Show and Tell 2016 by Central Saint Martins

CENTRAL SAINT MARTINS SHOW AND TELL 2016 Degree Shows One and Two, 2016

CONTENTS 4 6 8

Introduction from Jeremy Till, Head of College CSM Loading Creating an Identity SHOW TWO

SHOW ONE

Odira Morewabone | TAKE FIVE BA Culture, Criticism and Curation |

QUESTIONING THE SYSTEM

16 18 20 22

Alexandra Gribaudi | IN PROCESS Julius Colwyn | TAKE FIVE Sally Burch | IN PROCESS Joshua Tabti | TAKE FIVE

58 60 64 66

THE COPY

EXTRAORDINARY EVERYDAY

28 30 32

Zara Ramsay | IN PROCESS Mira Varg | TAKE FIVE Sergei Zinchuk | IN PROCESS

72 74 76

Wilson Astley | TAKE FIVE Louis King | TAKE FIVE

THE DELIGHTS AND DANGERS OF DIGITAL

38 40 42 44

82 84 88 90

Jean-Baptiste Lagadec | IN PROCESS Eva Cookney | TAKE FIVE Jessica Young | IN PROCESS Eva Wilkinson | TAKE FIVE Imma: Trans, Okay, Challenge, Performance, Audience

TRANSFORMING TRADITION

THE ART OF SELF-CURATION

Po-Wei Chen | TAKE FIVE Marc Richter | TAKE FIVE

98 100

EMPATHY BY DESIGN

Orla Lawn | TAKE FIVE Selom Sunu | TAKE FIVE

MATERIAL MAGIC

Millie Horton | TAKE FIVE Ben Waters | TAKE FIVE PROJECTS OF PROTEST

Zhiwen Tang | TAKE FIVE Maria Gasparian | TAKE FIVE

MullenLowe NOVA Awards

TAKE FIVE

In each of the four years I have been at Central Saint Martins, I have thought the end of year shows were better than the ones before. Maybe they really were, or maybe this a symptom of my natural optimism, but I think it is really a sign of my annual amazement at the collective energy and intelligence that goes into a CSM show. My wonder at this intensity trumps my memory. My favourite moments are those in the days before the shows open, in the flurry of preparation, pride and anticipation. I often think that we should open to the public during those days, and osmotically transfer that collective density to everyone else, as a form of generous creative empowerment. As it is, when we do open our doors to the actual shows, people flock; in 2016 we welcomed 41,500 people to the end of year shows, more than ever before.

And then it is all over, dismantled in a couple of days, leaving only the individual traces in student portfolios and some course catalogues. For the first time, therefore, we thought we should collect some of the showsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; projects and stories, as a record of the intensity and to contextualise some of the work for a broader audience who could not come. It is only a snapshot, but nonetheless burns bright. The best yet, probably. Professor Jeremy Till, Head of Central Saint Martins Pro Vice-Chancellor, University of the Arts London

instagram @csm_news

CREATING AN IDENTITY Sophie Rush and Shannon Swinburn were selected to design the visual identity for this year’s degree shows. This includes everything from posters and invites, to animations and wayfinding. Each year the College asks students from BA Graphic Design to create an identity and a high-profile campaign for our summer shows. The winning design is picked by a panel including course tutors and the Head of College. Both Rush and Swinburn are in their third and final year of BA Graphic Design, studying on the Design and Interaction pathway. They chat with us about the creative challenges of communicating such a huge event.

What were your ideas behind the visual identity for the degree shows? swinburn :

We wanted something that incorporated everyone around the College. That was an important part of the brief. We decided the one thing that everyone has in common is that even though it’s important that everyone works with whatever physical things they make, it’s also important to have a digital presence. We wanted to represent something that’s digital but in a physical way. We’ve ended up representing loading in different states. We’ll be revealing the visuals slowly, so as it comes up towards the degree show more things will load and reveal.

Were there various ideas trialled in the process of coming up with this one? rush :

It’s changed quite a lot since the beginning. We had to try and avoid being too fashion-centric. We needed to try and represent the whole College as opposed to just that programme.

What will be the experience of the visuals? s w i nb u r n :

We’ve tried to make an experience on the day of the show, we’ve tried to incorporate wayfinding and everything to make it an overall experience.

rush:

There’s going to be colour-coded wayfinding and floor levels, and representing the loading idea through the invites as well.

s w i nb u r n :

And we’ve also integrated the wayfinding into a performance piece on the night. It’s a secret at the moment. We’ve tried to think of non-obvious ways to use wayfinding.

rush:

We helped out in previous years and we found that people were always asking where is everything or what floor is it on. We tried to make that experience a fun and playful way of doing that this time and one that is maybe more approachable.

s w i nb u r n :

We didn’t want to make it too

serious. What difficulties did you encounter in putting the design together? s w i nb u r n :

Dropping ideas on the way and adapting to what other people want rather than just focusing on what you want. Our outcome was more photography-based, and they didn’t want that so we’ve made it more abstract along the way with more typography. We are really happy with it how it is now.

What have you learned through this project? swinburn :

I think Sophie was always quite organised, but it’s definitely made me a bit more organised too. I’m very laid back and I haven’t had to deal with a lot of the admin that comes with this before. Also, obviously a lot of projects we do on our course are never get realised in real life, so logistically thinking about how it would actually work and what you can and can’t actually have. Usually when you just come up with a concept it’s never going to happen.

What is the importance of the degree shows for you? rush :

It’s a celebration of everybody’s work coming together and getting it out there.

swinburn :

We just want to put emphasis on the fun side of it because even though it’s an important event it’s one that’s to be enjoyed as well. We don’t think that should be forgotten. We’ve tried to make it something that everyone can have a lot of fun at.

What are you most looking forward to with the degree shows? rush :

Getting to see your ideas coming to life. That’s really exciting. It feels like the cherry on top. It’s Central Saint Martins, it’s our final year, and it’s our big blow out.

swinburn :

Sophie was actually the first person I met in London. I came to the interview, sat down on the sofa and she asked me to hold her portfolio while she went to the toilet. We became friends and now it’s all come full circle and we live together and we’re working together on this. It’s nice to end your university experience by seeing your work on such a huge scale and to end on a high.

SHOW ONE Show One presented Fine Art in all its glory from painting, photography and installation to work we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have the right words for yet. From undergraduate to postgraduate, here was art at its broadest and boldest. COURSES FEATURED:

BA Fine Art, MA Art and Science, MA Fine Art, MA Photography and MRes Art: Exhibition Studies, Moving Image, and Theory and Philosophy.

QUESTIONING THE SYSTEM It wouldn’t be a Degree Show if there wasn’t work from a new generation questioning and challenging the status quo. And while this year’s graduating artists can be found engaging with politics and social anxieties there are those that turn their attention to the mechanisms of the art world itself and the role of the artist. One of the most striking pieces of work promises to be 1p by Will Webster (MA Photography). A blown-up photograph of a price tag, 500 times its actual size, affixed to a college wall brings value and transaction to the heart of the institution. “It’s the closest you can get to being worthless or priceless whichever you way you want to look at it,” says Webster, “I’m interested in the idea of a loss leader, pricing strategies, from the perspective of an artist who cannot escape from selling their work. I feel very privileged that as an artist I can say that I want to price my work as low as possible.”

Will Webster

Literally placing a price tag on an arts school, Webster followed recent discussion on the cost of an arts education and with tongue firmly in cheek, the work also responds to his experience of last year’s degree show which “seemed to be an arms race to see who could make the biggest thing, because it’s your degree show and you have to be noticed.” Placed in the central atrium of the College, the price tag sits not only on the fabric of the building but also in the display space for this year’s largest work. But, Webster says, money isn’t the target here, money

SHOW ONE

doesn’t care. Instead 1p probes the knotty connection between art, value and exchange: “What does that mean for a generation of artists fixated on the idea of return on investment? That you do art now as a career that brings you money rather than doing it for a higher, more noble need to express yourself or say something.”

Turning from education to writing about art, it’s easy to find the humour in Zarina Muhammad and Gabrielle de la Puente’s (BA Fine Art) online platform The White Pube, an art criticism website that, among other things, reviews exhibitions using three emojis. Set up in reaction to reading a newspaper exhibition review, “the exhibition got 3 stars, and I thought ‘what does that mean and how is that giving me any indication of what the show was like?’” says Muhammad. The website rejects obfuscation and art speak, instead embracing subjectivity and honesty. The White Pube has grown beyond the writing and the duo are excited about a series of Art Dates – simply a way to visit exhibitions with the platform’s social media followers, making real relationships from digital ones. As de la Puente explains, their intention is “to battle alienation and individualism and for artists not to cut each other down… making new friendships The White Pube not networks.”

SHOW ONE

Though the various machinations of the art world are the focus for some, Cara Mills’s installation (BA Fine Art) is more a response to her own practice and the nature of being an artist. A list of ideas is fed precipitously into a ceiling hung shredder, paper shreds float like snow and collect in a pile on the floor. The piece began when Mills noted she was generating great numbers of ideas for artworks but not realising them. “I got incredibly bored and started making slapdash work… I wanted to confront it,” she says, “so since Christmas I wrote out every idea that I had… For me the most interesting part was where the ideas come from and giving them space to breathe. To show that all ideas, good or bad, are worth recognition.” Interested in decision making, how an idea is rejected or accepted, Mills wondered what would happen if she removed the object entirely and prioritised the art in writing. The result is a reducing roll of ideas and a mounting pile of scraps:

Cara Mills

“It’s almost a shame when all of my ideas get shredded. They’re finished, gone. There was relief at first, but now they’re mounting they’re becoming an object which is what I didn’t want initially. It’s taking on a new form.”

From the price of education to an exhibition review in the Evening Standard, there’s plenty of pressure points in the system for artists to push against. “We’ve realised we’ve got some responsibility,” says de la Puente, “We have to do good, make art better and represent the things we need.”

Cara Mills

Alexandra Gribaudi

SHOW ONE

IN PROCESS

“I’ve got into metal this year,” explains Alexandra Gribaudi, a soon-to-be BA Fine Art graduate. Her installation combines found objects with large metal forms constructed with repetitions and layers. “Metal reflects the things that I’m interested in,” says Gribaudi, “it can go from one form to the other, it can be hard and then liquid, you can change its colour, it’s affected by the elements so differently. I’ve treated some parts with vinegar, others have been quenched [heating up metal then rapidly cooling it in water] and if you look, you’ll see those different processes and materiality.”

Each sculpture is made from material from her previous work, so the history of her practice is, in part, embedded in the metal itself. Combining both this sense of time with her recycling approach, the constant cycle of change, points to Gribaudi’s interest in the everyday:

“The everyday is such a complex thing to experience, doing an art practice is the same – you have doubts and hesitations. Committing to an art practice has allowed me to have a better understanding of my everyday and by extension the way our society works. I feel that metal is a reflection of that – in materials you can find the same complexity. It changes from one form to another, it’s the same as this morning you were annoyed but now you’re happy – it’s the same kind of movement.”

