Ice Bar

 This is my first experience of an Ice Bar/Hotel in Switzerland which you could also stay the night, with your beds covered in animal skin! At first glance it just looks like an igloo, and I didn't realise it was open until a woman came out and invited us in. This has definitely persuaded me to check out the big ice hotel in Sweden, as this place utterly blew me away. It's design was flawless. Absolutely incredible what you can do with snow & ice; I mean as if I could love snow even more! :)
Here's the website for the Swedish Ice hotel... WOW...http://www.icehotel.com/

Blank Media Collective

I created a Blank Media Collective portfolio a few months back because my sister's boyfriend Neil said I should create a portfolio as he's friends with a guy called Dan English who is the Communications Co-ordinator of Blank Media Collective and also a DJ at Joshua Brooks' nights such as Micron. Dan is now a friend of mine and introduced me to the guy who runs the whole thing (who, if I remember is called Mark?) at an exhibition at the Green Room about 3 months ago which was advertising the whole 'Blank Weekend', that BMC were organising round Manchester. He said that they were opening a space for artists to exhibit their work-any artists, and Mark said that he saw my portfolio online and said that the work I uploaded was good which is awesome to hear from someone I've just met, let alone a guy who is quite high up artiscally. I need to contact him again and see if I can get my own exhibition as he said I could get my own space... many images running through my mind of free drinks, talking to artists and most of all showing off my work! I just need to get going with it really as I have been slacking with it all.
Anyway, I have uploaded new photos on the website so check it out here >>> http://www.blankmediacollective.org/portfolios/alexcussons/

Mid Year Review Show

Carrying on from the 'Shelter' project I decided to kinda carry it on with the whole distortion of identity idea. So I got a few cut outs of faces and bodies from magazines and swapped them to make them look weird & mis-matched. I did the same with facial features of different sizes and shapes which reminded me of an artist who did a similar thing who I have looked at before called Sara... something.. I know it's terrible but I can't remember her name for the life of me! Well I decided to carry this on but with photos instead.. the first one didn't work so well, but it was all photo-shop experiments.. I actually ended up using Photoshop to how I wanted to.. It was all testing and trying different tools to see which ones worked. I placed my friends' features onto one face so they all collided.. I thought this was a lot of fun, and a lot of them got awfully creeped out by these images, which is the reaction I wanted. I also swapped mine and my sister's features which was very strange to look at as I know, when we were younger we used to get told we looked very alike, so I thought I'd twist it around and see what would happen if we did in fact swap features.. end result.. very strange. I ended up testing the warp tool and the like... was hard to get the desired effects at first, but I kept trying with it and got there in the end. The most fun I had was making myself and my boyfriend into a dog and a cat... and then myself into an owl. I chose those particular animals as it just seemed suited to our personalities.. and for an owl.. I've always thought that if I could be any bird, it would be an owl, as I can see similarities. In the end I decided to go for these 6 images out of all the different images I experimented with as they seemed to go with each other in the exhibition, and seemed to create a pattern in the way I planned them out on the wall. These images are below in no particular order.

After our review I had my presentation with my tutors.. They were actually helpful in where I could take it next. Although they said I need a more sustained practice and the project needs a stronger concept.. I do agree with this, I just need to stay motivated as I really enjoyed this project and I want to take it further so I'm thinking of taking the animal/human theme and creating a stronger idea and hopefully going in to research Greek mythology and human & animal like creatures.. My mother is really interested in the whole Greek mythology stories, and we had a big discussion about it over the Christmas period. I could tell how passionate she was about all the creatures and stories! She lent me a really old book she had from her childhood which was battered to pieces but had such wonderful stories in. I couldn't stop reading it! I would love to take it with me to uni but I can't as my mum is quite fond of it and doesn't want it ruined which is fair enough. 

I was also thinking of looking into animal habits and how they relate to humans, or just swapping them round like animals doing human activities and humans doing animal activities; I think it could be potentially quite funny too. Because I'm away ski-ing in Switzerland at this present time I would love to put animals on skis as I brought a fancy dress costume with me to ski in (giraffe outfit) so it got me thinking of how weird it would look to humanitse animals on skis. . . That's just a thought for now. However I definately want to carry these ideas through as they are too awesome to miss, so watch this space...

Unspooling

Before Christmas our course did one last thing together, and that was visit the Cornerhouse gallery together to have a look at their most recent exhibitions. 

Unspooling- Artists & Cinema was the exhibition held at the Cornerhouse. This exhibition presents the way particular artists use film and moving images to create something artistically productive. I thought it was a genuinely interesting exhibition as I love to see how artists portray film in different ways. 

