Central Station » Degree Show 2010

UCA Degree Show 2010

genny — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 17:17:25 +0000

University for the Creative Arts at Free Range 2010

This show was a little confusing. The work was scattered and the degrees mixed up. I found it hard to figure out the precise difference between Graphic Design: Visual Communication and Graphic Media. From what I saw the work of the former was stronger. This was another big exhibition and the layout made it hard to navigate leaving me pretty exhausted by the time I got to the really good stuff (a table of handmade books).

What this show excelled in was promoting individual student work. There were large banners with examples of work along with the student’s name and degree. Most students supplied a CV and/or a postcard with an image of his/her work and a nice little explanation of his/her work and profile along with contact details.

(above – Sarah Winter and Sam Hogg)

There was a lot of excellent work, but two clear favourites for me (again, the names are links if available):

Mudi Chris Eghweree makes beautiful books. His work has personality and spirit as well as style and substance. You can see his personal involvement with the subject and that makes it all the more wonderful.

Oliver Storrs was another excellent student in the show. His Found magazine followed a really similar brief to something I did in my final year only it’s much, much more beautifully executed. As a teacher, I’m a little reticent to plug his work after noticing the many spelling/grammatical errors in his postcard, but I’ll forgive him as his work is fabulous.

My Abertay Digital Showcase 2010

genny — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 10:15:18 +0000

Well, well, well, that’s it finally over, 2 years at University!! It all ended with my end of year show which I am about to go into in great detail, so pull up a chair and make yourself comfy cos believe me you’ll be here for a while (only kiddin’!).

For my final year project I wanted to explore the use of character design in conjunction with new technology and see whether it could help in the fight against bullying.

The development of my character Michty Mo – Playground Protector was updated on a regular basis (hah!) on it’s own blog post www.michtymo.blogspot.com where you can find out more about the character & project.

Through research for my dissertation I found that children were reluctant to tell an adult/parent/teacher if they were victims of this dreadful activity. So by researching the use of spokes – character design in advertising past & present I wanted to find out if I could use some of these techniques in creating a sympathetic character that children could relate to & trust enough to open up talk about any bullying issues.

It was my intention to create a youth club environment online and using Facebook & Twitter to create a type of social networking group as a possible means of interactivity using the character as a host . The idea of members having to enrol, where they could have access to online material, monthly newsletter updates, downloadable freebies, games etc, hopefully creating an online community where members could relate their own advice from their own experiences. The idea of an identity e.g. badges and stickers could be introduced & distributed to members as a means of recognition to other members to create a sense of belonging which would ultimately encourage self-confidence and the feeling that they are not alone and it is not just them that this vile activity is happening to.

As a way of introducing the character to the targeted age group I created a short animation work. As well as the animated piece I created a printed comic to sit alongside it to further promote the character. The response from the public during the time of the exhibition was very helpful & the amount of people that confessed to being victims or having knowledge of someone else being bullied was quite alarming.I’m not saying that the creation of this character will eradicate bullying but I am hoping that it could be used in conjunction with other anti bullying iniatives and help alleviate the despair & loneliness victims of this social disease feel.

Dundee Masters Open Doors

genny — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 15:27:09 +0000

This time next week the Dundee Masters Open Doors event will be starting as a special launch to the exhibition.

The students are putting the finishing touches to their exhibitions this weekend and planning for hosting the Open Doors day next Saturday. It’s a free event where visitors can get to know more about the students’ projects and the concepts dealt with within the five postgraduate courses (Master of Fine Art, MSc Media Art & Imaging, Master of Design, MSc Medical Art, MSc Forensic Art).

There is a huge diversity of work presented and this week I have had the pleasure of having previews of intriguing works such as a video of a girl coughing up crystals, Gray’s Anatomy inspired graphic paintings, research around cloud formations and their spiritual meanings, gargoyle-like 3D images pursuing the ‘uncanny’ in facial imaging and service design for charities who need social networking.

All of this work can be seen throughout the show run (28^th Aug – 4^th Sept) and on the Open Doors day in addition to exploring the exhibits you can attend and take part in tours, talks, screenings and workshops. These range from a screening and Q&A with artist Roddy Buchanan who has worked with MSc MAI student Andy Sim and his crew to produce his two recent films to a tour by Medical Art / Forensic Art tutor Caroline Needham and kimono printing workshops and a mid-event highlight of coffee and cakes with the MDes students within their exhibition space.

