PORTFOLIO OF WORK MARCO SCERRI
The designer is therefore the artist of today, not because he is a genius but because he works in such a way as to re-establish contact between art and the public, because he has the humility and ability to respond to whatever demand is made of him by the society in which he lives, because he knows his job, and the ways and means of solving each problem of design. And finally because he responds to the human needs of his time, and helps people to solve certain problems without stylistic preconceptions or false notions of artistic dignity derived from the schism of the arts. Bruno Munari (Munari, 2008, p.32)
Munari, B., 2008. Design As Art. London: Penguin Books.
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2013 – 2014
DIGNIFIED SPACES The new South Glasgow adult and children hospital (NSGH) building is due to be completed by early 2015. It will be one of the largest acute hospitals in the UK and Europe. This is the first generation of hospital buildings in which spaces for conversations are included at the design stage. The hospital has a total of 80 Quiet Rooms for this purpose. Dignified Spaces was a research project that explored what dignity means to users and how that could inform the design process of these Quite Rooms. It was based on a series of community engagement workshops involving individuals aged from 4 to 70. This study explored ways of considering all aspects of dignity, including how to listen, and what helps listening in clinical settings.
The workshop participants looked at the plants within a walled garden and made their own images from petals and leaves, using the cyanotype process. The aim of these images is to help inform the design process, wallpaper, fabric for chairs, and the overall aesthetic to be used in the Quiet Rooms of NSGH. As a communication designer working within a multidisciplinary team, I documented the process of this practice-led research, using photography and video, as well as designing the visual identity for the project. I also art-directed and designed the project’s exhibition, catalogue and website. The project was commissioned by Ginkgo Projects, in association with NHS Scotland. www.designingfordignity.co.uk
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Development process for the design of the Dignified Spaces logo.
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Connecting Communities
Biomorphic Symbol
Final logo for the Dignified Spaces project (left) and spreads from its exhibition catalogue.
Homepage for the Dignified Spaces website www.designingfordignity.co.uk
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2010 – 2012
WEATHERED This body of work consists of photographic studies of textures found on the surfaces of seaside rock formations on the east coast of Malta. The resulting images were then combined with basic graphic elements – form and colour – turning the photographs into abstract Photo-Graphic images. This image-making process derives from my interest in the abstraction of photography and the flexibility of this wonderful medium. In October 2012, I was invited to exhibit this project, at the European Commission’s Jean Monnet Building, in Luxembourg, in collaboration with Maltese writer and poet Antoine Cassar.
Four Rocks Antoine Cassar
And then, somewhere behind the letter M, a speck-sized speck, four rocks – at the top, Gozo, if you like, a reclined almond, sweet in spring, in autumn salty, if you like, a dagger of bronze, if you like, the eye of a Phoenician woman guarding the Mediterranean. A little this way, beautiful Comino, a two-humped camel, sitting down slowly churning his jaw, as he lowers his head to drink from the lagoon I fear he may choke in the plastic coral. Right at the bottom, crumbled Filfla, in ancient times an altar of giants, yesterday sacrificed thump after thump in the name of the gods of war, yet today she still salutes us with the hat that she has,
A selection of artworks from Weathered.
and in the slight splash across the water, Malta, call her a pearl, call her a blasphemy, call her a pebble surrounded by foam, call her a salty solitude or a fish reeking from her head, her tail up, sandy, her belly marble-hard, with one eye above the water towards the foot of Europe, the other eye hidden, she is like a dizzy saddled bream attempting to flee from herself, from net to net she swims perhaps she’ll find a little space, from net to net she swims until she dresses the net, swims on the wrinkling waves not knowing where to turn, swims not knowing where to go.
Exhibition of Weathered at The European Commission’s Jean Monnet Building in Luxembourg. 10.10 – 16.11.2012
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2011 – 2012
DISTANT LAND During the year I spent studying photography at Glasgow School of Art I worked on my major project Distant Land. It’s a cross-disciplinary reportage featuring undocumented Sub-Saharan African immigrants and asylum seekers whose journeys led them to the Mediterranean island of Malta. This project was my first attempt at approaching this unfolding humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean region and has lead me to question and reflect on the role of documentary practices in this field. I’m hoping to use this reportage as a starting point for producing research work that looks into the impact of aesthetic journalism on ways human migration is perceived in society.