One of my favourites was of Michael Borremans's black box which contained a room full of minature sized people watching a film in an exhibition. I just loved the way you could look in and be a spectator yourself but outside of this quiet little world, so you couldn't intervene. 

Another one I particularly loved which I couldn't stop watching was of Stefan Zeyen's video called 'Farewell.' It was of this woman looking at the camera in a convertible car from the back while it drives off. However, it never actually drives away, the woman stays the same distance from the camera except within the short time of this film, her image corrodes until the viewer cannot see her anymore. There is something about this that caught my eye- I think it's the mystery that it holds.. why the woman is staring at the camera and why her image fades- something about it that is beautiful to me. 

One piece of art that I nearly missed in the gallery was Sheena Macrae's Odyssey which was hidden around the corner on the top floor. This was a remix projection of 2001: A Space Odessey reconfigured into scans in between mirrors facing each other so that it was a never ending image of eternity. I liked how this could be played around with my shadows and seeing how many images of myself would extend into the never-ending mirrors. Beautiful. 

There were many still pieces too like photographic images or paintings which looked like photographs or collages etc.There was one I couldn't stop looking at which was Elizabeth McApine's Hyena Stomp. This was a square spiral of film frames of actors who all had their eyes closed- each line being a different colour- which was really fun to look at-trying to recognise the actor or film they have been in. This was a re-rendering of a Frank Stella painting which I had never in fact heard of- so I had a look at his work and discovered that his use of colour and shapes in his works is really unique. So I will definately have a look at him again. 

I really enjoyed this exhibition, there were so many pieces of art to look at, and intently as well. Most exhibitions  I don't look at in too much detail, but every single piece I didn't just try to look at it, but I tried to see. The interesting factor of the way film was used really drew me in. From simple installations such as a pile of televisions with different films going on in each to projections of the skeleton onto the human body- these type of artworks really sucked me in & gave me a hallucinatory effect, like I was stuck in these artworks. This is what I want from an exhibition- to take everything on board, and try and explain to myself of what they signify. This is what I want when people look at my artworks. I think my work has a lot of mystery contained, but a lot of second guessing as well. I want people to approach my artworks the way I approached this exhibition. I see my work as being quite similar to that of Sally Golding's work- in the way that she projects images onto the body so that the person is not recognisable to us. This is what I wanted to acheive from the 'Shelter' project. I wanted to show how we shelter ourselves from society with the use of covering ourselves up- so I showed this through masks. I believe we all feel the need to cover ourselves up from life and so I provided a distortion through beauty and ugliness. 

All in all I thought this exhibition to be be very influential to me, and I think I have a few ideas of where I want to go to next. My only problem now is which one to try out first?!

Michael Borreman's Black Box

Sheena Macrae's Odyssey

Elizabeth McAlpine's Hyena Stomp

Grotto

So after Jermyn gave us the task of researching different ways of screen printing onto various different materials, he introduced us to a new project he and his team were working on which was this shop called 'Grotto' they were going to open for a month in the Northern Quarter in Manchester until December 24th. They managed to get the shop for free from someone they knew so didn't have to pay any rent for the shop, (apart from the use of electricity etc). The aim was to sell artists' work by not ripping them off like most shops would do as they require a certain amount of money to keep their profits up and keep their shop running. Grotto would provide artists with the money they deserve for what they've made.-80% of the final price. So in fact the guys running the shop would get £0 unless they sold something themselves. They based the shop around the idea of Christmas being a little kooky and offbeat with not a typical view of Christmas by artists creating wrapping paper or Christmas cards. And for the final price of this they would give the artist 20%. Jermyn said that we could contribute as little or as much as we wanted to the shop, which was a great way to showcase our work to the public. It was great to visit it and see it running in action, it was like a working dream for them. I really like the idea of not ripping the artists like most shops do, so was fully up for supporting the idea. I produced my own design of Christmas cards for the shop- 2 in fact! I had designed a Christmas card of my mum dressed as Santa Claus and my dog acting like Rudolph 2 years ago while I was doing my art foundation for a project I was doing at the time based on dreams. The other card was based on a Christmas robot that cooked your Christmas dinner in his oven belly, and served it to you. I've added these designs below.