Gribaudi stresses this is not a metaphorical connection between material and idea but in fact a tangible one, that her process feeds not only her understanding of her practice but also life lived beyond the studio.

www.alexandragribaudi.com

SHOW ONE

Julius Colwyn Discussing his project In the Midst of Things, an examination of the make-up of complex systems, the MA Art and Science student told us about his studio rituals and their objects.

TAKE FIVE

A fragment of bone – which encourages structure and problem solving.

A glass object – to encourage clarity, this is currently in the form of a glass buoy.

A cut stone – the purpose of which is to help with the editing process, the cutting away and refining of a project.

Something complex – at the minute it’s a fractal bottle. This object intention is to act as a humbling force. Looking at the complexity of nature, Colwyn refers to this particular object for some grounding.

An object related to fire – at present he keeps a sample of crude oil and military issue lighter from WWI. The meaning behind these objects relates to the idea of throwing everything into the fire and seeing what happens, it promotes the trial of ideas.

“They’re sort of totemic, there is a really interesting link between cognition and ritual, the way we can coax our brains into a way of thinking, or making.”

Colwyn connects his artistic process with five specific objects. Associating each one with a particular way of thinking, he uses them as a way of creating and encouraging different approaches to his work. Currently you can find Colwyn with:

www.juliuscolwyn.com

Sally Burch

In BA Fine Art, Sally Burch’s photographs are odes to process. At first glance, they’re landscapes, but the closer you look the more unreal they become.

“I had to go back to what it means to be a photograph. The traditional conventions. How the image appears on photographic paper, its materiality. The image, the light – all the components. Then I looked at the components that go into image making now – the scanner, computer and the printer. That was my enquiry.”

Having used photography regularly within her painting practice, Burch had a moment of realisation. “I was wondering ‘why paint this?’ It didn’t make sense to me that I’d transfer what I’d already got. Well actually I haven’t even ‘got it’ – it’s a digital code. Then I started thinking how this digital code can be fragmented and changed.”

IN PROCESS

She began exploring the elements of photography – image, light and paper. Playing with scale, she moulded paper, creating images of miniature landscapes. She continued experimenting with different substrates on which to apply the photograph from bent wood to Victorian floor tiles, often altering, even destroying, the image in the process of its transference. The notion of the “poor image”, copied, transferred and reproduced, is something Burch returns to. Indeed, printing out her documentation on one of her final days working in her final project in College, the computer scrambled one of her images. “And I thought ‘Yes, that’s a gift – a whole new body of work!’”

SHOW ONE

Joshua Tabti

TAKE FIVE

In between creating this year’s BA Fine Art website and adding the finishing touches to his experimental performance project which sees photographs of World War II concrete bunker ruins line the Street, Joshua Tabti told us about the places he relied on the most during this hectic time.

The ruins of Atlantic Wall, Hitler’s bunker defence against the Allies is the subject of my degree show work. These monolithic and brutal ruins pepper the coast between France all the way up to Norway.

I’ve relied on getting my photographic film from a little shop called Process Supplies near Farringdon and what is really useful is that you can get your colour negatives developed nearby at EC One Lab in this fire station-looking art studio complex.

I enjoy going to The Photographers’ Gallery and then doing a little circuit through the surrounding backstreets and galleries because I usually have some sort of interesting conversation with a stranger or bump into a friend.

Cable Cafe on Brixton Road plays extraordinary live jazz every Tuesday night, it is one of the highlights of my week – the best de-stresser if you find swing and bebop relaxing.

Central Saint Martins – The building is enormous. There’s always somewhere you haven’t been before and amazing people you haven’t met. Having conversations with people from different courses has been really beneficial with getting different perspectives on my work. I owe a lot to the team at the photography department for putting up with me requesting equipment, teaching me new techniques and staying late!

www.joshuatabti.co.uk

THE COPY Copying may seem like the antithesis to art school selfexpression and exploration. An inflatable sculpture, for example, might not have the most obvious links to Renaissance sculpture, but Rolina Blok (MA Fine Art) invites the art of the past into her contemporary practice. I’ve never been to Rome, a huge inflatable bust of Moses – after a Michelangelo sculpture – points to Blok’s traditional training in Romania. Combining life drawing, composition and art history, Blok’s education mirrored that of the last two centuries of art teaching, an education from a different age? “It most certainly is,” says Blok “but it was very helpful. You learn a skill, you learn what was before you in order to understand what you’re trying to create today.” Her Moses, all soft and billowy, takes its cues from a bust that Blok drew again and again for her examinations. “We had a cast of him and used to call him ‘my lover’ because he had a beautiful face and horns. We had an intimate relationship,” the artist says with a smile. Blok knows this face so well because she studied it, her appropriation of Renaissance sculpture sits as part of a continual and important process that stretches across millennia. Blok’s practice not only highlights that contemporary art, no matter how iconoclastic, sits within a chronology but also art’s power to reproduce itself, to be reborn. Blok’s work consumes the history of art through replica and reproduction. I’ve never been to Rome could be interpreted as a love letter to the city of originals:

Rolinda Blok

“I’ve never been to Rome and I’d like to go and see it. But it’s not happening so I have to make something so I can see it.”

SHOW ONE

Looking at Yaoyao Ding’s work (MA Photography), you’d be forgiven for thinking you were in a national gallery. Her series of oil pastels are essentially still lives of paintings; Millais’s Ophelia in its opulent frame sits on a cream wall with the corner of its neighbour visible. Whereas Blok sites her work in a chronology of appropriation, Ding makes the more extreme point that there are no originals, only second hand images. After graduating from China Academy of Art, Ding was commissioned to paint reproductions of Impressionist artworks for hotel and office interiors. “I compromised a lot,” she says, “The price of the artwork depended on the size or the difficulty. Suddenly I became a labourer not an artist. My degree show work is a critique of that kind of system, that the artist is like a machine.” Photographing paintings on her iPhone on pilgrimages to galleries, Ding chooses depictions of young women as though selfidentifying with them: “I wonder if that’s why I choose them. It’s a mirror and I see myself in these works.”

While reproduction and appropriation are at the heart of both the art market and its satellites, the development of modern

Yaoyao Ding

SHOW ONE

technology – from photography to digital modelling – brings the technical copy into the artist’s toolbox. Juan Carlos Covelli Reyes (MA Photography) uses digital modelling as a metaphor for digital identity. “Everything we post on social media is an image,” he says, “our identity is something that we’re curating – it’s the time of me, me, me.”

– that could represent that word, place it in the top grid and then the process begins of creating a version of that object, each student responding to the previous student’s contribution. Though each is an individual reply, the process creates a collective landscape with each line of the grid showing one object made in a different way and different time by a different person.

Yaoyao Ding

To reflect this egotism, Reyes creates 3D printed renders and models of his body. His imagery retains the glitches and imperfections from inputting the data, as well as integrated traditional plinths as a nod to a Lenin souvenir he bought on holiday in Russia. For Reyes, the souvenir provided a point of reference for the reproduction as valueless replica:

“What’s important is the students realise that they’re part of a teaching methodology and that they’ve already been introduced to notions of the copy through their education,” explains Wright, “It’s getting them to realise there’s an agency to copying.” From the photocopier to 3D printing, students are encouraged to explore how reprographic technologies can be used critically within their practice.

“It becomes a reproducible unimportant thing. You can make it and remake it and remake it… I’m a photographer, the idea of the original doesn’t exist for me, that preciousness doesn’t exist. In photography, you can reproduce to the end.”

Far from being in opposition to the fine art practice, the copy is a fundamental tool. The repeatable, the reproducible, the replica are all expressions of the homogeneity of modern life, ripe for recontextualising. After all, Wright says, “we’re all copyists.”

Whether reproducing, re-appropriating or replicating, it’s clear that the copy has a place in the experimental and expressive practices of contemporary art. Though fine art education has moved away from the repetitive mimetic traditions of drawing casts and copying Old Masters, copying remains part of the art school experience.

Elizabeth Wright, 3D Pathway Leader BA Fine Art, runs a project with second year students that investigates the various natures of the copy. Following museum visits and discussions, students engage with a two-day workshop. A grid is marked out on the studio floor, each student selects a word from a list: fake, reproduction, multiple etc. They then bring an object – from a knock-off Burberry hat to a stone hammer

Juan Covelli Reyes

IN PROCESS

BA Fine Art student, Zara Ramsay’s objects are betwixt and between. An arrangement of found and made pieces: the resin cast of a bumbag hangs from the ceiling with strips of elastic either side or a video of someone imitating the sound of Kellog’s crunch (something the company attempted to trademark). The objects are brought together in installation, in what Ramsay describes as “a pseudo-science, an analysis of practices of living and our experience of materiality.”

SHOW ONE

Zara Ramsay

Her material choices are from a hybrid place – stuff that is neither liquid nor solid, synthetic nor natural. Indeed, she explains “the very fact that those delineations aren’t quite clear. I find that really uncomfortable.” The piece combining the bumbag cast with elastic is titled Echo Star after a satellite. Ramsay explains that when satellites no longer function they are relegated to a space graveyard in perpetual orbit, where Echo Star will be heading in 15 years. Though her objects offer peculiar material explorations, there is the underlying concern of consumption and production, the implications of present actions on an unknown future. Ramsay’s work involves marrying the handmade with the found, she finds making an integral part of her process. “I always like to make things,” she says, “it’s about trying things out and building up an inventory of these strange objects.” Engaging with process across the College, from the jewellery workshops to laser-cutting, Ramsay has found

particular inspiration in the Materials Library. Discovering an aluminum building product made by a Danish firm for example, Ramsay was attracted to the contradiction of a flexible yet strong metal. Having written to the company, a sample of the metal now takes its place in her degree show installation: “I’m wondering what are these weird things, trying to evoke that aura they have. Part of my practice is giving materials their say.”

www.zarapeggyramsay.com

Tragic Error – Tanzen

Mr G. – Daily Prayer

Mira Varg For this year’s Show One, MA Art and Science student Mira Varg presents Techno Fetus. Her project looks closely at the relationship between techno/acid house music and the embryonic womb state, both of which follow a rhythm of 120 beats per minute. With this in mind, we caught up with Varg to find out what songs have inspired her project and kept her motivated during the construction of the show

www.miravarg.com/MIRA-VARG

Culture Beat – Der Erdbeermund

TAKE FIVE “There is something more behind dancing, we’re enjoying it because it subconsciously reminds us of our embryonic womb state.”

