Manchester Met University
On 20th June I visited Manchester Met University for one of the largest degree shows in the country. The show held exhibitions of work from different students from a variety of university’s all across the country.
One area of the first floor seemed to show a mixture of different courses instead of just sticking to one specific area of design. Where as the rest of the show kept to one subject in a room. I felt the layout of the show worked well in some ways as a lot of work was put into a small amount of space. However some parts of the show were ‘out of the way’ and it wasn’t very obvious where you had to go to get to them. Therefore there was areas of the show I was unable to see.
The range of specialism’s on offer varied highly. There were a lot of different areas such as printmaking, fine art, photography, and advertisement.
One area of the show I enjoyed the most was the fine art area, I felt most inspired to try new ideas in my own work when looking through this area. When going through textiles I also felt inspired to begin incorporating material experiments into my work.
An area I disliked of the exhibit was the photography area.
I felt like it would have a lot more creative processes on show. Rather than photos that seemed to just show the use of being able to ‘point and shoot.’
However there was one artist that seemed to show the use of creativity in his work. Instead of simply photographing a chosen model he decided to continue working into this work by drawing a design onto the photography that was blown up in size.
An artist who stood out to me in the exhibition was portraiture artist Allanah Claire. Her influence is mainly the human body.
When looking at her work online her painting of Marilyn Monroe stood out the most. The starting point for this piece of work could have been her looking at vintage models from 1960’s. She could’ve used this research as inspiration to recreate her final piece.
When looking through the exhibition I came across a photographer Lauren Colbeck,who was studying an interactive arts course. I found that this type of photography stood out a lot more than the ones in the photography section as these were completely different and seemed to have been influenced by a range of artists.
When looking at her work you can see she has taken inspiration from photographers Iain Crawford and Zach Gold. They both incorporate a lot of bright colours into their photographs in an unusual way.
One of her images shows a large use of colour which you can see has been inspired by those two artists, but Lauren Colbeck has photographed her model through a glass. She was inspired to do this after researching into Irving Penn. I think the good thing about the work she has created is that you can clearly tell where she has taken her inspiration from and how she has adapted the ideas into her own final pieces.
When going into the final building I came across Textiles student Amy Mingkwan. She had created a variety of things which appealed to me greatly. However my attention was drawn to her wallpaper designs. She seems to have taken inspiration for through 'vintage' designs. After looking through her blog she said she had taken her inspiration for her final wall hangings from a design created by Ferm Living. The work she has created has really inspired me to try and create work in the same style. Her hangings that were based around herself have made me want to think about trying to recreate an image based around my childhood using various media to produce this.
Chesterfield College arts exhibition
The chesterfield college arts exhibition is a chance for students of art and design, fashion, interactive/graphic design, photography and all other art based subjects to showcase their best work for the public to see. I visited the exhibition on the 23rd June
The layout for this exhibition is pretty simple to follow once you find the dome at the college as then all the different areas that show work are signposted. In one area you have the main exhibit across two floors where you can see most of the work that has been created. This ranges from Fashion, Interactive/graphic design, photography and art and design. When comparing this layout to Manchester Met I felt it was so much easier to follow as the work was set into one large space. Manchester met was set across various floors and various buildings which at times was quite hard to follow.
One piece of work I particularly liked when looking around was two pieces of work by Shane Mellish from Interactive second year. The two pieces of work he had created were for an introductory project about Chesterfield. He had used a variety of media to create these, when I asked him what he had used he told me that he had monoprinted his images before put a wash of blue and red ink over them. Using stitching in places to add layers to the image.
After looking at this exhibition I think the one thing it has inspired me to do is become more creative when working in my sketchbook. When looking through the work that was on show one thing I noticed is that most of the sketchbooks were incredibly innovative. I feel that my sketchbooks right now are left bland and are not incredibly nice to look at. I feel it has also inspired me to try looking into more materials when creating experiments in my sketchbook.
When looking over my previous work I feel that I seem to stick to the same experiments. I also seem to create a lot of my final pieces in the same techniques. Which are mainly digital. I would also look to look more into how I prep my work to try and make my work more aesthetically pleasing at the moment I feel my work is quite boring and I don’t seem to be taking a lot of risks or using new techniques in my work.
After looking at this university I feel that it has made me more aware of the variety of things you can actually do on the courses that they have to offer. Previous to this visit I assumed that you would have to stick to quite a limited range of techniques. The range of work on offer at Chesterfield College has made me realise just the high standard of work that is created. Even though the foundation course at Chesterfield college is very different I still think it would be an excellent starting point for someone who is unsure of going away to university.
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