If you have any questions about the events or courses – please get in touch and you can follow our progress on Twitter @DJCAD and @ExhibitionDJCAD

We would love to know if you were coming – so please use Central Station’s ‘Are you going?’ option for that, otherwise the only events which you need to register for are the screenings of Roddy Buchanan’s films and student showreel which will take place at DCA Cinema (they are still free though!)

Looking forward to seeing you next week.

Dundee Masters Show 2010

genny — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 15:51:35 +0000

The Dundee Masters Show is fast approaching with the students starting to install their work from Monday. For this year’s show we have decided to group the different courses exhibitions together in the DJCAD Perth Road buildings. MDes will exhibit in the Matthew Gallery while the others are all at the front of the Crawford building.

The show will be launched in a different way from past Masters Shows in that we are having an Open Doors daytime launch on Saturday 28th August. This means that visitors to the show can get to know the works, students and staff through talks, tours, workshops and screenings.

A selection of events are presented by each of the Masters courses : Master of Design, Master of Fine Art, MSc Media Arts & Imaging, MSC Medical Art, MSC Forensic Art, and except for a couple of screenings at DCA in the morning, will all happen within the exhibition spaces.

There will also be a more traditional evening event on the last Friday of the show run.

Please see below for basic listing info and more detailed schedule is to come. DJCAD is also developing a dedicated website for the show which will have profiles and photos of the students’ work.

DUNDEE MASTERS SHOW EXHIBITION AND EVENTS///

MASTERS OPEN DOORS///
Saturday 28 August, 11am – 4pm

A day of free talks, screenings, tours and workshops from students and staff of Master of Design, Master of Fine Art, MSc Media Arts & Imaging, MSC Medical Art, MSC Forensic Art.

EXHIBITION///
28 August – 4 September, Mon – Fri, 10am – 8 pm, Sat & Sun, 10am – 5pm (except Saturday 4 September when the exhibition will shut at 1pm)

MASTERS EVENING EVENT///
Friday 3 September, 6 – 8 pm

Gone – (Devanha no.5)

genny — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 14:16:54 +0000

DEGREE SHOW

Oil on Canvas – 5ft x 5ft. Private Collection

See more work from JakiSinclair here.

Stealthy Considered

genny — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 15:53:49 +0000

Last week I walked to London in order to, amongst other things, see the Royal College of Art graduate show (2).

The show was a highly polished affair, a topic i’ll return to later, but as a result it made me think more about whether this type of exhibition is the best vehicle for communication art and design, product and interaction design, and so on. What the alternative would be, i’m not sure, but i can confirm that spending a week looking over the Communication Art and Design (CA&D) publication and associated websites (not a solid week, obviously, as a clarification for any pedants out there) proved a far more interesting experience than the show itself. However I’m not denying that it was a very pleasant day out, and perhaps as good a route into the work as any other.

For an overview of individual students work, these reports offer more detail. Plus: (Interaction Site / C&AD site)

A hot topic of debate around CA&D at the RCA is the imminent arrival of a new head of department. Readers of Creative Review (amongst others) will be aware of the art vs design rumblings (aside: probably best steer clear of the detritus in the comments section, a more accurate analysis of blog-comment-structures here) and the machinations about big-names vs unknowns and false dicotomies of practitioners vs theorists. There are various sides to these arguements, but one thing they possibly have in common is to locate the head of department too centrally (or at the top of a big pyramid) in the eco-system of this course. Interaction design is an interesting case-study at the RCA, as though much of the work is intriguing and engaging and does open up questions of sorts, this year it all felt very much in the mould of a particular type of critical-design, as practised by the course leaders, and though my visit was brief, I didn’t see much which challenged this world-view. Another point to return to later.

Tucked away, and modestly presented, some very interesting projects were on view as part of the RCA/V&A MA History of Design Course, and I’m interested to know how this course interacts with the others.

On that note, I was also very interested in Department 21 which was in evidence at different points and in different departments in the show. A student-led initiative, it took a temporarily empty painting studio and used it as the focus for an ongoing programme of inter-departmental projects, talks and events. This for me is another ‘indicator’ of a desire acrossformal and informal educational experiences for a inter-disciplinary approach. I am not trying to claim that this is a new or radical thing, but am suggesting that the desire is strong and does exist, and that institutions (in their heirarchical, top-down mould) seem incredibly ham-fisted at delivering them, prompting interesting experiments like this one to spring-up.

