White Cube - Mason's Yard

This week I went to White Cube to see the Gilbert and George exhibition. I first became aware of their work a few years ago when I went to see one of their collections at the Tate Modern. I was particularly interested in The Urethra Postcard Art pieces as I have been working alongside a company for the the last few months on a website that encourages people to make and send in their own postcards (My Best Thing Today).

I am becoming increasingly interested in the techniques, methods and imagery artists use to examine emotions and human interaction with society. I am starting to explore my own desire to communicate more complex feelings that I perhaps find difficult to put into words.
There is a lot of intensity in this collection of work that really drew me in. I also have a personal love of art that is small and contained - a canvas that a postcard provides perfectly.

Museum of Childhood

I went to see 'A Sense of Place' exhibition at the Museum of Childhood. I was interested in seeing the work because a lot of it was inspired by cultural context of urban and rural environments which ties in with some of the themes I want to explore in my personal project. 

Taran Ghosh has created a toy theatre called the London Project...

The work of Tapan Das 'Rickshaws - 'Journey from Dhaka to Bethnal Green' - were of particular interest to me because he created a narrative through his paintings. Again journeys and narrative are something I will be exploring a great deal this year. His canvases are beautiful, bright and hopeful. 

Thurle Wright uses books and other sources of typography to create extraordinary pieces. Her work would have been great inspiration for the altered book project! But it also made me consider alternative ways in which typography can be incorporated into a piece of work.

Defacing Money

My 'Voodoo Money Ragdoll"...

The pinned flags read; 'cash in my pocket', 'money on my mind' and 'sex sells'. I may change the quotes on the flags as I continue my research or create more to be pinned all over the doll.

White Cube - Hoxton Square

White Cube is currently holding an exhibition of work by Rachel Kneebone - 'exhibition of new work by Rachel Kneebone. Over the last few years, Kneebone has created a unique space in contemporary art with her expressive and delicately worked porcelain sculptures'

The exhibition is called Lamentations and the sculptures are all expressions the trauma of death, loss and grief. I found the actual craftsmanship of the porcelain sculptures so delicate, intricate and enchanting that they really drew me in to want to study every detail. Looking at each of the pieces individually they  made me consider emotions such as pain, human destruction and helplessness. I found the sculptures disturbing - not in the sense that I disliked the work but because they were beautiful objects craft wise and then the actual subjects were so distressing.

Whitechapel Gallery

I haven't been to the Whitechapel Gallery before and the building is absolutely stunning. 

The first room that I went into was an installation by Claire Barclay called Shadow Spans.
Her sculptures are used as inspiration for live dance.

Another artist I looked at whilst there was Stephen Sutcliffe whose work consisted of video and audio being played onto a large screen. He uses archives of VHS and audio recordings and then meshes soundtracks and moving images to create a sophisticated visual language. I was particulary interested in this piece of work as it is a good point of reference and inspiration for my own personal project I am starting this year.

The installation that 'wowed' me the most was 'Keeping It Real: An Exhibition of Four Acts - Disterbance', Mona Hatoum. Inside the room was a structure made up of lots of square wire cages forming one large cage. Inside each cage was a light bulb. The bulbs faded in and out at various intervals and there was also a strange electrical buzzing sound that appeared to come from the lights. I enjoyed this piece because you could really experience the art in a number of ways. Standing in a corner of the room and closing your eyes you are still aware of the light changes and of course the sound and you could also walk around the structure waiting for the room to dark - it was quite surreal!

This Is Tomorrow is an exhibition about an exhibition in the 1950s that explored new technologies in media. It was clearly an iconic exhibition of its time and looking at the work that was produced is a real eye opener into the production of art and how ideas and social trends change due to technology.

Smile for London - self initiated project

A company called Life Clubs have offered to sponsor my animation. They wanted a version of the animation that ran a little slower and mentioned their name at the end. Here is their version, which is slightly different...

Where Are My Wings

I am currently working on redesigning my website to give it more of an illustrative appearance.

Initially I had the idea that the homepage of the site would be shelving with various objects n the shelves. Each object would represent a different piece of work or area of the site...

After working on this idea for a while I realised it created the same issues I have with my current design. Once people navigate away from the homepage it can be difficult to navigate other pages without ending up with the standard home, about, work buttons - and this is something I would like to avoid.
I then moved onto the idea of the website only consisting of one page meaning that all the work and information I feel relevant will be very accessible to visitors. I also think it would be nice to relate the illustration of the site more directly to the site name - where are my wings.
Birds are a representation of wings and working as individually illustrated icons they could each work as a rollover action to bring up various bits of work.


I spent a lot of time trying out different types of birds and whether or not they should be detailed drawing or basic representative shapes.
I then came up with the idea of origami cranes, people often hang the birds to create mobiles etc. Having the cranes 'hang' down from the top of the page means that I can add or remove the birds easily to introduce new bits of work etc to the site. It also means I can keep to the idea of only have one main page. At the moment I am happy with the idea but not sure whether the design is too basic and if a more illustrative appearance is needed. I have also replaced text on the site with hand drawn lettering.