One69A

SO me and a few people on my course were given this opportunity with this company One69A in Salford at Islington Mill. Jermyn who actually came in one tuesday at uni to talk about the stuff he did was really interesting, and kinda got me game to go and help out a little bit every week. They are a screen printing based company.. I've never done screen printing or actually known what the process involves, but I really wanted to have a go. We got a group of us together who met up with Jermyn one Thursday to discuss projects we could do for him. As for a start there were various different products he wanted us to research which were- caps, stickers, labelling, packaging etc. Me and Emma chose to research into caps and what different caps we could screen print onto, how expensive each cap would be, what materials could be used, and the processes into it. We had a look at other screen printing companies to see what prices or what else they offered. I thought it was quite handy getting first hand research done for a company, and seeing the science behind each process. After the initial presention of our work, we then went in a few times to the mill and helped out a bit by cleaning the screens with this special chemical which smelt quite nice but also irritated my legs which left rashes and a burn (which we were warned about, but I didn't really think about it) the chemical was really hard to get off your hands as it was kinda like a waxy substance (even though I was wearing gloves.) Anyway what the chemical did was take all that nasty stuff off the screen which doesn't come off with a normal power spray. You leave it on for about 10 minutes then power spray it all down. They always had people popping in and out all the time and I got talking to a few of the guys who worked there. Everyone is really friendly and helpful which makes the working environment totally relaxed, especially in aid with the odd beer every now and again. I eventually went on to do my own screen print which was of Captain Spaulding from House of a Thousand Corpses. It was Sam's idea to print it onto T-shirts but it's better to use the ink as much as possible as not to waste it, so I had a go and did my own T-shirt which I then gave to my boyfriend for Christmas. I had designed an illustration of a robot destroying a city which I was going to give him, but I eventually ran out of time.

Me doing my first ever screen print.

Shelter

When we were intially gave this project back in October, I was quite unsure about the whole concept. BUT I drew a mind map and then i got a few ideas that way- definately a way to approach a new project in the future. I thought about maybe basing it on homeless people, feral children or escapism- for example like the abuse of drugs & alchohol. However i came up with the theme of 'fear' and how that links into shelter just like opposites do; like for example how for some people a place may be where they take shelter, but for others it may be somewhere that they fear or connects with them to fear in some way. I thought about maybe doing a documentary of people walking outside, and inside unawares to show the difference in emotion between open spaces and closed off spaces, and the contrast between fear and safety, which definately varies from person to person.

However, after much thought, i decided to go for this idea of sheltering yourself from society, and how beauty is such a forced image down our throats and how we are supposed to look a certain way to be accepted. I looked into how we cover ourselves up; from the extremities of covering yourself head to toe in tattoos to making yourself unidentifiable from your past self, say from plastic surgery or sex changes. I eventually went with this idea of masks which led on from this idea of hiding ourselves from our true selves. I liked how masks vary from making a person look beautiful, if maybe haunting- for example venetian masks and then to ugly masks such as the ones we use on halloween. I went on to create my own versions of these contrasts. One beautfiul mask and one ugly mask. I did this by decorating typically pretty accesories on one mask and fake blood and tissue on the other. My results are the photos above. It was a lot easier to make the ugly mask scary by the light and the setting, rather than the beautiful mask was just worn on my face, and i couldn't really think of a way to edit it so it looked even more stunning. However I did layer the image up and made it look more refined, whereas the scary mask is blurred and dark. I'm quite pleased with the results afterall as it gave people the affect I was looking for.
I then went onto swapping the two by taking a photo of a model (who most would deem beautiful) and putting burn marks and blood over her using photoshop, and using a photo of a burns victim and putting the beautiful mask over her disfigured face. I wanted to see how they both worked for each other, and even though my photoshop skills on the photos aren't that great, you basically get the jist of what I was trying to do. I then did the same thing with my face, but instead got 2 of the same photos of myself and made each mask look a part of my face. I think the horror mask worked the best on my face as the colours blended better to my skin, whereas the pretty mask looked a bit overexposed.
I then created four photos of me wearing the masks but in different outfits. For example two were done of me wearing 2 different dresses wearing the 2 different masks, and then I wore 2 different scruffy hoodies and 2 of the masks again. I wanted to see how stupid and what looked good with each. My 2 favourites are of me wearing the pretty mask with the dress and the ugly mask in the hoody as it stands out as quite a powerful image as they both look quite suited to each outfit. The photos are pictured below.

Liverpool Biennial

 
When the interactive arts crew and i headed to Liverpool for the Biennial, FACT was the first exhibtion we visited as a group, where i came across a room full of photographs of this japanese man- of which had been taken every second for- if i remember- for every second over a year. it was quite fascinating to look at- there was also an accompanied video.




