, playfully inserting herself and her own practice into this multimedia exploration of the lineage of feminine beauty and the place of women in art history.

Genzken’s sculptures are precariously stacked assemblages of potted plants, designer furniture, empty shipping crates and photographs, among other things, arranged with the traditions of modernist sculpture in mind – traditions which are then manipulated by the artist. With this cacophonous array of objects, Genzken undermines the classical notions of sculpture and, in the North Gallery of Savile Row, re-creates the architectural dimensions of the artist’s beloved skyscrapers and the riotous colours of the city streets. Devoid of the weightiness and overpowering scale seen in the sculptures of her Minimalist predecessors, these works abandon notions of order and power, allowing the viewer to relate to the works’ inherently human qualities of fragility and vulnerability.

Both sculpture and photography combine and overlap in Genzken’s collages, whose dense surfaces are formed from the materials of the artist’s world: magazines, flyers, snapshots of friends, self-portraits and reproduced artworks. Genzken makes use of all surfaces of the gallery, including an on-going series of collages that span the floor of the space, like a pavement down a busy city street."

Text taken from  http://www.hauserwirth.com/exhibitions/1432/isa-genzken/view/

and to finish,,, if you want to show some support and appreciation for my blog head over to www.facebook.com/aestheticsousveillance , hit like and share! 

And if there's any thing you need to get off your chest mail me. 

Peace and Plastic Figures.

Dennis Pomales | Humanish.

 

Heres a post type I have been slacking, as my blog has become increasingly self indulgent. 

I was searching for some illustrations that showed the human body (or at least 'humanish') in angular shapes, preferably triangles, for the project I'm working on, which I have shared with you on a previous post (and another new post soon to come!). And came across some awesome colourfull illustrations by Dennis Pomales, I decided to have a look on his website and came across this wicked sketches. 

They are incredibly quirky, and should be printed on t-shirts asap.

If you want to see more head over to his website -> http://www.minotaurelab.com 

 and,,,,,,,,,,, he also has his own blog.  http://minotaurelaboratories.blogspot.co.uk/