FANTASY
LETTER FROM THE CREATIVE Welcome to the sixth issue of ST.ART Magazine, a visually driven independent magazine dedicated to promoting and exhibiting the creative talent of St Andrews. As a platform to showcase the raw talent and inspiring work of its contributing artists, ST.ART strives to champion creative freedom and vision. As we approach the holidays, with the last of deadlines and impending exams, we are all looking for an escape. ‘FANTASY’ therefore seemed the fitting theme for our final issue of 2012. This semester ST.ART has continued to grow, forging links with creative societies and organisations from within St Andrews but also, excitingly, from outside of the Bubble. We would like to thank everyone for their continued interest and support, particularly to all our collaborating artists and societies for all their help and involvement this semester. The FANTASY launch event will be taking place on Tuesday 4th December and we look forward to seeing you all there. The aim of ST.ART Magazine, above all, is not to make you happy or sad, excited or calm, inspired or dejected, although it may do all of the above! The aim is simply to make you pause. And think. A picture truly can speak a thousand words. Enjoy.
Photography by MARIA FACIO LINCE
By IMMY GUEST Face art has always been something that has fascinated me, and recently I have had the opportunity to release my creativity through painting the faces of the ST.ART committee. There are scarily few people who have managed to make a living out of extreme face art, so I took some inspiration from the few I knew of. Face art is one of the most interesting ways to explore the theme of fantasy; if the model moves their face just the tiniest bit, it gives a completely different perspective on the design, allowing the artist to explore new ideas and presentations all on the same canvas of a face. The model also benefits from the experience, in that face art allows people to hide their real identities and take on the appearance of a new person while their face is ‘disguised’; it is that important step up from wearing a mask that makes all the difference.
Ayami Nishimura is a Japanese artist who has worked for many prominent photographers, designers and magazines, including shoots for Vogue, Dazed, Bazaar, and the Sunday Times Style magazine, to name but a few. She has done make up for shows for the likes of Louise Grey and Pam Hogg, and her clients include Topshop, Lady Gaga and Kylie Minogue. When doing her more extreme face-art, Nishimura is very thorough in her research, taking inspiration from fashion illustration, African art, nature and animals, she succeeds in bringing lots of different styles and influences together to produce the most dramatic effects. The mixture of different textures and accessories used are what allows the end results to be striking and ethereal, with models looking like they are from another planet.
FACE ART
Alex Box is yet another artist who has taken standard make-up to the limit; she is Creative Director for the make-up brand Illamasqua and has been designing avant garde creations on faces for years. As well as producing make-up, Illamasqua actually runs courses on how to create certain looks, through courses such as the ‘boudoir circus starlet course’ and the ‘art and the alter ego course’. It may look like face art has gone mainstream but at £375 a go, it seems a little too much to pay for something you could achieve in the comfort of your own home (albeit not as professionally). Box’s work can sometimes be so surreal that it verges on scary; she takes models’ features and moulds them into more extreme versions of themselves. Face art can be seen to be one of the best ways to explore the theme of fantasy; the images created can be so easily changed and manipulated to either incorporate or obliterate a model’s features, and be seen in a different light. So next time you find yourself in the position of having your face painted, take the opportunity to explore designs of a fantastical nature, and not just the standard clown.
CREDITS Photography Celeste Sloman Makeup Artists Immy Guest Toby Marsh Jenni Dimmock Francesca Altamura
“Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope.” Dr SEUSS Fantasies are a crucial part of our imagination, allowing us to escape the ordinary or everyday and indulge in the mysteries of our dreams. Becoming lost in one’s fantasies can be all too easy. When desires and fears interweave to distort one’s perception of reality, escaping into the imagination is a powerful draw. The impossible becomes the possible, an alternative reality, and that is the appeal.
Drawing by EMILS GEDROVICS
Photography by SAGE LANCASTER
Mixed Media by BEATRICE VASILIAUSKAITE
Illustration and Design by Myles Cook
Drawing by EMMA PARVIAINEN
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Photography by ANNA GUDNASON
Photography by MACGREGOR TADIE (Above) MARTIN LYLE (Below)
COSTUME WITH ANTONIA HURLEY
By ANNIE CORNWELL A few days ago I had the pleasure of interviewing Antonia Hurley, a costume design student in her second year at Wimbledon College of Art in London. Her current project: to design costumes for five of the characters from Midsummer’s Night Dream, one of which will be shown in an exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery. She talked me through the process of decision making when it comes to imagining her outfits. “The main thing about costume design is you have to pick up on little bits of character traits to be able to show to the audience... it takes a long time for you to fully understand your character and to get the feeling of them” she says.