Detroit in Effect – R U Married

Acid Jesus – Radium

SHOW ONE

Sergei Zinchuk

SHOW ONE

IN PROCESS

For Show One Sergei Zinchuk (BA Fine Art) created the ghost of a house from the unassuming combination of plywood and cable ties. Suspended from the ceiling, the gridded form hovers in the atrium space at the College. The piece began life in an impromptu exhibition of work at Zinchuk’s own house. This year, the BA Fine Art students have collaborated in the curation of the degree show, the process started with them self-selecting into groups. One of the themes connecting Zinchuk’s group together was an interest in place so one evening he brought them to his rented Victorian terrace house (no.17) and suggested each person make work for a particular space, in 17 minutes. Through this fast process, Zinchuk made a 3-dimensional grid within one of the rooms. This exercise in space sparked something within the Ukrainian artist and he sketched up the idea for a larger, storeyed structure: “It started off as a map of this London house to which I’m an insider because I live there but I will also always been an outsider because I grew up in completely different linear, socialist housing. There’s something

kind of desperate about that kind of London house… I like the way my final piece clings on to the modern building around it.” Questioning how the organisation of space influences us, Zinchuk’s installation invites the viewer to walk through its form, experiencing it from the inside. Wanting to get the physical object as close to a 3-dimensional drawn line as possible, the construction and installation has been quite a feat. Experimenting with material, he tried welding, thinking that he’d like the rigidity of metal: “I hated it. Perhaps it’s my personal fear of commitment or I just don’t like working with materials like that.”

He settled on plywood strips and cable ties, enjoying their quiet anonymity, “as close to a non-material as possible,” he says. The installation took Zinchuk and a friend four days, building a floor at a time, raising the piece up and building the next floor. What had been drawn up with straight lines and angles soon became gently bending and leaning as it took physical shape: “I strangely like that. I was openminded. When I’m in the process, I’m just in it and whatever happens, happens.”

www.sergeizinchuk.com

THE DELIGHTS AND DANGERS OF DIGITAL A machine that offers you a sweet while stealing your image, a study of the bacteria found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the story of one of the world’s most isolated islands might seem like they have little in common. Apart from all being works in Show One, they share something deeper, each one exploring the possibilities and implications of digital technology. Emanuel Tomozei’s Technoclampsia (BA Fine Art) combines virtual reality technology with performance art, inviting viewers to enter a world the artist has created. “I was doing performances and trying out film but I wasn’t happy with them. I didn’t enjoy using my body as the medium,” he explains, “then I found VR and I thought ‘this is the perfect thing’. This year I really wanted to apply it to a performance and see how it would work… I think there’s huge potential for this technology in the live arts.”

Emanuel Tomozei

Technoclampsia brings together two participants, beginning in a 3D scan of the exhibition space it transitions into a virtual location in which users take on roles within a narrative. Though the work is inspired by Kafka’s On a Penal Colony, viewers aren’t simply enacting the artist’s directions; they have agency to explore the world themselves. Part of the challenge for Tomozei has been, he explains, “figuring how you can tell a story when people can do whatever they want”.

SHOW ONE

The idea of agency within the digital world is something Neale Willis (MA Photography) also explores. His interactive piece invites visitors to play a game to win a sweet. Throughout the duration of the game, enough data is gathered for facial recognition, with the subject effectively surrendering their personal information. “I’m asking questions about what is considered private, hidden or erased,” says Willis, “Personal data is the new battleground.” Willis brings the dark arts of data collection to the fore with both of his installations. The other being a soundscape from the 16-digit codes left behind when a tweet is deleted, music made from digital debris. “Digital stuff doesn’t have to be what it is,” says Willis: “When you take a photograph with a digital camera it isn’t capturing light, it’s just ones and zeros. And those could be anything. It’s only an image because we tell it to be an image.”

The connection between the physical and the digital has been explored by several of this year’s graduating artists, from Jean-Baptiste Lagadec’s painting tools inspired by Photoshop to Jessica Young’s hanging sculptures (both BA Fine Art). For Naomi Ellis (BA Fine Art) the connection between the digital and physical is a question of geopolitics and social inequality. Ellis was intrigued to discover Tristan de Cunha, the world’s most remote inhabited island that has no airstrip but is connected to the world via the Internet. The island enjoys an unreliable Internet connection now, but

Neale Willis

SHOW ONE

previously each inhabitant had an allowance of 100 words a month to send, in Morse Code, to the world. “People assume everyone is connected but that’s not the case, there’s a politics to the system”

Naomi Ellis

of bacteria across the pages of the book (the images are constructed digitally, offering a satisfying circularity to the project). From the world’s most isolated island to a virtual reality world, all this work – though differing wildly in both content and form – engages with the impact and opportunity of digital technology. In some we see future possibility and ambition while others offer caution and a moment’s pause, but each is a view on the relationship between man and machine.

The artist set about befriending inhabitants – as well as introducing another isolated island, Pitcairn, to her story – inviting them to share their stories and images. The resulting work includes film, text and sculpture, all exploring a sense of place, overlaying something digital onto something physical. So, a photograph of Pitcairn island is projected onto clay and plaster which the artist moves with her hands, distorting it. Elsewhere images of coral reefs have been transferred onto vacuum formed plastic forms reminiscent of miniature landscapes.

While Ellis plays with macro and micro scales, Sarah Craske (MA Art and Science) focuses solely on the micro, detailing the bacteria found in an 18th century copy of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. With libraries digitising their manuscripts and books enabling global audiences to access them, Craske wondered what would the impact be on the physical artefact. As objects, do they have other systems of knowledge to offer rather than just the text on the pages? Surprisingly, she found a 1735 publication of Ovid’s Metamorphoses for sale in a junk shop for £2. Collaborating with microbiologist Dr Simon Park, Craske began mapping the bacterial landscape of the pages. “We could start to see how people were using with the text,” she says, “that people engaged with the Latin more than the English language section because the specific bacteria for touching is on the Latin part.” Her final work includes the cultures of the bacteria as well as magnified ‘maps’ detailing the arrangement

Sarah Craske

IN PROCESS

Jean-Baptiste Lagadec (BA Fine Art) spent the first two years of his degree working digitally. But something wasn’t right. “I wasn’t happy with myself and I didn’t know why”, he explains, “at some point I realised that I was working on my computer morning to evening, when I had a break I would still be at my computer, then I’d have dinner and watch a movie on my computer. When the tool for leisure is the same as the tool for work, it’s problematic.” Looking to break the monotony and lethargy he felt working at a screen all day, Lagadec took a year out for a Diploma in Professional Studies. He contacted printers and publishers, keen to engage with the realisation process, making things. Working at a screenprinters, Lagadec was energised by the daily practice: “It was fantastic. I was doing a bit less with my head but way more with my body. I was in contact with colours, solvents, the smell and the dirt.

He began the third year of his degree with a new sense of conviction but the influence of digital technology did not diminish. Inspired by Photoshop and artist Pierre Soulages, Lagadec began making his own painting tools.

Jean-Baptiste Lagadec

SHOW ONE

Taking the mark-making functions from Photoshop as a starting point, he made hand-held foam pads (called PS Brushes) as well as repurposed mops and water guns.

Finding pleasure in his process again, the painter worked up layers of ink and paint on wood using his new tool vocabulary. Layering became important, not only in reference to the construction of a digital image but also to painting as a 3-dimensional object. For Lagadec, the discipline has been redefined as

an object by its relation to the digital screen. Paintings, now more than ever, are 3-dimensional. Lagadec’s series includes reference to Greek mythology in which Ariadne’s thread laid throughout the Minotaur’s labyrinth marked Theseus’s pathway back. Here Ariadne’s thread is Lagadec’s mark-making process; the viewer is invited to explore the layers of each painting, to piece together the chronological process of making in reverse. The layers of gesture build up, detailing the painter’s process and most importantly the pleasure of making marks:

“In the past years that I felt I was working for art, I realised that I wasn’t working for myself, I was working for my tutors, for my peers and for art. I was working to convince everyone else that my work was valuable… If you don’t take pleasure in your work, it shows.”

www.jeanbaptistelagadec.com

SHOW ONE

Black Sabbath – Fairies Wear Boots

The Julie Ruin – Oh Come On

Peaches – Dick in the Air

Young Trynas – Control

Fugazi – Suggestion

Eva Cookney “If I’m making a video or taking photos then I usually stick on some music to give me a kind of rhythm to think and perform to. Lately this has been a lot of Peaches but I have stuff I always return to like Fugazi, The Julie Ruin and Black Sabbath.” For her final project, BA Fine Art student Eva Cookney has been working under a performative alter ego called Sage. A lot of her work focuses on the preparation involved in transforming herself into Sage and getting into the right frame of mind for her performances. From trialling wigs and costumes to improvising in front of a camera and watching YouTube tutorials for inspiration, Cookney’s work-making ritual also relies heavily on music. To find out more about Sage, Cookney told us which five songs she has been relying on most to gather inspiration when working on performances.

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IN PROCESS

SHOW ONE

Jessica Young

The College’s atrium is a huge space, offering up a tempting spatial canvas to graduating students. Jess Young (BA Fine Art) has taken on the challenge by creating her largest work to date for Show One, a series of hung objects made from foam, latex and inflatable plastic all in pastel shades. Engaged, like many students, with the impact and experience of digital technology, Young however wanted to work with tactility and decided to marry the two: “It’s a concept I’ve been working on for most of this year, trying to realise that the relationship between the physical and the digital isn’t a rivalry. There’s a synergy. Just because something is digital doesn’t mean it can’t be translated into the physical.” Having spent time this year arranging objects to photograph for Instagram, Young decided to bring the screen into real space, hanging her objects in a row across the atrium space.

Her objects, many of them found, suggest the synthetic with their bubblegum colours and manmade surfaces. And though this is where Young’s attraction lies, it’s important for the artist that the objects age, gather dust and the materials degrade over time. Selected for the emotional response they provoke, her objects respond to their environment, twisting, fraying and bulging: “The way that big pink strip of latex hangs? It curls perfectly either side. It’s so satisfying, so calming… The autonomy of materials is so different to the digital. You have a certain amount of control and then the material will do what it wants.”

Eva Wilkinson

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As something of a digital flâneur, MA Fine Art student Eva Wilkinson makes videos from footage captured from her digital wanderings on Google Street View. The locations featured are places she has previously visited within the real world, and through these films she explores the borders and boundaries of real spaces, remembered spaces, and urban landscapes. We asked Wilkinson to talk us through some of the key spots from her digital wanderings.

SHOW ONE

The corner of the pub: I was trying to look through the window of the pub but as I got closer the façade of the pub cracked to reveal a grey space, like a hidden door or passage-way – like you might find in a computer game.

The Rainbow Glitch: When travelling around Google Street View on the back roads that border the town I grew up in, I came across a glitch which looked like a few multicoloured stripes standing in a field. As I travelled down the road, the glitch moved with me. At one point I zoomed in on it and it changed state into a beautiful rainbow which disappeared as soon as I tried to move towards it. The car park: I dropped down to Street Level from Google Earth and landed in a car park. I tried to move out of that space, but was blocked by an invisible wall, I couldn’t get out. Every time I approached the exit the buildings in front of me warped into strange shapes.