Estonia Latvia Denmark
Lithuania
United Kingdom Netherlands
Ireland Belgium
Poland
Germany
Czech Republic
Luxembourg
Slovakia
Austria Slovenia
France
Hungary
Bulgaria
Italy Portugal
Romania
Spain Greece
Malta
Cyprus
Tunisia Morocco
Algeria
Egypt
Libya Western Sahara
Mauritania
Mali
Niger
Sudan Chad
Senegal
Guinea
Ghana
Eritrea
Nigeria
Ivory Coast
Ethiopia
South Sudan Cameroon
Gabon
Somalia
Congo
Kenya DR Congo Tanzania
If I stayed in Mali I would have been killed. I had to escape. I crossed the border into Algeria, then into Libya. I managed to find someone to help me go to Italy, handed him money and he arranged everything for me. Adam, Mali
A selection of photographs from the Distant Land Project.
Sweden
Finland
Estonia Latvia Denmark
Lithuania
United Kingdom Netherlands
Ireland Belgium
Poland
Germany
Czech Republic
Luxembourg
Slovakia
Austria Slovenia
France
Portugal
celebrations in specially-catered villas only metres down the road.
its form, its profile, its contours. This is not a Rorschach test,
In one photograph, Scerri has kindly captured Ibrahim, getting
but with a little pareidolic imagination, you may notice that the Mediterranean is the shape of a fetus: two feet crossed between
ready to pray, looking toward the Mecca. South-east, that is. His invisible line of worship must first leap over the nearby freeport,
Spain and Morocco, head resting against Egypt and Palestine,
the shipping containers, the passing tankers. Yet Ibrahim is not oil,
umbilical cord leading up to the Italo-Slovenian Alps. The comfort
metals or merchandise, and he’ll be staying put.
of the womb, a fertile basin, the cradle of civilisation. Now rotate
Hungary
Romania
Bulgaria
Italy
Take a look at a map of the Mediterranean Sea, and observe
Spain Greece
the map 180º, south-up. You may see the shape of a small boat,
I’m no photography buff, but as a profane observer, I can say that
complete with a low cabin, or a rectangular Pheonician sail. Travel, migration, trade. With the little boat still in mind, bring the
Scerri’s choice of black and white photographs far from reduces the thorny realities of migration to a two-colour, two-sided issue.
map back to its ‘standard’ (yet utterly conventional) north-up
In fact, through the delicate play on light, shade and shadow,
orientation. The Mediterranean is also the shape of a corpse, in
Scerri succeeds in further ‘humanising’ the Ħal Far residents,
fetal position, lying at the bottom of the sea. It’s been there for a while, enough to turn as blue as the water that swallowed it whole.
on both the individual and collective levels. I use the verb ‘to humanise’, and I realise what a terrible paradox this entails. How can one humanise the already human? This is perhaps one of the
Malta
Cyprus
Tunisia Morocco
Algeria
Egypt
Libya Western Sahara
Mauritania
Mali
Niger
Sudan Chad
Senegal
Guinea
Ghana Ivory Coast
South Sudan
Gabon
Somalia
Congo
automatically forfeited as they laid a foot outside the confines
about fish reeking from their heads - secrets will always find their way out, guilt will always manifest itself unwittingly. In a small
of their national maps, or onto the crowded boat that took them across the waves. Scerri’s juxtaposition of these professional
country like Malta, there’s not much use in hiding anything, but she tries anyway. For reasons as much social as geographical, the
and poignantly human photographs with a selection of online reader comments taken from Maltese newspapers by no means
south-east of the island is where the nation-state has chosen
exaggerates the contrast: many Maltese, as their counterparts
to stash its dirty laundry: industry, the power station, a recycling
abroad, attempt to mask their hate behind the term “illegal
plant, the freeport. At the very chin of the fish is a remote area called Ħal Far, which literally translates to Ratville. This is where
immigrant”, delegitimising the condition, plight and very existence of the migrant, while seemingly legitimising their own racist outlook
the Peace Lab and the migrant “tent city” are located. And this is where Marco Scerri has chosen to take his camera, his curiosity,
(or ‘inlook’). Yet the most important part of the story - that is, of the reality - is in the photographs themselves. On the one hand, we
his contemplative yet non-judgmental gaze.
