I know what you did this summer
See Something Whitechapel Gallery - June 2016 Running from 10th June to 11th September, Keith Sonnier’s ‘Light Works’ was exhibited at Whitechapel Gallery in London.
After researching Sonnier’s history and past work I discovered that he was part of a group of artists who were said to have “challenged preconceived notions of sculpture� as they experimented with industrial and ephemeral materials. Sonnier used different materials from latex to satin and in 1968, began creating wall sculptures using incandescent light and experimenting with neon. By using copper tubing as a template for his work, he began sketching lines, arches and curves which lead him to the discovery of putting neon in glass tubing. By doing this, Sonnier was able to use the quality of neon to draw in the space using light and colour while the colour of the light interacted with the surrounding architecture. After having visited his exhibition in a gallery, I agree with the fact that the colour of the neon works in different ways depending in which room the work was placed. In Whitechapel Gallery, the room that his work was exhibited was a large, open room with different sky lights letting natural light into certain parts of the room. The old bricks on the walls and the large pillars reflected the lights in different ways and smooth texture of the work itself added a contrast between the work and the space it was in.
As I had never visited Whitechapel Gallery before, I had no pre-conceptions as to what the space would be like but I feel that Sonnier made great use of the space - highlighting different points of the room that the viewer wouldn’t normal tend to pay attention to, for example the corners. By having such an open room to display the work in, it allowed the viewer to look at the work from a lot more angles which therefore made the pieces more interesting. For me, I think that it is interesting how Sonnier doesn’t focus too much on what the message behind his work is - he focuses a lot on what the relationship is between the different materials and I think that that is what I enjoy most about his work. Some people could see me as lazy for not enjoying pieces of work that you have to search for the meaning of, but I would rather look at a piece of work and enjoy it for its aesthetics over its meaning. Overall, I really enjoyed the exhibition and I would highly recommend choosing to visit a random exhibition as you have no preconceived ideas about the artist or their work.
Do Something Begur, Spain - August 2016 A series of photos taken from a trip to Begur, Spain.
7
Read Something Before even starting my career as a designer (or whatever I may end up being), the uncertainty of a job in the future was a thought that would not escape my mind. Of course all sorts of jobs are hard to come by in any industry but as someone who isn’t particularly forward with my ideas and thoughts, a career in the creative industry was actually something that scared me. However I do believe that you can do anything if you put hard work and your mind to it. That’s why Kate Moross’ book, ‘Make Your Own Luck’ appealed to me in the first place. Based in London, Moross is a graphic designer, illustrator and art director. In 2007, Creative Review selected her for a Creative Future award and in 2012 she launched Studio Moross - a full-service creative design studio. Just the title, ‘Make Your Own Luck’ proves that this whole industry isn’t about waiting for opportunities to come to you. You need to set yourself up in a way that makes you able to go out there and find those opportunities for yourself. I loved how real Moross is in the style that she’s written this book she’s been completely honest in the way she talks about some really serious subjects which, when you are new to the industry, is exactly what you need.
One of the most interesting sections of the book was ‘Copyrights Copywrongs’. Over the summer break, one article kept cropping up in the news about copyright as the fashion brand Zara have been accused of directly copying the designs of jacket pins created by Tuesday Bassen. It was really interesting to read how Moross has dealt with it before and what she suggests to do if you ever feel like someone is using your work without your permission. Another interesting section was the one about money. The whole concept of doing work for someone and not getting paid for it is something that I have come to expect because of the industry that I hope to go into but it’s interesting to hear different peoples opinions on the subject. I tend to agree with Moross in the fact that if you see the work that you are doing as valuable experience for you then it may be worth doing it for free. Again, I really enjoyed how honest she was about starting out her practice - the way she just did work for clubs and people’s social media pages without them asking for it. By doing this, it built up her incredible reputation as a hard-working designer which then got her more work in the future. Over the summer, and being out of uni for such a long time, I started to become unmotivated in my work and was genuinely starting to question whether coming to uni was the right choice for me at all. However after reading this book, it’s boosted my morale - it’s made me realise that it’s okay to not have a clue what I want to do, and that it’s okay to just figure it out as I go along.
Throughout the summer break, I have done exactly that - I have made sure I have taken a break. Whilst taking a break I found myself reading blogs which I find very interesting and quite different to reading a magazine, but there’s nothing quite like picking up a glossy magazine and having a flick through the latest articles. I never used to be into reading magazines but in the past few years I have noticed that the quality of the design and layouts has really stepped up its game which has made the whole reading experience at a lot more enjoyable. One of my favourite examples of this is the ‘Wear’ section of Cosmopolitan. The monthly magazine gives a run down of the different fashion trends that are expected each month by displaying a variety of items fitting into the trend around a short description of how to easily wear each one. As the magazine itself isn’t very big in size, its a really ingenious way of showing lots of items but only using one page. Finding the trend led pieces isn’t really what I am in to, however the layout design is something that I find exciting.
The inspiration behind creating this publication started off from the last project of Level 4. After being given the freedom of being able to present our work in any way we wanted, I naturally gravitated towards writing. I fell back in love with writing about a subject that I was interested in and used my love of reading blogs to help inspire the style of writing and the choices I made regarding the presentation of the project. Receiving a 1st in that project spurred me on to create more writing and work based loosely around editorial design for my summer project. I decided to spilt the work up over the break so I didn’t complete it all in one go - allowing myself enough time at the end of the break to collate all the work that I had created into this one publication. Creating as how I really side of
this project allowed me to I then presented the final enjoy creating publications things and that maybe this
practice my photography skills as well project. It’s allowed me to realise that like this, especially the layout design is something that I want to continue.
Rosie Blyth