The Road: This location is a road leading out of my home town, when moving down it – I changed direction and when I looked back in the direction of the town, walls appeared either side of the screen like a tunnel.

The Sea: Because the Google camera shoots from the road it is very hard to get close to the sea on Google Street View. In my film, I capture the way in which the façade of the seascape rolls back and forth like waves as I try to get closer to it.

www.evawilkinson.co.uk

Performance

Imma: Trans, Okay, Challenge, Performance, Audience

It’s part improvised, part rehearsed – it’s half and half – the plastic sheet is my suffocation mechanism and then the topics that I address are constant so Judith Butler is a big thing in it and talking about objectification and the gaze are all pretty concrete, but how I fill in those blanks is quite improvisational What is good enough and what does that mean and who’s to say what is good enough?

I used MA Fine Art as a way to question performance – where it sits and what its capabilities are – what the recipe for live performance is, opposed to digital performance or performing photography Before that BA Fine Art, Parsons Before that, I was a professional ballet dancer

Trans

If I can do that, it’s great

It’s a really important performance for me

The whole trans thing takes a lot of courage, a lot of constant reminding of how much energy it takes to make everything okay – whatever okay means

I’m going through all this stuff so recently and to be just be able to outwardly and openly speak about it in a public space brings it to me differently rather than just talking to friends or at home or in the pub I’m hoping that it crosses someone’s thought patterns and that they’re thinking “Wow, that is something” or “I should think about that, I’m partaking in something that’s not so great” or “I could be doing something more”

Okay Okay for me is just being able to be in the world unjudged and to not judge – it’s a two-way street We’ve been trained to judge when things don’t quite meet the standards which we’re used to and that’s something I’m trying to eliminate from my subconscious

Sometimes it’s just different and coming to terms with what that difference is and knowing that it’s offering something other than what you’re used to – that’s something that’s really hard to grapple with – people say: “No. Don’t like it. That’s weird. I’m not into it. Change it.”

Challenge Talking about things like [the personal experience of trans-gender issues] in a public space can seem quite confrontational when really it’s something that’s quite normal that we should all be thinking about I’m saying “this is me and you can respond and talk back to me” Somehow with performance we’ve come to this space where we analyse and watch and we don’t dare cross the line, but I’m inviting you to cross that line and to really get there and that’s why I’m performing for an hour so that wall deteriorates and by the end of it you can come up to me

I’m using my everyday life to keep it fresh and keep it moving – I try not to repeat – movement-wise, it’s all responsive with the moment and the mood Audience I’m more looking to the audience for the conversational part of it and by that I don’t even mean a response – a response would be great – it’s through the gaze that the audience is there with you and they’re ready to take on more information and you can see when they’re ready to say “I’m here, what else are you going to say?” or it’s like “This is a lot, I’m going to go out the door because I don’t want to deal with this” It’s challenging the space and it’s up to you as a viewer to respond: “I’m going to rupture the space and go into it and be in the madness or I’m going to refrain from that and let it just stay on the periphery of who I am so I can walk away cleanly without having to, you know, wash my hands” That’s always the question of performance I think

SHOW ONE

THE ART OF SELF-CURATION You’d be forgiven for thinking it’s business as usual with the degree show but this year, BA Fine Art students have curated their own show, engaging collectively to present the work of nearly 200 fellow artists. What began as a move by the BA Fine Art Pathway Leaders and the Course Leader to give the graduating artists more agency in the display of their practice is now bearing fruit. The process started months before the show with an open studio event at which students were encouraged to meet their counterparts from other pathways and social groups – almost like speed dating. “We haven’t all been in tutorials together. We haven’t talked about everyone’s work together,” explains student Josephine McGarry-Hunt, “so quite quickly you have to say, ‘I do this, you do that. We’re quite different but there’s a core, a difference or a similarity. Whatever it is, we can work with it.’” And so groupings formed, not around material or aesthetic but concepts and approaches. McGarry-Hunt’s group of six discussed their work, figuring out resonances across their practices as well as the differences between them: “The lateral connections you had to make in that speeddating scenario means you don’t just find someone who paints like you. You’re forced to make rash, possibly wrong, quick decisions. Your group is disjointed so that process of finding those connections and how one work relates to another was important.”

Soon the practicalities took over the conversations: what type of space was required, was it wall-hung or freestanding, does the work need electricity, what eye height should it be at? With the Course Leaders listening to the needs of each group, the College’s space was carved up and the students met their

SHOW ONE

neighbours and settled into the space that would be their work’s home for the fast-looming degree show. Being in curatorial collectives continued to be useful as the graduating artists negotiated among themselves how to display their work: “We all get tunnel vision. Everyone here is thinking about their piece – I want it to look good and this is my plan. And then there’s five other people saying ‘you need this, but you don’t need that and have you thought of this?’ Although we all care about our own work we have to react to the people around us and find the best place for each one.”

Has the process of curating their own show added unwanted pressure or has it done what was hoped and empowered. “I’m not the most natural collaborator – I like to control my work,” says McGarry-Hunt, “But I think it’s made me realise that it’s possible to work in such a chaotic, large space with people you don’t know well. It goes to show that there are hurdles that everyone has to jump because these things are big and complicated. But it can happen, it can be alright.”

SHOW TWO Seven programmes were presented in Show Two, with disciplines stretching from design and fashion to drama and cultural enterprise. Whatever the material or process, you could find work challenging the world to be a better, bolder place. CULTURE AND ENTERPRISE:

BA Culture, Criticism and Curation, MA Innovation Management DRAMA AND PERFORMANCE:

BA Performance Design and Practice, MA Performance Design and Practice, MA Character Animation FASHION:

BA Fashion, BA Fashion Communication, Graduate Diploma in Fashion GRAPHIC COMMUNICATION DESIGN:

BA Graphic Design, MA Communication Design JEWELLERY AND TEXTILES:

BA Jewellery Design, BA Textile Design, MA Material Futures PRODUCT, CERAMIC & INDUSTRIAL DESIGN:

BA Ceramic Design, BA Product Design, MA Design: (Ceramics); MA Design: (Furniture); MA Design: (Jewellery), MA Industrial Design SPATIAL PRACTICES:

BA Architecture, MA ARCH Architecture, MA Architecture: Spaces and Objects, MA Narrative Environments

SHOW TWO

Odira Morewabone Odira Morewabone (BA Graphic Design) visited Nairobi earlier to research the creative subcultural environment of the Matatu industry, an informal system of minibus taxis known for their visual style, operating on fixed routes with no fixed timetable.

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Mr Wanyoike – I met Mr Wanyoike a few days into my trip. At first I found his curiosity annoying because it drew attention to me and my equipment slowing my progress. But in the end, this humble cart-puller who delivers clean water to the residents of Eastlands in Nairobi came to be a friend and personal tour guide. He was a blessing. He knew every trader, tout and “hustler” in Donholm and made sure that I met each and every one of them. This was easily the best thing that could’ve happened. I’m sure there’s a lesson to be learnt in there somewhere.

Doctors – Being from a country with a similar public transport environment as that of Kenya, I have this overriding memory of graphically bold posters advertising traditional healers/doctors littering walls, telegraph poles and street lamps. Nairobi was no different. I got very strange looks peeling off these posters.

“I want to tell a different story of Africa, a continent of creative, cool and enterprising young people who live by an ethos of doing things their way and by their own rules.” Each Matatu vehicle is an individual expression, from the imagery which can run from hip-hop stars to religious verse, to the music blasted from their sound systems. Morewabone was drawn to the plurality of the visual culture, documenting how it amalgamated local with global, sacred with profane. “By relying on various visual sources and the inherent subcultures these carry,” he says, “the Matatu integrate old and the new capturing a unique and temporal moment, reflecting and refracting the very community it caters for.” Here, Morewabone shares five moments he captured on his trip.

A Portrait of ‘Spoiler’ – Aside from the customised body artwork of Matatu, an element that has always interested me was the act of naming taxis. The lack of route numbers or destinations leaves only the name as identifyer. Referring to the Matatu by name builds some sort of loyalty as though it’s a living being.

The Backbones of Nairobi – Both the Matatu industry and the Jua Kali Sector (Kenya’s Informal Business Industry) are impressive symbols of what marginalised and “forgotten” people can achieve. These “informal” industries employ a majority of Nairobi’s population.

SACCOs (Savings and Credit Cooperative Organisations) – Intended to make Kenyan roads safer by formalising the Matatu industry, Michuki rules (named after the transport minister who implemented them) came into effect in 2004. Operators were required to remove designs from their Matatu, replacing them with a single colour with a yellow reflective strip than ran the entirety of the vehicle. This was the government’s attempt to regulate the industry and ensure they shared in the its economy. Drivers were forced to organise into companies and wear uniforms as ways to make it easier for authorities to hold them accountable if they flouted traffic laws. Although officially abolished, Michuki rules eased in April 2013 under a new Kenyan President, who reportedly told the government to “let young people do their thing”.

www.matatuism.com

SHOW TWO

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BA Culture, Criticism and Curation

Throughout this year’s Show Two our final year BA Culture, Criticism and Curation students offered a new and unconventional approach to the sometimes hectic environment of the show. Through specialised, student-led tours, visitors will be invited to enjoy an alternative view of the projects and themes on display as well as an insider’s take on the College itself. ‘Crit Lounge’, a curated decompression lounge designed by the students, will also be open to the public, offering a space for guests to relax, unwind and discuss the work on display.

Developed by Louella Mae Ogle Ward, the View Finder tour will take you to spaces within the Granary Building that provide views of London. Finishing on the College’s roof top terrace, participants will be invited to partake in landscape drawing and share their own experiences and memories of the area. Influenced greatly by the work of

Air Studio, particularly the King’s Cross Walking Club, and the King’s Cross Voices Project, Ward has sought to explore and understand people’s experience of the College’s location. Through collecting stories and memories of the area, Ward intends on building an audio library of the present life and times in King’s Cross.

The Sexuality tour, designed by Aravin Sandran, explores youth and sexual identity within the work and exhibits throughout Show Two. The tour will conclude with “20 questions about love and sex”, a candid conversation about contemporary sexuality during which participants will be offered free coffee and condoms. Borrowing its name from Italo Calvino’s novel and devised by Yuying Yang, the Invisible Cities tour will explore the inconspicuous spaces in Central Saint Martins, uncovering lost stories of everyday life in the College. Designed with hints and riddles, the tour will follow a treasure hunt format, varying each time to offer a different take and experience of the space.