One particular aspect of dept21 that interested me was a workshop and seminar on ‘de-skilling’. I’m fascinated by the idea of amateurism (in the best sense), and the prospect of an ‘amateur masters course’ (or masters in amateurism) is one i’d (perhaps mis-guided) sign-up for.

In a circular fashion, this brings me back to the emphasis placed on the new head of C&AD, the professionalism of its show, and a wondering about whether the significant developments in the course are likely to happen at its boundaries, and away from any one individual.

With the appointment of Neville Brody, I would hate the CA&D course to come to mirror its leaders. There are already enough supersonic ego’s in design education, and the star-cult of the individual is writ large. Thankfully there are those challenging this view, and even if the appointment was made on that basis, hopefully Brody will fall into this latter camp— I suspect he’s well aware of this potential pit-fall, and am interested to see what happens.

Images: RCA show2, Printers: ©Xavier Antin, and various, and Those that Move, off-site exhibition of Camberwell BA Graphic Design, at the Rag Factory, off Brick Lane.

P.S: Thought this RCA project was good, in relation to Central Station.

Grays School of Art Degree Show

genny — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 15:59:02 +0000

I loved the Grays Show this year. It’s always good, but this year I thought it was excellent, and (dare I say it) better than Glasgow or Dundee.

I thought the spaces were well considered and professional; more gallery, less Art School. The graduates were all there, happy to talk about their work. Most importantly, there was a dedication to their craft, a sense of hundreds of hours spent passionately creating work which was both beautiful and technically outstanding. Right across the board from Graphics, to Textiles, Ceramics and Fine Art, I felt the Grays graduates weren’t trying to pull any stunts or cocky art tricks, they had put in the hours and made some truly outstanding work.

Call me old school, but I like that.

Some things that caught my eye:

Alex Gordon’s Thin K Gallery – a show within the show. 3 Graduates (a printer, a painter and a sculptor) got together and curated their own exhibition. Clever concept.

You couldn’t miss Tessa Androutsopoulos’ space. A colour explosion of Pandas in rockets and quirky monoprints, eccentricity and bravery combine to make a truly memorable show.

Having followed her final year endeavors on Twitter this year, I was delighted to see the fruits of Jo Dodd’s labour. Graphics graduate with the beautiful ability to move seamlessly from slick digital to tactile screen print.

The textile designer in me loved these huge painted canvases by Jason Murray. Precise, graphic works with painstaking attention to detail. A beautiful, coherent collection of work which I’ll be doing my very best to get into a show at Musa Aberdeen…

Autonomous, Synchronised

genny — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 16:11:31 +0000

As is abundantly evident, its mid-to-late degree-show season. When caught in the middle, it sometimes seems like this time of year is a fairly directionless panic of sleepless nights, over-wrought angst, and a slightly overwhelming feeling that EVERYONE is graduating from a creative course somewhere, and EVERYONE has that great job (or more likely open-ended placement) lined up ahead of you. There is an increasing pressure on graduates (I think, based entirely on unscientific observational non-research) to be the ‘next big thing’, (partly fuelled by the star-tist and star-chitect culture of the nineties, partly by the increasing commercialisation of higher education and student debts…), and to somehow know exactly what they want to do amid the feedback-fuzz of a design-will-eat-itself* magpie culture.

I sometimes need to remind myself to pause for breath, and at the end of last week I had a chance to go to the ECA degree show and see what was happening there. The show was, overall, (and at risk of a massive blunt generalisation), quite good. But rather than try to review something so diverse and eclectic, I thought it might be useful to think about the context in which scottish (design) students are graduating.

Aside from the willingness with which most graduating students accept the de-facto format of ‘degree show’, it surprises me that every year at degree show time, the generalisations that people seem to make about the types of courses offered by art and design institutions get writ large in a strange dividing up of ‘typography’ from ‘ideas’, or ‘concepts’ from ‘craft.’ This chat can become a bit depressing, bar the fact that its hopefully only a few people indulging in it, but it does highlight one particular tension, about ‘what industry wants’, (as some of those in ‘industry’ have a habit of phrasing it).

Of course education and industry (in the broadest sense) should be in close contact and part of a dialogue (also including other external patrons and users of design who are not ‘businesses’) which is mutually beneficial, but the idea that Art Schools and Design Courses would be better off shaping their courses solely to the needs of business would be a massive error, and indicative of a think-big-but-ignore-the-detail type of strategic initiative for which governments, skill-councils and other quango’s are renowned.