may feel the immediacy of our interaction with the photograph, the
The tents, shipping containers, prefabricated blocks and former airplane hangars of Ħal Far today house hundreds of sub-Saharan migrants, the “darker feather in globalisation’s cap”, as Joe Sacco describes them at the beginning of his graphic story The Unwanted. Across the roundabout, Father Dijonisju Mintoff’s Peace Lab is home to a small group of Africans who, after losing the jobs and rented rooms they had briefly managed to secure after leaving the tents, suddenly found themselves unemployed and without a roof. Among the background noises in both places are the shrieking planes arriving and departing (the airport runway is but a stone’s throw away), the revving motors of go-cart races, the early-morning gunshots of hunters in the fields, wedding
Ethiopia
Cameroon
central responsibilities of the contemporary Maltese artist: to help return to migrants the humanity that they would appear to have
mouth to the south-east. There’s a saying we use a lot in Malta,
immediacy of the migrants’ situation; on the other hand, we may
Eritrea
Nigeria
Close to the belly button of this fetus-corpse is the island of Malta, itself shaped like a miniature fish, tail to the north-west, open
Kenya DR Congo Tanzania
Antoine Cassar Maltese poet, author of Passport
Angola Zambia
Namibia
Mozambique
Zimbabwe
The depth, the silence and the darkness of the Mediterranean’s seabed shall never relieve our conscience. Their memory shall never be forgotten. Their hope for peace and a better life shall never be extinguished. It is for these reasons that the Peace Lab organizes this ceremony. We feel duty-bound to honour the memory of these immigrants while at the same time we take this opportunity to renew our commitment to pursue with our work towards the promotion of peace and social justice in the world. The sacrifice of these immigrants reinvigorates our will to pursue our struggle against injustice, racism, and discrimination. Their memory is a constant reminder of our duty to leave a better world for our children. Fr Dionysius Mintoff, Malta
If I stayed in Mali I would have been killed. I had to escape. I crossed the border into Algeria, then into Libya. I managed to find someone to help me go to Italy, handed him money and he arranged everything for me. Adam, Mali
Spreads from the Distant Land Project’s 64-page newspaper.
muster some sense of the long, prolonged wait for an opportunity to move on, to continue growing, to spread one’s wings. With that image in mind, take another glance at the profile of the Mediterranean, north-up - this time, your eyes might distinguish a deep-blue bird with a short tail, a long beak, and wings spread wide from Gibraltar to Gaza. And Malta is there, located off the centre of the bird’s chest, perhaps a tiny fishbone piercing its lungs, or a limestone tattoo in its heart.
The Distand Land Project at Glasgow School of Art’s Graduate Degree Show 2012 at The Lighthouse in Glasgow.
Index page of the Distant Land blog www.distantland.eu
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2009 – 2013
BOOK & EDITORIAL DESIGN In the past 5 years I worked with a range of publishers with different approaches towards the nature and aims of the printed publication. This selection features work I’ve done for Miranda Publishers, a major publishing house of photography books based in Malta. There’s also work I’ve done for Inizjamed, a voluntary non-governmental cultural organisation that is committed to the regeneration of culture and artistic expression in the Maltese Islands and actively promotes a greater awareness of the cultures of the Mediterranean. Within this selection I’ve included the most recent editorial project I was involved in – Le Monde N’est Pas Rond, a collaborative protest piece with Maltese poet and writer Antoine Cassar, which discusses the thorny subject of human migration.
Spreads from The Great Temple 360° – a publication about the Knights of St John’s conventual church in Valletta. Written by Cynthia De Giorgio with panoramic photography by Enrico Formica. Published in 2010 by Miranda Publishers, Malta
Exhibition and launch of Historic Chapels of Malta & Gozo 360º – A book written by Joseph Grima with photography by Italian Enrico Formica. A project sponsored by HSBC Bank. Published in 2010 by Miranda Publishers, Malta
Design and photography for Gharaq Xort’Ohra – a book of LGBTQ literature by Slovenian writers Suzana Tratnik and Brane Mozetic. Translated into Maltese by various writers and poets and edited by Clare Azzopardi and Albert Gatt. Published in 2013 by Inizjamed, Malta
Design of the first issue of Le Monde N’est Pas Rond (The World is Not Round), an international artistic newspaper, based in Luxembourg. The publication explores the contemporary realities of migration, borders, and human rights through the publication of articles, art and illustration, photography, prose and poetry. Published in 2013 by Antoine Cassar, Luxembourg
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2006 – 2011
MARKS Logo design is one of my favourite areas of graphic design practice because it offers a unique challenge – how to tell a story in a symbol. That symbol is also the mother and foundation of a visual identity system. So what defines a good mark? I would say a compromise between function and aesthetics, clarity, simplicity and flexibility of use suiting any budget or printing process – elements that I strive to achieve in each and every logo and mark I design.