Taking its inspiration from the College’s female dominant gender balance and the contradictory inequalities reflected throughout the heavily male art world, the Feminism tour, created by Allyne Costa, will take its participants on a route through the show to demonstrate how this environment has manifested itself in our exhibiting students’ final projects. Earthlings, a tour curated by Robynne Collins, will focus on the work by students studying MA Material Futures. Exploring the relevance of the material concepts on display, the tour will ask visitors to think of ways in which material structures could contribute to improving the earth’s future, inspiring viewers to confront current global predicaments concerning themes such as nature, sustainability and education.

EMPATHY BY DESIGN Design, it could be said, is an intrinsically empathic process. To connect with the lives of others, to think from another’s perspective in order to rethink the world. A project that harnesses the power of empathy most acutely is Di Peng’s Dementia Simulator (MA Industrial Design). The adage of only knowing someone when you’ve walked a mile in their shoes is put into practice with Peng’s headset which allows the user to experience a variety of dementia symptoms. Proposed for caretakers and family members of dementia sufferers, the headset disrupts sensory experience such as obscuring people’s faces so the user has difficulty recognising them or obstructing speech so communication is only ever partial.

Dementia Simulator, Di Peng

The process of stepping into someone else’s experience is taken to absurdist extremes in Freya Morgan’s series of screenprints If People Were Like Plants. The soon-to-be graduate of BA Graphic Design has created domestic scenes in which the human inhabitant swaps places with a pot plant; so as leaves luxuriate in bed, a vase on the chest of drawers nearby is stuffed with disembodied arms. Her work, though laced with healthy doses of humour, stems from her emotional connection to plants. “I’m always devastated when they die,” she explains, “obviously plants don’t have a central nervous system in the same way that we would understand it, but they might feel in a way that is completely

SHOW TWO

intangible to us. You just never know… These illustrations represent my take on mankind’s selfishness. I’m evoking a sense of equality between the two entities in that, in some alternative world, the plants would be keeping us on their shelves.” If People Were Like Plants, Freya Morgan

Anthropomorphism appears again in Joely Clinkard’s Humanware collection (BA Ceramic Design). Her ceramics – characterful vessels standing on awkward, metal legs – are an ode to her experience of the city. The colours painted on her surfaces echo the diversity of the people that embellish the grey and brick of London’s backdrop. “My work celebrates people and individuality,” Klinkard says, “it’s a bottom-up politics, accentuating the good things about difference and the vibrancy of the city.”

While Clinkard takes inspiration from the materiality of the city, it’s the power of place to help forge connections across communities is explored by Helena Jordan (BA Architecture). Focused on Cliftonville in Margate – an area of which a third of the population moves in and out each year – Jordan’s project seeks to build connections between the local transient and indigenous populations.

Humanware, Joely Clinkard

SHOW TWO

If empathy is about taking on others’ perspectives, Show Two explores design’s ease with empathy. From dementia sufferers to pot plants, these are projects connecting to, and enhancing, our emotional understanding of not only ourselves but our wider community. At a time when difference threatens more and more to define our political and social landscape, founder of the Museum of Empathy, Roman Krznaric – who spoke at the College this year – implores “we are now in a more urgent need of empathy then ever before”.

Called Northdown Network, Jordan’s plan centres around a community hub and housing comprising nurseries, kitchen and dining spaces, and learning zones using the form of the cul-de-sac so users slow down and engage with the environment. “By making the programme and design as interactive as possible you can create these empathic situations,” says Jordan, “If you see the same person a couple of times there’s a bond, a build up of small interactions that goes on to build bigger, lasting relationships.” Having lived with various families in Margate, Jordan gained an understanding of what people were, and weren’t, getting from their housing and local area. She identified the resources that both new and long-term local people needed, from a free nursery to a community kitchen and a skill swap. The scheme is volunteer-run and supported by local business: “It’s for people, they decide how they want the building, it’s transformable… Architecture is for people and they make it what it is.”

Biying Shi (BA Graphic Design) is using film to dismantle the preconceptions of the ‘Made in China’ label. The Chinese designer documented and interviewed workers at various factories and workshops producing furniture, paintings, electronics and shoes, often in reproduction rather than new designs. “I want to tell a story,” says Shi, “I think ‘Made in China’ is not just a label that talks about the country of origin but it’s also a metaphor for the complex relationship between the consumer and the works. I want to make a multi-dialogue story so my audience feels those barriers and prejudices.”

Northdown Network, Helena Jordan

SHOW TWO

Orla Lawn

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1 Breaking away from traditional textile design methods, Orla Lawn (BA Textile Design) set out to create threedimensional textiles with an architectural feel for her final project. Using a mixture of silk, plaster, concrete and wool, Lawn has combined casting and construction techniques with traditional weave processes and structures to create pieces that were able to cast beautiful shadows and move in unexpected ways.

With this heavy architectural influence in mind, we spoke to Lawn to find out which five buildings and architects have had the most impact on her designs.

Louis Kahn – National Assembly Building of Bangladesh:

Up close, the timber impressions in the concrete give this building incredible texture.

Kahn created the most beautiful light in his buildings.

Victor Horta – Horta Museum, Brussels: This is the dreamiest house of all art nouveau architecture.

Sir Denys Lasdun – Royal National Theatre, London:

Erno Goldfinger – Metro Central Heights, London: The proportions and repetition of this façade are so satisfying.

Herzog & De Meuron – Messe Basel: So many of Herzog and De Meuron’s buildings have brilliantly playful surface textures and shapes. www.orlalawn.com

SHOW TWO

Selom Sunu

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For his final project, Selom Sunu (MA Character Animation), created a three-minute animated film titled Kojo’s First Day, which tells the story of a boy’s first day at school in Ghana. Covering identity, bullying, acceptance, bravery and freedom, the narrative follows a secret Kojo accidentally exposes, and the consequent reactions from his classmates and his mum. Sunu shared with us the films that inspired this work.

The Jungle Book – As a child, I remember watching The Jungle Book over and over again. Back then, I probably just liked the songs and the pretty pictures but as an adult I can appreciate the number of layers the film has. Kojo is basically a Ghanaian Mowgli. Like Kojo, Mowgli was convinced he fitted into his surroundings and hated being made to feel different, especially as jungle life was the only life he had

known since birth. In this image, he is desperately trying to prove he is as much of a bear as Baloo. He knows he’s not a bear but is so sick of being undermined that he is willing to imitate an approved jungle creature just to be accepted. This is the kind of lie I am fighting with my film.

X + Y – This British film that I stumbled across on Netflix ended up being a huge inspiration for parts of my story. The plot revolves around an extremely intelligent but socially awkward teenager who resents that the only person he could relate to passed away. Unfortunately his mum suffers the brunt of this resentment and as a result the divide between them becomes ever wider until difficult circumstances bring them together again. I took inspiration from this relationship and adapted it to suit my story and to add some emotional undertones to enhance what could otherwise be seen as a comedy. Aladdin – As this is my favourite film, it was bound to inspire me in some way. It’s packed with the theme of being yourself. Both Jasmine and Aladdin were sick of being who they were. Aladdin went to extra lengths to reinvent himself and impress Jasmine but found out the hard way that he couldn’t keep up the pretence, and also that she preferred the real version over the fraud.

Flat Stanley – A book I read as a child that follows the transformation of an ordinary schoolboy into a paper thin boy after he is flattened by a billboard. At first Stanley enjoyed his new-found popularity but then the attention soon grows wearisome. I drew inspiration from the simplicity of the story and the way that his classmates reacted to him.

Gyimah Gariba – This short film inspired me both visually and in terms of the simplicity of its message. It portrays two classmates from different family backgrounds (one rich and one not so rich) and their respective journeys to school. When they get there we find out they are friends. What I got from that was that, in life, people will have various starting points and backgrounds, but this shouldn’t prevent them from getting along or being happy – a major theme in Kojo’s First Day.

selomsunu.tumblr.com

EXTRAORDINARY EVERYDAY It may sound improbable to find inspiration in the daily commute but Lucie Davis (BA Jewellery Design) has done just that. Her graduate collection includes false nails that replace your Oyster card and a ring that’s only activated while doing the washing up. “These ideas just kept popping up as I was experiencing my daily routine” explains Davis, “You get so immersed in it, it’s an intimate, active thing – that’s what I want to get across.” Touching in Touching Out, for example, is a set of false nails with the RFID tag from an Oyster card embedded in them, allowing the wearer to pass through the London Underground ticket barriers without rummaging around pockets for their card and with a little bit of magic. With a good dose of humour, her collection turns the mundane into something magical. With the use of magic sponge, Davis has created a ring that expands when it touches water, holding the crystal in place in its setting as it does. The ring requires water to be activated, inverting the usual ritual of removal at the sink. Davis asks us to rethink those moments and objects that we take for granted in our daily life, she’s even created a series of silk scarfs embellished with hand drawn blue lines, a handmade homage to the ubiquitous J-cloth and Hermes scarf in one. While it re-evaluates the everyday, Davis’s work equally plays on the notions of preciousness. “Sometimes you can get caught up in the word ‘jewellery’,” she says, “Every time I say ‘I do jewellery’ people always ask what metals I use. It’s a bit of shock to them when I say… sponges. Whatever you use, just taking an object and calling it ‘jewellery’, you’re doing something, you’re adding a notional sense of value.”

Touching in, Touching Out, Lucie Davis

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Stacey Huang, another soon-to-be graduate of BA Jewellery Design, finds her inspiration in an equally unassuming place, Tesco. Visiting the supermarket on her daily routine, the Chinese student finds comfort in the familiarity of the products’ packaging: “I find that packaging has become an international language. I’m an international student but I understand this language.”

Lucie Davis

Having had a previous practice as a graphic designer, Huang’s collection works with the signs and symbols of supermarket products. “I know what’s under the graphics,” she says, “I’ve learned how to get people to buy things. I know the traps.” So she has transformed the throwaway visual language of mass-produced packaging into a collection of goldplated and pearl jewellery. There’s the Buy One Get One Free earring where the second is, in fact, its reflection, or the Bundle in which a necklace is threaded with both earrings and a ring.

While jewellery designers are finding the mundane a fruitful path, the everyday underwent several transformations during the BA Fashion Show with not only Jaeeun Shin’s gown constructed from Waitrose bags but Chiara Tommencioni Pisapia’s collection which saw men ironing, sweeping and cleaning their way along the catwalk.

Buy one get one free, Stacey Huang

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Pisapia’s collection brings together various inspirations into one place. The designer became interested in sustainability, especially the recycling of plastic, while working for an NGO in Myanmar last year. Her process combines offcuts and waste from various manufactories as well as objects she finds discarded in London streets. Thinking about the notion of disposability, Pisapia then stumbled across the phrase ‘disposable people’ in reference to contemporary slavery and began researching. These touchstones of influence combine in her Labour Mart collection an almost-performance of men enslaved in domesticity, their enforced everyday acts clothed in a flurry of textiles.

“That’s what interests me the most, the social and political aspects of objects. But at the same time I know my work is quite colourful. I was looking at ’60s advertisements aimed at housewives and they are quite graphic and colourful… We buy products that are colourful plastic and shiny, they cost £1 and then you realise that behind them is a footprint of slavery. Behind the colour and shine there is a dark side.”