We then hit the exhibition at 54 Renshaw street, which personally was a little confusing to me at first. When I first went into the basement, I came across these 3 videos by Ryan Trecartin called 'Trill-ogy Comp: P.opular S.ky 2009.' I have come across Ryan Trecartin before as my tutor for my art foundation course told me to check him out. I however didn't like him mush when I checked his videos on youtube. His filming style is brilliant, but what was creepy was the way these tranvestite men were talking to each other being really over the top americans. It was a little bit too much for me, so I decided to head upstairs. My favorite exhibition i came across nearly got avoided by me as I didn't realise there was an upstairs to visit too. But this photo to the right is NS Harsha's 'Sky Gazers.' The reason this was my favourite was because it really let you interact with it and was a lot of fun to play with. It involved this huge room with a mirror for its ceiling and for the floor it was a load of illustrations for different types of people looking directly up so when you look at the mirrored ceiling you get the impression they are looking at you. I really liked how this messsed with reality. The photo I took of myself taking a photograph of the ceiling was my favourite as there is a ninja character right behind me, and it looks like he's about to creep onto me and assassinate me. as pictured above.

However, the next exhibition at City States art gallery was just as enjoyable, mainly because it involved lots of video/animations. The artists were mainly of asian orgin, so it was cool to see videos and animations from the other side of the world. The one I enjoyed the most was of this simple animation of an outline of a man doing horrible things to himself like exploding himself up or cutting his penis off etc. I thought the simplicity in the animation found it enjoyable to watch as the cartoon was simply very effective. I liked how outside the gallery there was a mini skate park where there were a few skaters practising. I tried to get the perfect shot of them in the air, but proved it was quite difficult! Was quite fun to watch them skate nevertheless.

Finally we had the Bloomberg Contempories exhibition which I personally didn't pay as much attention to in the end as I was extremely tired and just wanted to visit the beach, which I should point out was very windy and cold! It was fun to visit the Anthony Gormley sculptures nevertheless. I liked how rusted and weathered they were; all convered in seaweed. It showed that it had lived a life. I like how the further out to sea they are, the more worn and torn they look. In this particular picture, it was actually quite hard to get across to as there was a load of water in the sand of which I thought would be easy to walk across with my big doc boots on, but it was just sinking central! It was quite fun to try and wade across though!

Then on the walk back from the beach to the coach for the journey home, I got Rhys to take photos of me jumping simultaeously in the air and I then edited it in an action series in one photo as shown above. :) All in all it was an adventure this trip. Seeing new sights and experiencing some new art pieces; even if I didn't like all of them. But that's what art is about right? Having many opinions!

Super K Sonic Booooum!

 As it was the Science festival for the past two weeks, I helped out with an exhibition that ran in a dis-used lab in the John Dalton building opposite the BBC on Oxford Road. The installation consists of a 22 meter long ‘river’ of water running through a tunnel lined with thousands of gold balloons (photomultiplier tubes). Members of the public embark on a boat, pulled through the tunnel on a submerged track using a pulley system, with sound and lighting effects, and with an expert particle physicist navigator as a guide. On the journey they learn of neutrinos, their role in the Universe and how scientists detect them. This installation is designed to deliver physically thrilling experiences; emerging the audience on a journey through the physics of the Universe.

The idea was delivered by Nelly Ben Hayoun who was a lovely French woman who always checked to see how her volunteers were doing even though she was crazily busy herself. For the setting up of the exhibition I helped with painting a door, and some stairs black, as well as flyering and putting up posters to advertise the exhibition. When everything had been set up by her amazing team, and everything was completed it was on to facing the public. All the volunteers went on to help with different jobs, so we all got swapped round so we could experience every little bit. I helped with talking to a couple of members of the public to explain what it was all about upstairs in the video room, which had a confusing explanation all to do with science and stuff. I then went onto the pulling of the boat on either sides, and acting alongside Nelly to get the members of the public on the boat to go onto their ride of a lifetime. We all donned very attractive Tyvek suits & hard hats, but the people going on the boat also had to wear wellies. After the last day i volunteered, I was feeling exhausted, not because I had been working for about 6 hours, but because I had been working in such a dark place for so long, my body just wanted to go to sleep!

Many of the hundreds of balloons from the inside of the installtion.

...And from the outside.

Me in my white suit in a large neutrino model illuminated by ultra violet light.

Nelly in front of her installion.

Overall I thought it was quite a memorable experience, and seeing people's faces who have never experienced such a hands on exhibtion before was also quite interesting to watch, as i guess they didn't know how to act when Nelly was shining torches into their eyes! I would definately like to work on something as interesting as this again!