Scotland is a small nation, with even smaller art and design courses, and the fact that there is some diversity in the types of course on offer is a massive bonus, and one that students can take advantage of. We are also in the massively beneficial position of being able to offer cohort sizes and staff/student ratios that would make a London student weep with envy. But we need to beware that we’re possibly at the thin end of a very thick wedge (given the recent budget) and its not going to be easy for small specialist institutions to stay small or specialist in the future. It strikes me as strange that when mergers are discussed for Scotland’s remaining independent art schools, its always with the nearest big university and never with each other.

The sinisterly titled D&AD ‘New Blood‘ show, part of the (surely ironicly titled) ‘free-range‘ graduate event (battery farm or zero-grazing anyone?) is a very visual demonstration of just how many creative graduates leave UK courses every year, and how highly many graduates from Scottish courses feature amongst them**, surely an affirmation of the scale and types of courses we can (currently) manage to run. These events (at their worst) are also indicative of the direction art and design education could head if we follow the idea that design courses should be focussed solely on churning out industry-ready and compliant machines. At risk of making a massive historical generalisation, the supposed glory-days of British graphic design, from Fletcher through to Brody and Saville et al. came on the back of a fairly archaic and/or anarchic art-school style education. That we have such strong small courses with their own characteristics, is something to build on, not something to ‘iron-out’.

So the ECA show, (particularly Graphic Design and Illustration as that’s where I spent most time), for me demonstrated (in the same way that GSA, DoJ, Grays and some of the other Scottish university degree courses do) a reassuring view of the design landscape in this north-west corner of Europe. The things that excited me most were the projects (like this CCTV one, by Piotr Klarowski) where students had challenged the visual protocol, tried to find a new angle into a topic, and allowed their time at university (and the freedoms afforded) to produce ideas that might not currently sit very comfortably in the grafik (sic) mainstream. But that’s a reflection of my personal tastes and interests, and, (while I’m convinced it’s those students that will make the most interesting designers, advertisers, filmmakers, artists and so on), I’m equally glad of the students who have produced more mainstream and archetypal work, but executed it with a depth and rigour, as it suggests a course (and design community?) where people with these interests and ideas can feed off each other, challenge each other, and the binary thinking that lurks around the corner can be held at bay for another year.

[I've used some shots of the eca show to illustrate this post, and tried to credit them below — any errors I apologise for, and please let me know, so they can be corrected].
Images, in order of appearance:
Signage
Recycling Centre outside Main Building
Main Hall, Textiles Product Design and Others
Val McLean, Intermedia Art
Stefania Strouza, Art Space and Nature MFA
Graphic Design Entrance
Piotr Klarowski, Graphic Design, CCTV Project
Assorted Business Cards
*Thanks to DC and KD for the lend of this turn of phrase.
**Though we’d do better to look at the international context rather than the national and work out whether we’re any good or not.

GRAYS DEGREE SHOW Promo HD

genny — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 16:15:32 +0000

Grays School of Art Degree Show Preview 2010

Parallel Schools, Other Educations

genny — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 16:47:54 +0000

(Image:MANYSTUFF, MOSCOW – PARALLEL SCHOOL)

I’ve written at various points over the past year about the tremendously exciting parallel school, (a student-led augmented educational experience), as it has shadowed my own emerging interest in the field of alternative education. There are a couple of issues that i think are important about this;

The initiative starts small, and uses social network tools to connect with likeminded communities, but is built on the dedication and energy of a small group.

In line with the ‘open community’ myth of the net, it still appears to be dealing with a core demographic of similar people, though they may come from different countries and cultures, and be geographically dispersed.

It is aligned to a traditional educational institution but is not bound by it.

In itself and its existence, it is a political act, and directly questions the creeping commercialism of education.

Most of its work appears to currently be self-referential, (about the act of ‘design’ and the process of education), and it will be interesting to see if it moves into other areas.

It is fantastic that at a time when most art colleges are going through the business-as-usual degree shows, groups of students are self-organising in this way.

More resources on alt/self/parallel/future education, knowledge (and related areas) here – (sorry for the sloppy formatting):

www.unitednationsplaza.org

www.staedelschule.de

facultyofinvisibility.tinka.cc

College

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