Jaeeun Shin

Across disparate projects, these designers ask us to think again on our daily experience, challenging us to go beneath the surface of that which we no longer see. From the pleasures and peculiarities of our routines to the ramifications of our effortless consumption, this work reminds us that the everyday is worth another look.

Chiara Tommencioni Pisapia

SHOW TWO

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Wilson Astley Wilson Astley (BA Product Design) has been investigating cynicism in design. His final project took inspiration from the narratives of sustainability, to create Pangloss, a new synthetic material, created using a home-made rotational moulder to emulate the wood grain of natural growth. “Cynical process, positive outcome” as the designer explains.

corner; for so unaccommodating are the owners of door- ways, passages and angles, that they seem to have exhausted invention in the ridiculous barricadoes and shelves, grooves, and one fixed above another, to conduct the stream into the shoes of the luckless wight who shall dare to profane the intrenchments.”

Here, Astley shares five examples from his research: Just to be clear (as many have strong opinions), this is what I mean when I refer to ‘cynicism’: “Cynicism is having a disrespect for the status quo, being disparaging of others’ motives or actions, and distrusting of their capacity for goodness and betterment.” My examples aren’t all positive, indeed, most are pretty horrible. However, what my research revealed was that all design should have at its core a healthy cynicism. To seek to change the status quo is to be a designer. To have a distrust of people’s ability for betterment, and to seek solutions on their behalf, is cynical.

The Georgian Urine Deflector – In urban environments we experience plenty of cynical design; from benches designed to make sleep impossible, to deliberately uncomfortable chairs in fast-food chains to increase turnover. You’d be forgiven for thinking our cities are designed to agitate us. This practice is commonly known as

“hostile architecture”. One of the earliest examples is the Georgian Urine Deflector. One of the booming public house industry’s unfortunate byproducts was causing nearby shopkeepers distress. A patron of 1804 London commented on a new design – “...in London a man may sometimes walk a mile before he can meet with a suitable

Mosquito Anti-loitering Device – In the hostile architecture of today we see much more ambiguous behaviours targeted. Mosquito Anti-loitering Device, “has the teeth to bite back at these kids” and “take matters into your own hands in a way that does not involve any confrontation”. It uses technology originally developed to dissipate vermin, playing a high frequency tone only audible to those under 25. The quotes are from the manufacturer’s website. This design clearly displays a cynical motive and output, characterised by its inability to deal with a “problem”, merely displace it. UCL halls of residence – The design for this halls of residence uses the original Georgian façade to appease locals’ anxiety over a new building, with the actual glassfronted residence standing a metre behind. The façade casts a shadow on the majority of the rooms behind, preventing light from getting through. It won the Carbuncle Cup in 2013, an award for bad architecture. The judges remarked: “The original frontage has been retained in a cynical gesture

towards preservation. But its failings go deeper. This is a building that the jury struggled to see as remotely fit for human occupation.” It highlights the delicate balance in the design process. If the architects had treated the external community’s worries with half of the disregard that they’d shown to the inhabitants, a much better design would have evolved. Plag by Waēl Seaiby – Designer Waēl Seaiby took HDPE plastic bags through processes to create a new material and subsequent set of vessels. His raw material was free but Seaiby stated that people are unable to value a product produced from HDPE plastic because of their semiotic bias towards cheapness and disposability. His vessels cynically disguised the true material to work against that bias. Waterwheel by Wello – The image of a vibrant, sari-clad woman with clay pots balanced on her head, transporting water, is synonymous with the Rajasthan. This is a cultural role engrained within Hindu traditions. Wello challenges this with a new vessel for water that is rolled on the ground, making the transportation of much more water, easier. Cynical design – design that “disrespects the status quo” – can have positive results. Wello’s challenge to tradition to solve real problems gives me hope.

SHOW TWO

Louis King

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Louis King is a MA Performance Design and Practice student whose work retells autobiographical stories from the American heartland. His final project, another bald dead woman, is performed alongside his collaborator Manon Santi. Speaking about the performance, King said: “It’s a darkly humorous performance-exploration of the human body as both medium and canvas, exposed through narrative, sculpture, and movement. Our histories are written into our flesh. They allow us to differentiate ‘self’ from ‘other’. What, then, is the effect of separating the body from its stories? Is individual experience sacred, or is subjective experience universal? True to its American roots, another bald dead woman expands the practice of democracy to autobiographical performance practice.”

Here King shares his five key inspirations behind another bald dead woman.

Holly Hughes is an American performance artist who works predominantly with autobiographical narratives. She is most well known as one of the NEA Four for her legal battle over censorship and public funding of the arts in America. Hughes’s work explores the potential for dialogue between LGBT culture and her Middle American upbringing. Holly is an incredible mentor and artistic inspiration. This is an image of French performer, Oliver de Sagazan performing Hybridization, part of his Transfiguration performance series, which was featured in Ron Fricke’s film Samsara. Working with de Sagazan over the last two years has inspired me to explore the use clay and other organic materials on the body. Michigan. This is an image from an area of Middle America known as the Rustbelt. Growing up in the economic decline of post-industrial,

car-manufacturing territory has deeply impacted my worldview and perspective on the relationship between art and life. My trade union upbringing has engrained in me a desire for creating and maintaining community, even at the expense of the individual.

This is a photo of Mabou Mines experimental theatre company performing Samuel Beckett’s Play. I chose this image both because of Beckett’s prolific influence on my texts, and because of the performance-making techniques I learned while working with Mabou Mines from 2012-2014.

This is an image of my artistic collaborator, Manon Santi, performing in our final production another bald dead woman (and other stories). I am incredibly inspired by my collaborations with Santi and all of the other talented artists I have the pleasure of working with. Without them, my work would not be possible.

MATERIAL MAGIC When looking at material innovation in Show Two, it makes sense to begin with MA Material Futures. Working in the intersection between technology and craft, many of the Material Futures projects offer us a glimpse of the future of stuff and Pure Human, by Tina Gorjanc is perhaps one of the most unnerving projects on show. Looking at the applications of biotechnology, Gorjanc presents a series of objects and documents to critique and provoke around advances in tissue engineering technology. With the aid of a QC, the material explorer set about investigating the current legal (and moral) structures around biological information. Her aim is to highlight the legal gaps around the use of human material within research, an area currently attracting the attention of the luxury industry. Gorjanc’s project includes a collection of speculative leather goods cultivated from DNA – as if to confront us with the reductio absurdum (bags made from cultivated human skin) of the path which we are, unknowingly, already walking down.

Also from MA Material Futures, Hanan Alkouh’s project looks at first glance like a butcher’s shop, but in fact her table is laid with joints made from Sea-Meat Seaweed, a material made with dulce seaweed. The project, focused on a seaweed known to taste like bacon when fried, deals with sustainability asking, as meat production becomes more unsustainable, can we retain the culture around meat eating while engaging with a replacement? Pure Human, Tina Gorjanc

SHOW TWO

Alkouh’s main challenge was to transform the texture from plant-like to something more meat-like. With each experiment she got closer to a satisfactory replacement and soon realised that alongside the ecological sustainability of meat production sits a social sustainability: “Religion and ritual often revolve around meat; these celebrations and sacrifice are our natural behaviours as human beings. There’s a strong language and aesthetic around meat and that’s fabricated from our culture. We’ve built a dialogue around it and that’s what I want to celebrate.” This cultural connection led Alkouh to create her first “pig’s carcass” made from dulce, inviting a butcher to joint it, with the fruits of their labour on show in her ersatz butcher’s shop.

But material exploration isn’t confined to MA Material Futures. Giada Giachino, MA Design: Ceramics, Furniture & Jewellery, has been innovating in the traditional realm of the cameo. Looking at the Italian-based industry, Giachino was struck not only by the lack of contemporary cameo design but also by the endangered skills of the cameo engraver and the unsustainable use of precious shells. Making connections with the shelfish waste in the food industry as well as discovering that a third of the shell is wasted through the traditional cameo process, Giachino began experimenting with a way to utilise this material waste.

SeaMeat Seaweed, Hanan Alkouh

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Her breakthrough came when she created a process that colours ground shell, which she could then suspend in resin, resulting in a beautiful, and flexible final material. Giachino has created a series of jewellery using lobster offcuts and resin to give people a glimpse into the possibilities: “There is a big conversation about the ethicality and sustainability of jewellery at this moment. Sometimes I think recycled silver or ethical diamonds are not enough. There’s a provocation in this collection because its saying that you can wear mussels – but the value is in the process. That’s the provocation. Cameo is a technique; the shell itself is worth almost nothing and yet the final outcome is valuable so there’s something in the middle, the process. Like diamonds, they are amazing stones but when you cut them you make them something else and you have the value.”

Giada Giachino, photo: Vicente Mateu @ Mateu Galler

“I just lose myself in them. People were so interested that I had 10 or 15 people coming to help me. It’s such an ancient craft, so people wanted to learn about it and get it into their repertoire.”

Understanding a material – let alone inventing a new one – is a long process. While all these material explorers have projects to celebrate in Show Two, many are at the beginning, rather than the end, of learning what their materials can do. So watch this space.

Undoubtedly, Giachino is at the start of a long material journey, the next step being her summer residency at the University of Maine. Staying with an aquatic theme, but turning to a material with an almost-lost tradition, Joe Boon (BA Fashion) created a collection including garments made from fish skin.“Material creation has always been really important for me” says the designer who’s previously made giant sequins out of gelatin and dresses out of a moped. In a reference to his relationship with his father, Boon was inspired by fly-fishing and set about learning the craft of this now-unconventional material. “Fish skin has been used for thousands of years, it’s died out because people have a preconception that it’s not a good material but salmon skin is ten times stronger than sheepskin,” Boon explains.

Spending his time in Billingsgate Fish Market, the designer collected the waste skins of salmon and Dover sole. At home he set up a production line of cleaning, de-scaling, curing in a solution of olive oil and egg yolk, then drying and cleaning again before being left with beautiful, translucent skins. With some garments needing as many as 38 skins, the collection was a labour of love. “I find repetitive processes really meditative,” says Boon:

Joe Boon, photo: catwalking.com

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Millie Horton For her final project, BA Fashion Communication student Millie Horton explores the creative spaces of a series of influential women with her printed publication SEINE. Featuring 19 women, the first issue comprises artists and designers in a diverse range of spaces from studios to swimming pools.

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For a sneak preview of SEINE, Millie has selected some of the most inspiring spaces chosen by the women she interviewed:

Amanda Harlech chose her painting studio in her country home in Shropshire. I suppose what made this interview so interesting was the fact that she is not renowned for her paintings and this gave me a huge insight into another area of her life. Amanda is a relatively low key person within the industry, so I was honoured to spend time with her.