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Curwen Press UK, 2011
Gamezing Competition University of Malta Malta, 2010
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Storygardenz Italy, 2010 Illustration: Joe Scerri
Abacus Hotels Malta, 2006
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Faculty of Digital Gaming University of Malta Malta, 2010
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2008 – 2011
ALEXANDER HAMILTON Alexander Hamilton is a Scottish artist and ecologist who portrays nature in photograms. His work has been exhibited extensively in the UK and the rest of Europe in the past twenty years. During June 2009 I produced photographic documentation of Hamilton’s residency at Brantwood – former home of John Ruskin. Sensorium was an exhibition which exposed this work in a series of events across Scotland and England. My most recent work for Hamilton is the catalogue I designed for his touring exhibition Stromata, which showcased the artist’s photograms in five galleries across the Scottish Highlands from April to October 2011. www.alexanderhamilton.co.uk
A selection of photographs from the visual documentation of Alexander Hamilton’s residency at Brantwood, Cumbria in 2009.
Design for print, exhibition and electronic media for Alexander Hamilton’s travelling exhibition Sensorium (2009–2010).
Photograms – Cyanotypes 1
1. Exhibition Catalogue Brantwood 2. Exhibition Panel Lancaster University 3. Electronic Invitation Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh 4. Exhibition Logo
Photograms, the pictorial result of the cyanotype proc element of my artistic output. I am drawn to this tech its capacity to create unique images, each made by the materials. The cyanotype process requires one to work an object, usually a plant, which is placed onto a pre-p of watercolour paper. The image is drawn out of the the light from the sun, and permanently fixed by the s being washed in water – hence the term ‘camera-less The flower petals leave a trace, a unique deposit, on th final result contains the essence of each plant, displaye of blue, creating a contemplative work of art.
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cess, are a major hnique because of e plant’s natural k directly with prepared sheet plant through simple process of photography.’ he paper. The ed in rich tones
Alexander Hamilton’s work provides new responses to plants and the effects of climate change using picture-forming methods. Pictures were created at Brantwood during a Leverhulme Fellowship and inspired by cherry trees from the RBGE phenology monitoring programme.
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh Invites you to the John Hope Gateway Gallery and a celebration of Alexander Hamilton’s exhibition
Sensorium: Pictures from Nature’s Laboratory Saturday 6 February from 4:15pm to 6pm
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Cyanotypes made at Brantwood, 2009, during a residency funded by
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The Leverhulme Trust.
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8 – 22 August 2009 11am – 4pm 17 William Street, Studio 11 Edinburgh EH3 7NG Private View 7 August 12 noon – 3pm www.alexanderhamilton.co.uk
BLUE FLORA CELTICA Alexander Hamilton
Poster for Alexander Hamilton’s Blue Flora Celtica, an exhibition forming part of the Edinburgh Art Festival 2009.
Catalogue for Alexander Hamilton’s travelling exhibition Stromata (2011).
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2014 –
ION CONCEPT SYSTEMS ION Concept Systems is a leading provider of real-time navigation and data management systems for the seismic industry. Last March, this company approached me with a brief to re-design a set of icons to be used in the interface of one of their new specialist software packages. It’s a very interesting and challenging commission, that involves a thorough understanding of semiotics, as well as the opportunity to work with software engineers. The process of understanding and translating complex technical concepts into minimal symbols, is one of the most rewarding I’ve engaged with in my practice as yet. I’m working on this commission in collaboration with my father Joe Scerri, who is a very experienced graphic designer and illustrator, based in Malta.
A selection of icons designed for ION’s PandA software package.
For more info about projects or availability, please get in touch.
Design, Photography and Text Marco Scerri
+44 (0) 7501 195 444 msviscomm@gmail.com
Typography Set in Peri贸dico designed by Eduardo Manso Emtype Foundry, Barcelona www.emtype.net
www.marcoscerri.com
Images and text Marco Scerri 漏 2014 All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from the author. Compiled in August 2014.