David Shrigley at The Hayward Gallery London.

Before I even got to the exhibition, I was extremely excited in my geeky little self in the idea of seeing a David Shrigley exhibition. I had seen his work before and loved the awkward cartoons he projects. I suppose one could say you either love or hate him, but being interested in anything a little bizarre; his work is my kind of cup of tea. 

His works were titled under the themes of, 'Death,' 'Misery,' 'Characters,' and 'Misshapen things,' and not in that particular order. In fact they weren't even shown around the gallery space as those groups either. Each piece of work was unique which ended up getting you to beg for more when you had finished walking through the artist's mind of wonderment. I found that I laughed through the exhibition, and to hear other people's laughs was quite refreshing in a gallery space because normally people are so serious in these type of spaces, which in some ways puts me off! What I liked most is his unusual perception of the world through dark humour shown through illustrations, animations, taxidermy models, sculptures, and photographs. My favourites were the animations and cartoons he drew. I think if you can remind people how things are pretty crappy in the world but show it in a way that it makes people laugh, then you've got it spot on. We are learning to accept the bad, but not necessarily support it. The taxidermy models were really interesting to look at, as they were very sinister but had this great sense of mystery around them. Everything has a story in my opinion and we wonder why they became a stuffed animal. 

I think his work connects into mine quite a bit with the way he uses his odd views of the world and creates art out of it. He, just like me, aims for the same audience reaction, " The response I would like are laughter, intrigued confusion and disquiet." When Creative Transit started up last year I described my work to provoke reaction in the same way. We also similarly use a lot of illustrations in our work as well as animation. This is the first time I have seen a great likeness of my work to another artist's work without having done any prior research. Great minds think alike? Always questioning and never accepting.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Before I went to London, I initially planned to go there because I was going to this travel photography seminar on the Saturday morning. Absolutely gutted isn't the word when I found out they cancelled last minute!! Anyway, good can always come from bad and so I planned a last minute list of places I wanted to visit. In usual fashion I didn't exactly stick to the plan! I managed to fit in a lot on that day but one exhibition that stood out was this outside display of photographs on stands outside the National History Museum. I'm glad I stumbled across this as missing out the seminar made it worthwhile for a little bit. There were many many wonderful photographs taken from all over the world to showcase the best in wildlife photography. They ranged from arty photos to detailed photos to once in a lifetime shots. I was really impressed with the diverse array, but however in moments like this I always think to myself, "I could do that." Who knows though. Maybe one day I will...

Tea Room

Here are some of the photos from the pop up tea room circa January-February 2012  that we as an Interactive course put together in a 1930s theme to serve tea, cake and sandwiches to the public. We did this in order to raise money for our degree show. People from many of the other art courses donated some of their work for the 'Salon Hang exhibition' which would take place in the tea room area. I donated 3 cakes that I made by scratch and did a fair bit of pot washing and carrying stuff back and forth. People from our course dressed up in 1930s style outfits doing table service while the little canaries in the centre of the room cheeped away. We aimed to make £2,000, but instead ended up making a whopping £6,000. Incredible. 

Lights & Music animation

I made an animation with the long exposure lights I did in the woods in Knutsford. I wanted to see what they would look like flowing all together in a short film; 12 seconds in fact. I only did a bit of editing; the main issue was deciding which order to put the photographs and how fast. Here is the result:

Antwerp Mansion exhibition

Well this was an interesting one. Creative Transit exhibited in Antwerp just off Curry Mile, which at first looked like an abandoned house. There was a lot of work involved on the day of the exhibition, as the night before they had a Zuketh night, and so there were tons of cans everywhere and sick in corners. I arrived at 10am hungover too, but still helped with the lifting of heavy objects, alongside the manager who was also hungover and subsequently knew my friend from work! I had been a designated driver in the previous days carrying stuff down to the mansion. The box that contained my animation was so awkward to carry. We had to strap it down in Lozzy's car with a bit of string I borrowed from Eliza, as it was too big! There was a big worry it would fall out. In the end it ended up being alright, even though it was really awkward to move across the mansion as bits kept falling off, so a lot of making do and hammering went on. In the end everything got sorted out in time. My piece was the caterpillar animation, and I put it in the box 'Beware Wild Animals' that we were lugging around. The theme was 'Growth,' and as you can guess, my piece was to do with the growth of a caterpillar into a butterfly, and also hopefully the growth of child's minds when they learn. (That was who my piece was aimed at.)
 It was such a great night. We had bands on downstairs which brought a different crowd to the mansion, it was a lot of organising but I think everyone had to agree the music & art combination worked well. We all had shifts on the night as well, so I was on the door ripping tickets for a bit, and it was pretty bloody cold being in mid Feb! We had a stall as well which we used to sell some of our handmade work.

Two of my friends from work also came to review the event, as she is part of a group of people who review everything in Manchester- from computer games to good nights out in Manchester. You can check out the review here:  http://pronomo.co.uk/2012/02/28/manchester-art-exhibition-review-evolve/

Anyway enough of the talking, I will let the images do the talking now:

This is what the room looked like in the set up process.

My art piece

The finishing touch!

The stall

An example of some of the work

An example of some of the work.

The exhibition in flow...

A Caterpillar Tale

I decided to animate a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, finding its way in life and evolving as it goes. It was quite a simple idea but quite effective I think, as it teaches metamorphosis to kids; a complex matter; into something quite simple and beautiful. I decided to go down the story telling route as I thought it would go quite well hand in hand. I animated it in the animation suites in our university which took a couple of weeks. The movement isn't as smooth as professional animations, but I think it has quite a charming quality to it and goes quite well. I decided on a narration to go with the animation. The timing was quite difficult as it had to be read at a steady pace and at the right moments.

Here is the video:

Swans

I went to Amsterdam recently for the weekend and came across one of the most beautiful things in nature I came across that appeared out of nowhere. The canals had frozen over and swans had settled there in their not so normal, natural environment. It was strange seeing them on ice rather than in the water. I think another reason I found it so fascinating was because I had never seen them in a different country in the middle of a city. As I was growing up I always used to see swans in their natural habitat in Tatton Park in my home town of Knutsford. I've always loved how gracious they can be. I took photos of them on my digital SLR camera, and edited the layering effect on Photoshop instead of composing random film shots like I have done with my Diana camera of the multiple exposure shots. I wanted to see what the effects would be like if I actually did a bit of planning. And so here these experiments are, for you and for me to look at. 

Long exposure lights

I went into the woods near me and experimented with long exposure lights. I wanted to continue this idea of 'the shadow' and how the opposite of it; lights always gives a person hope no matter what. In some ways it's like a light that guides you home, kinda like a fairy godmother. I wanted to continue the fairytale theme, but with a lot of mystery. The photos I created keeps you second guessing to what the light is, who or what it may be, and where it's going....