Polly Brown took me to Heathrow Terminal 5 – probably the last place I expected anyone to seek creative inspiration. We sat down and watched airplanes take off into the sky for an hour, which is when I was reassured that such a busy and confined space could also contain such a strong sense of calm. I interviewed Sarah Kathryn Cleaver in her bathtub. We both stripped down and spoke about water as a creative space until our skin wrinkled and the water turned cold. Sarah was one of my favourite women to interview because of her endless sphere of knowledge and wisdom.

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I constantly struggle to find words that accurately describe Zoe Bedeaux’s home because I’ve never been anywhere like it. It is the most incredible home I have ever been to and she is one of the most incredible women I have had the pleasure of meeting. Hannah Martin is a jewellery designer who lives in the Barbican complex. As far as creative spaces go, the Barbican is rather aesthetically pleasing and it was really interesting to feature a totally different kind of creative space.

www.instagram.com/milliegracehorton

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Ben Waters

blocks of solid colour, I over-processed them with many effects and filters until they become unrecognisable and shapes began to emerge.

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Having experimented with process and material, BA Fashion graduate Ben Waters’ collection looked romantically to the digital age.

“To me the digital glitch is a visual representation of vulnerability in the seemingly infallible algorithm of pixels we absorb almost constantly, where the limitations of digital emotion are met. Compressed and zipped, this is how we now experience nostalgia.”

At Frieze Art Fair, I was drawn to the work of Nina Beier. On display was a selection of different coloured human hair wigs, squashed into glass frames on muted pink backgrounds. It transformed a familiar and textural object into a physical image of itself, removing it from a contextual function, but also preserving it like an artefact. I questioned how clothes become contained and become images while still being worn on the body, so I began draping faux fur wrapped in PVC.

I worked with Stylo Graphics in Watford to print glitch-inspired prints on industrial weight PVC. It was important to experiment with digital printing rather than hand painting or dyeing because I wanted to explore the digital image in particular. I made a physical pattern on paper for the skirts and capes that I cut in PVC by toile-ing in a lighter weight plastic, then I scanned those pieces, redrew them in Illustrator and created the patterns contained within them on Photoshop. Starting with

I discovered the work of french photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue online. He is probably most known for his black and white photographs of sports in the 1920s and 30s. Big driving duster coats, pleated tennis skirts, spectators in gowns and furs, jackets worn by ice skaters and racing drivers; these were the things I took reference from. As with Beier’s compressed textures, I was excited by the idea of containing motion as Lartigue did, many of them distorted and blurred by the subject’s movement. I have found a way of illustrating that involves a combination of hand drawing and digital manipulation. I always draw the figures walking so that I can imagine how the clothes will move around the body and where needs volume. I then scan them in high resolution and use digital tools

to add colour and sharpen up the pencil line. I also superimpose the glitched prints over images of the toiles to make decisions on the placement, colours and scale.

All the fabrics, aside from the PVC, are composed of natural fibres, importantly they are all in shades of warm grey, beige and brown. I made this selection to emulate faded black and white/sepia photographs so that, when placed under the highlysaturated digital prints, they could reference digital storage distortion of history. It was important the fabrics had a visibly textural quality that could be flattened underneath the transparent PVC.

PROJECTS OF PROTEST Viewers of the BA Fashion Show will remember Phillip Ellis’s collection as a palimpsest of politics. The designer combined traditional British proverbs and Palestinian headscarves with contemporary political slogans and even a nod to David Cameron’s Pig-gate. Speaking to Dazed about fashion’s power to be political, Ellis said “I think that clothes are one of the most powerful ways to communicate yourself and that, in a sense, fashion is inherently political. I think that I’ve been given a platform to express myself creatively and that it’s fitting to use it to communicate my political agenda.”

While Ellis’s work brings together the aesthetics of nationality, both culturally and politically, into a living breathing collage of multiculturalism, Emily Schofield (BA Graphic Design) has focused on the nature of protest.

Philip Ellis, photo: catwalking.com

Inspired by the Situationist International of the 50s and 60s, a group that criticised the transactional and commercial nature of contemporary life, Schofield challenged herself to create a typeface of protest and disruption. “Typography is a tool of communication and it has to abide by these rules to be efficient,” explains the graphic designer, “so on what level can a letterform express protest? Can it break out of its supposed structures?” Initially, the designer experimented with many forms in print, playfully obscuring and dissolving letters but her move to digital type brought a broader application: “Can it be a typeface that actually acts, that doesn’t work? That’s what the digital can do, you can create action in a typeface.”

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And so, a word written in the entirely legible Ariel type on Schofield’s interface soon glitches and morphs. Protest may previously have been found in content, the words written, but here they don’t really matter. In an anthropomorphic turn, Schofield explains “my typeface refuses to stand still. It struggles with itself.”

The future of statehood itself is focus for Katy Shand (MA Material Futures). Looking at displacement and migration, Shand proposes the second half of 21st century will see people living on the oceans in floating island habitations. In what Shand describes as “a critical exploration of the implications of marginalising and isolating people” she has created a series of objects – including a raft – to aid the formation of future independent nations.

Situationist Typography, Emily Schofield

But it’s not just the contemporary situation that inspires this year’s graduates. Florance Tebbutt, BA Jewellery Design, has created a series of goldwork and embroidery pieces made in response to the Magdalene laundries. The laundries were institutions in Ireland run by Roman Catholics, from the late 18th century to the late 20th, to house “fallen women”. Since the 1990s, the institutions have been exposed as places of systematised physical, sexual and emotional abuse of the women and children who were in its care. With a family friend brought up in one of the Magdalene homes, the subject is personal for Tebbutt. In her work she

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embellishes christening dresses with traditional goldwork more usually seen on military and religious garments contrasting both the institutional and domestic narratives of stitch. Some pieces include intricate papal medals such as the Supreme Order of Christ while another details the names of 796 babies discovered in a mass grave in the grounds of a Catholic institution in County Galway in 2014. “I’m drawn to artefacts and narratives. Objects have the power to say a lot,” Tebbutt says. Her work acts as a commemoration of the lives about which she stitches but also an implied institutional critique juxtaposing the glory of such gilded medals against the vulnerable fabric of the christening gowns. “That’s what I wanted,” she says,

Florance Tebbutt

“a visual contrast – the goldwork is always going to be beautiful, the rich red colours of the papacy. I wanted to reel people in with that first but then there’s the underside that people then discover when they’ve stared at a bit longer… though it’s historic, it’s still very much present.”

From the meta-political nature of protest to the most personal and affecting of stories, these projects remind us of an object’s power to reflect our world back at us. One can be ever hopeful that we might learn something in the process.

Order of Pius IX, Florance Tebbutt

SHOW TWO

Zhiwen Tang

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Chinese Dream is a graphic novel created by Zhiwen Tang (MA Communication Design) which tells his father’s story. Having contributed to the construction industry for more than 40 years, Tang’s father witnessed China’s transition from the post-Maoist era to “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”. Tang was awarded the annual Cecil Collins Drawing Prize for this project and here he shares five of the most significant moments captured in his graphic novel:

My parents got married and had their first child while my father was working as a construction team leader in a government-owned construction company. He worked very hard and he was very good at what he did. At that time, China was poor and instead of receiving bonuses or any other kind of benefit, he was given a large number of award certificates. When he realised my mum was expecting a baby, he was happy and didn’t know what was coming.

According to the “One Child Only” policy at that time, if my mother broke the law by giving birth to their second child, my father would lose his job, the family’s only form of financial support. My father wanted to keep the job and the baby. So my mother had to secretly move to the countryside and hide from the birth-control investigation group sent by the government. In this drawing, my parents are struggling not to be found in a maze which is made up of the three dimensional structures based on the Chinese character for “birth control”.

My father lost his job due to the birth of the second child and as a result he had a hard time making a living. Luckily in 1978, China opened its door to economic policy experimentation. Soon after, the policy “Reform and Opening-up” changed thousands of people’s destiny, including my father’s. This drawing shows the appearance of international advertisements and the impact it had.

Since then, China intensified its development and slogans such as “development is the absolute principle” and “time is money, efficiency is life” become popular. People were overwhelmed by the rapid economic growth and unaware of what it would bring. To most of the people, including my father, it was the golden era of all business. But for many areas and issues, the side effects could be as bad as hell. In this drawing, I wanted to create a scene which look like both heaven and hell.

Nowadays, the economic growth has started to slow down and all the side effects have started to show. China’s latest national slogan, “Chinese Dream” is no longer a policy or a law or even a suggestion. Its ambiguity can be seen as a question and one which everyone in China needs to reflect on. What is the Chinese Dream? How do we want it do be? www.tangzhiwen.com

SHOW TWO

Maria Gasparian MA Design: Ceramics graduate Maria Gasparian’s intricate project Colour Ceramic City sees ceramic bricks produced using a combination of industrial methods, such as extrusion, with traditional craft skills. Using dynamic forms, texture and colour while celebrating the plasticity of clay to examine big city issues such as the strains of growing populations, alienating building developments and barren neglected spaces.

“The colour is essential to my project. There is a strong evidence that colour has an immediate effect on people’s mood and wellbeing. Having come from a country with a lot of sunshine and saturated colours I applied it through brightly coloured glazes.”

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Here are the buildings and architects that inspired her final project:

Merchants’ National Bank by Louis Sullivan in Grinnell, Iowa

Hospedale degli Innocenti in Florence by Andrea della Robbia

Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company building in Chicago by Louis Sullivan Chicago

Park Güell in Barcelona by Antonio Gaudi

Majolica building in Vienna by Otto Wagner

TRANSFORMING TRADITION

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The souvenir, a place commemorated in object, has had an update at the hands of Phoebe Quare (MA Material Futures). Her collection of lights and bags, including the invention of a new material, is inspired by a small island off the coast of County Cork.

Phoebe Quare

“This is for them. It’s inspired by them and for them,” she says of her designs for Bere Island. Interested in the unique lifestyles of small communities, Quare found that such communities were threatened with rapid depopulation in recent years due to economic pressures as traditional industries waned. The young designer travelled to Bere Island, to investigate what local materials could be transformed in products to help economically sustain the population. “They have some amazing materials on the island – quartz stone and seaweed, sheeps’ wool. They have it, but they don’t know what to do with it. They actually pay someone to take the sheeps’ wool off the island to keep it clean. That’s really exciting, I could work with that.” Quare identified several materials – from the sheep’s wool to mussel shells – that were being discarded or worse, costing the community money. Eager to transform the mussels into something usable Quare began experimenting. By applying heat, the shells turned entirely white, and after grinding them down and applying a natural binder she had created a workable plaster-like material. The resulting lights Quare designed reference the Martello towers dotted across the island, as well as the military-style signal lamps, folding both the

Mussel Plaster, Phoebe Quare

military history of the island as well as its current industries of agriculture and fishing into one object. Quare’s collection of mussel plaster lights and woollen bags has become part of the island’s story but also offers an income stream as the designer shares the manual for production with the inhabitants enabling them to make their own souvenirs. “I’m using the skills of the islanders so that it can be carried on,” she says, “it’s giving them a starting point, for them to take ownership of the island’s future, to see what’s possible. This is possible.” From here, she hopes that other designers might be attracted to Bere to rethink the island’s materials and grow the collection.