I asked Antonia whether she thought that working on a project with an element of fantasy was more enjoyable. She replied that though it was more fun and interesting it was often much more difficult simply because there are no restrictions. She says:
Antonia places great importance on the literary sources behind her costumes - she read Midsummer’s Night Dream about five times, each time gaining new information about the characters to help imagine them better. Demetrius was the character that particularly spoke to Antonia. She saw him as young and immature, around eighteen or nineteen years of age and with the kind of romantic crush that can only happen at that age. She says: “... its arrogant peacocking of youth and self-assuredness. It’s like when you really fancy someone when you’re eighteen... with the feeling that ‘this is right’”. To show this in his costume Antonia made the decision to create a look that is ridiculously over-exaggerated, “with stupid colours and colours you wouldn’t really put together”.
We also talked about the importance of costume design in creating the reality of a play or movie. Costume makes the audience believe in what they are seeing. Character traits, Antonia believes, are picked up immediately in your first impression of someone - in the tiny details - and what they are wearing is key. Creating this sense of reality from something that is essentially unreal requires a strong foundation to become believable. “Your fantasy is only as good as its grounding” Antonia says, adding “any fantasy needs a good grounding, even if it’s only in the costumes.” Costume may seem a “small and indistinguishable” part of a performance but they create the groundwork from which a fantasy can be believed.
“It’s like our tutor said to us; you have to be the director as well, you have to go away and work out a world... I came up with maybe ten or twelve different worlds but it really makes you appreciate what a director has to go through to be able to finally sit down and be able to say ‘this works’ and that there are no holes…it’s way more interesting to design for but it’s so much harder.”
“These things seem small and indistinguishable” Demetrius from William Shakespeare’s ‘Midsummer’s Night Dream’
CREDITS Photographer: Ruoyang Zhang Designer: Hera Wan Set Design: Sitara Creative Team Location: the Castle Course Make-up: Sophya Gordon
SITARA* 2013
By LYDIA CRUZ Swiss Army I got it in a box full of little things for my birthday Slipped inside a sock that promotes good circulation And is meant for people with diabetes I don’t have diabetes, but the socks are thick And I hate cold feet We’d been planning on moving to Florence in May Leaving this dump of a town for Cobblestones, cafes, and sun My ticket was in my wallet between All those dollar bills And gas station receipts I can’t go He said on Tuesday People like us Aren’t meant for espresso and tan lines I carried it around for the bottle opener so It took me a second to pull the blade from between the corkscrew and file He was looking out the window I did it in one quick swipe Like buying something from his neck with a credit card
Mixed Media by ANNA STEINMANN
Mixed media by LIVIA MARINESCU
Drawing by NGA FUNG
CREDITS Photography Kelly Diepenbrock Featured Artist Jean-Paul Gaultier
By Vanessa Krooss Convincing people that fashion is art can be a difficult undertaking, though inventively striking collections placed in an equally imaginative setting can do an awful lot to sway those doubting fashion’s artistic legitimacy. The De Young in San Francisco, delivered exactly that with its dramatically staged and visually sumptuous “Jean-Paul Gaultier: From Sidewalk to Catwalk” exhibit this summer. It was clear that the show’s curators viewed Gaultier’s designs as art rather than just “clothes,” a distinction that is often ignored and one that his epic creations are clearly deserving of. The question of how to exhibit fashion in a way that properly highlights it without stripping it of its dynamic and contextual qualities is always difficult, but the De Young rose to the challenge. The complicated, controversial, and oftentimes unsettling nature of Gaultier’s designs were mimicked in the hauntingly lifelike projections of women’s faces talking, singing, or simply just emoting onto the heads of the mannequins. This worked especially well with Gaultier’s “Virgenes” collection, as the many folds, intricate embroidery, beautiful prints, and inventive materials of the Gothic and Renaissance-inspired pieces came alive, transporting you truly to another time and more
mystical place. In contrast to the atmosphere of otherworldly calm surrounding Gaultier’s more romantic collections, his corsets with pointy brasieres made famous by Madonna, and other S&M-inspired creations got a completely different treatment. Their highly sexualized nature was far from ignored, with an accurately scandalous black and red lighting scheme and suggestive positioning of the mannequins embracing Gaultier’s exploration of the brash and bawdy. A vital part of appreciating fashion is being able to observe the details and textures one wouldn’t able to properly experience from photos or reproductions. With that obviously in mind, this exhibit did a brilliant job of highlighting the mind-boggling amount of time, effort, and creativity that had been poured into every piece. The undeniably impressive level of craftsmanship and originality present in Gaultier’s designs, and wonderfully displayed by the De Young, could convince even the most ardent traditionalist that fashion is an art form worthy of exhibition and appreciation.
