Whitworth

I visited the Whitworth art gallery today to view the new exhibition Subversive Spaces: Surrealism and contemporary art. I obviously loved to see some pieces by Sarah Lucas as I have always liked her work and its really good to see her work in Manchester rather than just in London. 

I would say that I only enjoyed a small percentage of the work as some I thought was of a poor standard and other pieces made me feel uneasy. 

However there was a video which I didn't managed to get the name of the artist, it was of a man using a drumstick against railings and fence to create a series of sequences that were then put together to make one film. It was really enjoyable to watch and I could have sat and watched it for hours.

I visited the Cornerhouse in the week to see the new exhibition there, Interspecies. What I most enjoyed were the videos of an artists spending hours with monkeys. The monkeys all had different characters and it was very funny to watch them interactive with the man.

Things I Love

I'm thinking of producing a small book combining my illustrations and my sewing. I will leave them all around manchester with my blog address on the back and wait for responses.

Watch this space.

Unpicking animation

For my next animation I plan to produce a sewn image using a sewing machine instead of hand embroidery. I will then unpick the stitches to create the animation. Using the animation suite in the studio each unpicked stitch will be a still of the animation. Once i have completed it, i will play it backwards so that it appears as though the sewn image is being created not the other way around.

Today I visited the Urbis and saw the Black Panther exhibition and the  photography exhibition Reality Hack: Hidden Manchester showcasing the work of Andrew Paul Brooks.

I found the Black Panther exhibition really interesting and learned a lot about that period of time, the posters by Emory really interested me, I liked the use of line and blocks of colour simple but very effective.

Andrew Paul Brooks photos were very intriguing as they showed places that the general public never see however I did think some of the photos look as though they had been photoshopped a fair bit which I really dislike as I prefer photos to look more realistic, other photos looked less edited which I think worked a lot better. The light in the photos made them almost dreamlike and very fascinating.

Knitta

Knitta is a collective of women from Houston Texas, who use knitting as a form of graffiti. Tagging street furniture such as lamposts, bridges and postboxes with knitted pieces.

I think its the same simple idea taken from people like Bansky and turning it on its head. Because whereas Bansky is using paint, Knitta are using wool and because it isn't actually defacing the objects as the wool is not completely attached.

There work has become very popular with people removing items and selling them to earn money for themselves which is also happening with Bansky, I'm completely against this as I think it is unfair that these people get money that the don't deserve. All they have done is find the piece of work, they shouldn't be the ones making money from it.

At the moment Knitta has only been seen in the U.S.A but theres always a chance of it

happening over here.

http://www.knittaplease.com/ABOUT.html

Control

Just watched Control for about the tenth time the film about Joy Division by Anton Corbijn and just realised I had the final song of the film Atmosphere on my itunes. Am well pleased, its one of my favourite songs of all time.
Shame the music video is rubbish.

Der Lauf Der Denge

The Way Things Go a film by Peter Fischil and David Weiss made in 1987. Its the inspiration behind recent adverts by Honda. Its all based around the domino effect, objects controlling the movement of other objects.

The film its self is nothing special its set in a dark dirty warehouse, its the objects moving that make it so intriguing to watch, tires, trash bags, candles, bottle rockets, fire and chemicals are all used. There a moments of suspense when your waiting for an object to make contact with another object. One of these moments was the plastic cup rolling around a table, it needed to fall off to carry on the process and keep it all going. It was almost tense watching it roll around , waiting for it to drop.

There is no other sounds apart from those of the objects, such as the spark of the fuses, water dripping and gushing into containers.

The only fault of the film is the editing between sequences, its visible and pretty obvious which ruins the idea that its all complete and set up ready and waiting.