While Quare was interested in installing new making based on traditional industry, Clementine Fiell (BA Fashion Communication) has been documenting the British fashion manufacturing. Her final project, Built, takes readers on a tour of thinkers and makers from Margaret Howell and Vivienne Westwood to Doc Martens and Sunspel: “I’ve always been interested in viewing fashion more as clothing than fashion. I’m interested in durable, long-lasting fashion. Its processes.” Celebrating centuries of skills, Fiell toured factories and workshops across the UK as well as ending the life-cycle by documenting the fate of discarded clothes in incineration and recycling plants. Built, Clementine Fiell

Phoebe Quare

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Britain’s industrial past and present was a point of reference for joint L’Oreal Professionel Creative Award Winner and MA Fashion graduate John Alexander Skelton. Inspired by the foundation of the Mass Observation survey in 1937 and its documentation of the everyday lives of mill workers in the Bolton, Skelton looked at the expression of identity and the symbiosis of the observer and the observed. His interest in the state of manufacturing in the UK today stemmed from the statistic that only 3% of wool woven in Britain uses British wool. Having searched for UK-based spinners, Skelton created knitwear with wool from millennia-old British sheep breeds. His final collection not only told a history of UK industry but also pointed to future ways of working sustainably.

Focused on the jigger jolly, a machine that produces plates, cups and bowls (as the mould for one side spins around on a central axis, the profile of the upper part is brought down to cut away the clay, creating the final shape). Salgados’s plates tell the story of their own production as well as exploring ceramic’s traditional coding in architectural draughtsmanship. “It’s about the value of the process”, he explains, “how opening up the manufacturing process can inform and enrich the user’s experience. If people engage emotionally with it, it becomes less disposable.”

John Alexander Skelton, Photo: Catwalking.com

Using 3D printing to make the moulds, Salgado then created the plates with the jigger jolly. Each plate is embellished on its surface with the abstract patterning of coding for ceramics in building from porcelain to brick. The designer also created his own collection of backstamps detailing the manufacturing from CNC milling, jigger jolly, firing temperature, the glaze and finally screen-printed decals. For Salgado, these plates are imbued with information, some decipherable by the consumer and some not.

Another project with the wool industry at its heart is that of Irene Infantes (BA Textile Design). With a shepherd in the family the Spanish designer began looking at contemporary work using Spanish Merino wool and was incredulous to discover that the majority of the Spanish wool was sent to China for processing before being sold back to Spain and its neighbours. Infantes visited wool producers in Spain, getting to know their material: Irene Infantes

“They were not proud of their material, they were not seeing much hope. But they’re growing this great thing. I don’t know how much difference I can make, but hopefully they’ll feel inspired.” Infantes set about designing a series of contemporary blankets with her aesthetics taken from photography of found objects on the streets of London, her recurring analogy being to shine a light on hidden things and forgotten values.

His interest in mass-manufacturing grew from course visits to factories in Stoke-on-Trent and Poland. “I feel a responsibility to engage with mass industry, but not as it is at the moment,” he says, “a lot of it is driven by consumerism, you make 5,000 of something just because. I want to understand how massmanufacturing, craft techniques and new technologies can be combined because I want to manufacture with more of a meaning.”

The global and anonymously-made lacks just that, meaning. From across the College and with many different outcomes, designers are engaging with traditional manufacturing, celebrating and challenging it in equal measure to tell its stories and evolve. From mussel shell lamps to jigger jolly plates, these designers are making manufacture more meaningful.

Traditional industry, in fact one machine in particular, forms the basis of Jose Maria Salgados’s BA Ceramic Design project. José Maria Salgado

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Po-Wei Chen The O Collection showcases the first pieces in Po-Wei Chen’s (MA Design: Furniture) collection of Taiwanese-inspired furniture. Created from three layers of bamboo filaments, exploiting traditional forming techniques from Taiwan, the collection reinvents a traditional craft into final pieces upholstered in breathable natural linen. Here, Chen tells us about the materials, culture and designs that inspired his collection:

Bamboo is a common material in my country, Taiwan. Historically bamboo has been used in different daily products like bowls, chopsticks, and furniture. However, it is now thought of as a cheap, low quality material but through traditional processes it becomes an amazing material, with lots of potential.

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I explored different kinds of traditional crafts in this project. The handcraft of heating and bending bamboo was developed from a traditional furnituremaking technique. It’s a very interesting process. This technique preserves the properties of bamboo as strong, flexible and durable and retains the original texture as well. Taiwan is a place of many different cultures. People who moved from China to Taiwan in the early period brought customs, language, lifestyle and architecture with them. Therefore, the foundations of Taiwanese culture are based on Chinese culture with Japanese and Western impacts shaping it more recently. It is this creation of our own philosophy and culture from these influences that’s the reason I am interested in the cultural meaning behind the objects.

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The “pure” aesthetic of Scandinavian design is always attractive to me. The atmosphere of Nordic interiors creates a very distinctive character and yet the design is inspired from daily life. As a designer, I really enjoy shopping. Shopping is a very direct way to find the new inspiration and understand trends, especially in different market places like department stores, galleries, or select shops with different sale strategies and customers. They are all good resources for design inspiration. Therefore, I think to be a designer you need to enjoy seeing what’s new on the market.

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Marc Richter

Psychological safety In games, the willingness to take risks, despite the likelihood of failure,

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Marc Richter, MA Innovation Management, has been looking at experimentation, failure and innovation through the prism of video game design. “Studying innovation has taught me that sometimes even the most inane sources can provide insights,” Richter says, “while failure often represents a threat in the context of large organisations, I identified game design as a space within which failure is highly constructive. In welldesigned games, failure motivates players and enhances learning.” Here, Richter shares five things to be learnt from video games. Freedom to choose one’s own actions Games show that in learning environments it is important that the player has agency; without a choice of action, learning is hindered since failures become less meaningful. Learning – in games – is most effective when freedom is combined with iteration. Increased interaction with the challenge allows for both experimentation of approaches as well as the fine-tuning of strategies.

is enhanced because the player knows there is no tangible punishment for failure. A game clearly raises boundaries within which safety is assured, a space where a single failed performance is not held against the player; where the individual, their colleagues and stakeholders can separate failure from consequence. In an organisational innovation context these boundaries could relate to stages within the innovation process or a physical space like a workshop thus providing the risk-taker with a low-stakes environment in which failing acts as a teaching moment without negative consequences.

Balance between challenge and ability Well-designed games balance challenge and ability; they match the player’s ability with the opportunity for action, resulting in a state of “flow”. In a working environment, if a team is given a too easy task, they have no incentive to adapt their approach to accomplish that task. In contrast, balanced challenge increases the effort and attention that is given to the process while also stretching the abilities of the team.

Precise and meaningful feedback Games give feedback often, allowing players to evaluate and adjust their trajectory. Feedback in well-designed games is precise, it allows for responsive next steps, since it also provides an indication of where adaptation may be needed. Where there are low consequences to failure and challenges can be reattempted the player develops rapid adaptation. Failures happen and feedback is assimilated again and again, until there’s been sufficient progress to overcome the challenge.

Incorporating failure While some games rely on mechanics alone to communicate their approach to failure, others craft a supporting narrative strengthening the player’s understanding. Sunless Sea (Failbetter Games, 2015, for example, is a naval adventure game in which narrative is a central. The game opens with the statement “Explore. Take Risks. Your first captain will probably die. Later captains may succeed”. This quote was included when the developers began play-testing early iterations. Test players were overwhelmed by the fact that their characters kept dying. Implementing narrative elements helped players understand how to progress, the risks that they should be taking and how to make their failures more intelligent. It can be argued that a game’s narrative frames the play much like the culture of an organisation frames its workforce’s experience within it. We could see an organisation’s culture as a narrative, as a story that shapes the ways of working.

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Maria Gasparian

MULLENLOWE NOVA AWARDS The MullenLowe NOVA Awards are now established as a major event in the College’s year, celebrating the most exceptional work from across both Show One and Show Two.

From a shortlist of 14, representing a broad disciplinary sweep, Oyster card fake nails and a microbiological footprint of Ovid’s Metamorphoses were among this year’s winners. Sarah Craske, MA Art and Science, was announced as the MullenLowe NOVA Award Winner for her Microbiological Hermeneutics project which explores and documents that bacterial history of a 17th century edition of Ovid’s masterpiece. “The thing that really struck me was the recognition of risk”, said Craske of her award, “I feel like I’ve taken a lot of risk in my work so it was really nice for that to be recognised in this way.”

Sarah Craske

The runners up were Tina Gorjanc, MA Material Futures, whose work muses on the ethics of human tissue engineering and Maria Gasparian, MA Design: Ceramics, who has been investigating the potential of ceramics in contemporary architecture. Gasparian also took home the Unilever Sustain-Ability Award. New for this year was YourNOVA, voted on by the public. Lucie Davis, BA Jewellery Design, scooped YourNOVA with her collection that brings a little bit of magic into everyday rituals, from Oyster card nails to rings made of “magic sponge” for use specifically while doing the washing up.

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“Over the years, the shortlist and winners of the MullenLowe NOVA Awards provide an important and fascinating record of the work emerging from one of the world’s leading art and design schools – a snapshot of the best forms of creativity and how they might be applied,” says Head of College Jeremy Till, “The process of selection is incredibly rigorous (and demanding on the judges), and despite the vast array presented, the best work always bubbles up to the surface, whatever the discipline.”

Lucie Davis

2016 MullenLowe NOVA Award shortlist in full: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Tina Gorjanc

Lucie Davis, BA Jewellery Design Neda Ahmadi, MA Character Animation Hanan Alkouh, MA Material Futures Tina Gojanc, MA Material Futures Frank Lin, BA Product Design Will Astley, BA Product Design Max Luo, BA Fashion (Print) Marina Mellado Mendieta, MA Industrial Design Maria Gasparian, MA Design: Ceramics, Furniture or Jewellery Mark Laban, MA Design: Ceramics, Furniture or Jewellery Neale Willis, MA Photography Sarah Craske, MA Art and Science Julius Colwyn, MA Art and Science Naomi Ellis, BA Fine Art XD

Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London www.arts.ac.uk/csm Facebook | @centralsaintmartins Instagram | @csm_news Twitter | @csm_news Editor: Teleri Lloyd-Jones Contributors: Christiane Brittain and Sophie Corcione Designed by: Emma King With thanks to: John Sturrock, Sophie Rush, Shannon Swinburn and Jeremy Till