The Delicate and the Dominatrix
By LYDIA CRUZ When the sky slid shut like a blink come too soon The sun tried to burn its way in Flecks of night floated down glowing coal embers Settled in tree branches and hair They said the smell was like dog’s fur on fire But I say it’s dawn’s face laid bare
Illustration by Toby Marsh
Mixed Media by Galina Netylko
Photography by NEFELI PIREE ILIOU
Photography by RENATA GRASSO
Photography by RENATA SAMMIEGRASSO McKEE
Mixed Media by NICOLE HORGAN
By LORNA CUMMING-BRUCE
THE RAIN ROOM
In the middle of the hustle and bustle of London sits the oh-so-ugly Barbican Centre, the largest performing arts centre in Europe. As the suited and booted of London’s business district toil in the surrounding buildings and streets, something truly fantastic is going on inside this monster’s concrete walls: it’s currently staging Random International’s ‘Rain Room’. Step into the Rain Room and you can walk, skip, dance your way through 100 square metres of falling water without a drop landing on you. Nothing of its kind has been seen before. Thousands of litres of water were shipped into The Curve Gallery of the Barbican Centre where it falls into the grated floor, is treated and recycled, forming a perpetual shower. This fantastical installation was the brain child of Stewart Wood, Hannes
CREDITS All images sourced from The Telegraph
Koch and Florian Ortkrass, a group of former Royal College of Art students who set up Random International in 2005. Famous for their interest in audience participation and the manipulation of digital science in contemporary art, here the trio use a mixture of tracking cameras, pressure regulators, and solenoid vales to create something miraculous. Fiction has become fact. You can smell and feel the moisture in the air, see and hear the rain pouring down, but it parts to make way as you move through the room. Visitors choose whether to watch from afar or step into the installation. Choosing the latter, you take up the role of artist as shapes and sounds are created by your movements. If you’d prefer to watch the artwork safely in the balcony, best to do it during the ‘interventions’ by choreographer Wayne McGregor, danced to a score by Max Richter in a melding of nature, sound and movement. This is truly an art installation that makes fantasy a reality. If you make it to London before March 3rd, take a look for yourself. The two hour queues are testament to the work’s genius but worth the free admission at the end.
By ARTHUR RIMBAUD I have seen the sunset stained with mystic horrors Illumine the rolling waves with long purple forms Like actors in ancient plays.
Mixed Media by NEHA LUTHRA
Photography by CELESTE SLOMAN
Drawing by LIZZIE GOW
CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS Emma Parviainen Emils Gedrovics Sage Lancaster Beatrice Vasiliauskaite Myles Cook Anna Gudnason Macgregor tadie Martin Lyle Ruoyang Zhang for Sitara* 2013 Anna Steinmann Nga Fung Kelly Diepenbrock Toby Marsh Galina Netylko Nefeli Piree Iliou Sammie McKee Nicole Horgan Neha Luthra Maria Facio Lince Celeste Sloman Lizzie Gow
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Immy Guest Vanessa Krooss Annie Cornwell Lorna Cumming-Bruce
THE TEAM Editorial Team Editor in Chief: Toby Marsh Managing Editor: Jenni Dimmock Creative Director: Marian Casey Online Features Editor (Blog): Lily Moodey Online Features Editor (Friends and Resources): Claire Abrahamson Photography Editors: Francesca Altamura, Kelly Diepenbrock, and Nefeli Piree Iliou Photography Sub-Editors: Neha Shastry and Anna Gudnason Music Editor: Eleanor Quinn Music Sub-Editor: Callum Scott Fashion Editor: Vanessa Krooss Graphic Designers: Hettie O’Brien, Theo Weiss, Katherine Georges, and Toby Marsh Business and Advertising Team Publisher: Toby Marsh Associate Publisher: Jenni Dimmock Marketing and Advertising Director: Johanna Pollick Ass. Marketing and Advertising Director: Nicole Horgan Events Coordinator: Marian Casey Ass. Events Coordinator: Nicole Horgan Finance Director: Anna Inman Sponsorship Managers: Bianca Howard and Katya Leibholz Featured Writers/Columnists Lorna Cumming-Bruce Immy Guest Annie Cornwell Callum Scott
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