Generation x Urban Outfitters Window Display

So I've just finished installing my window display for Urban Outfitters. I was staying in Edinburgh from Monday to Thursday and the unveiling was on Thursday night which went pretty well, it's up til the 28th of August.

The experience was amazing - it was so unlike anything else I'd done. It was obviously challenging but such a change for me getting to work on such a large scale. I had been really nervous about the install but it was all surprisingly straight forward - everything ran really smoothly. The outcome itself was exactly as I had planned, with no compromises on the design which was brilliant. I also learned so many different processes and different ways to do things.

The design was based on the locations of the Scottish National Galleries and the idea of all of the artists coming together in these venues. I like the fact that there are several different layers creating a lot of depth to the window. The reflections from the mirrors (which we made from Mylar stretched over wooden frames) are really effective I think - aesthetically, and also just in attracting people's attention to the window - seeing yourself in an installation makes it a bit more interesting.

Having my work shown on Princes Street in Edinburgh during the festival is so exciting! Really pleased with the outcome so I hope everyone else likes it too.

Sails Project Development

Was looking through work from this year and I found some of the development work from this project. Thought I would share a few images as often the development can be more successful than the outcome.

I like the clean crisp appearance of these line drawings. I spent a lot of time working out composition in this project, so for every individual image I took photos of different possibilities for positioning the legs before committing to sticking them down. 

My development work was often totally bizarre which I think was slightly lost in the planned final outcomes - they didn't have the same feeling of spontaneity and experimental quality.

Memories Project

One of my projects this year was based around the idea of memories. I started by thinking about how memories can change over time, how you can alter memories by retelling them, and how memories of the same event can differ from person to person. I then spent a while sitting about reading the old newspapers which were lying about the studio to avoid having to do any work. After a couple of days of doing absolutely nothing I panicked a bit and started cutting out and playing about with some of the pictures from the newspapers, painting over images or using masking tape to peel them back.

The picture of the boys wearing purple is actually an old school photo which was printed in a newspaper article about institutional sex abuse (pretty topical right now sadly). I started thinking about how all the boys in the photos would have had different memories of their school days, and how the physical "visual memory" or photo, with rows of smiling faces showed a completely different picture than what actually happened. 

One of my tutors suggested I tried a acetone transfer print and showed me how to use the printing press and acetone to take a print from a photocopy. I made A3 copies of some of my sketchbook pages and layered them up in the prints which I think gave a very subtle ambiguous effect which showed exactly what I was thinking about. To complete the images I peeled back a couple of black and white newspaper photos using masking tape and simply stuck them on top which I think grounded the images well. 

Short Film

For the 4 week project at the end of this year at art school, all the communication designers had to choose an audio clip from a selection and make a screen short to accompany it. This was quite a daunting task for me as I tend to work with my hands, only occasionally using my basic computer skills, so the project was quite a learning curve. The clip I chose made me think of state control and dehumanisation - I think the tutors took it from a film but I'm not sure what one - I think if I had chosen a familiar clip it would have been more difficult to come up with an original visual concept. Anyway, I decided to create visuals which compared soldiers to farm animals blindly following orders and not being individual - probably an obvious link but I felt it illustrated what I was getting at pretty well. As usual I used collage for this project, but I think the video format added a new dimension to my usual technique although my computer skills are still a bit lacking.

I had a bit of extra time at the end of the project so I made a few posters parodying the army and navy's promotional slogans "be the best" and "life without limits". To me these slogans are ironic - I don't see how you can be the best when you are constantly being told to do, and I think living and working in these institutions must be extremely limiting.