Unit X Evaluation.

Unit X has been a very different experience for me. I have never worked collaboratively with a group of people before. It was very tough to begin with as it was difficult trying to combine all of our different ideas and coming up with a final
theme we could agree on. Working with students from Film & Media also proved challenging as they aren't an art based course so the collaboration could only go so far and final outcomes were limited. I also found it challenging to create a lot of work as our group weren't meeting up due to people in the group not turning up. It took us a while to fully understand what the tutors wanted from us in unit X, I felt the direction was very vague and there were a lot of constant mixed messages going on. But after talking to Hannah and Mary I realised you could either work individually or as a group. My group decided as we were all very different we would come up with a common theme and starting point but from then we would work individually on our own projects. I very much enjoyed being in a different creative space but I did miss the feel of working in the art school studio. I enjoyed the freedom of the unit and not having to create work to fit in with course criteria. I have also enjoyed the blogging aspect of the course, it is very different from developing and using a sketchbook as a diary and I feel I have improved massively at blogging.

Exhibition Day!

So today was the day! After setting up yesterday I was really excited for everyone to see the work we had all created. I had to go into the Kraak Gallery early this morning as I'd been told my original way of hanging wasn't working within the space, so it had to be changed. A lot of others work had also been moved so the room worked better as a whole. We decided to remove my frames from the wall and arrange them on the floor collaboratively with two other students. The colours of all our prints worked better and they also complimented each other. The exhibition had a good buzz all day and people were very positive about the work on show. I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience of exhibiting my work in a gallery. It has been very exciting to work collaboratively and display my work amongst other design students in such a creative space!

My work

Mex's £1.75 items

Mex work

Exhibition Set up.

Today I was setting up my exhibition in the Kraak Gallery. Mex had a corner space. There wasn't much wall space so I couldn't display my work as I originally planned but I worked around the problem. It was the first time I had seen the space and everyone else's work. Every groups work was unique and creative and there was a wide variety of work, but it looked really good!
I visited one of unit x's festival exhibitions which was downstairs in incognito. Two groups from perform were displaying their work in the two rooms. The work was very good and worked well in the space! I have enjoyed seeing everyone's work and I think it is good that we have had the opportunity to display our work to the public.

My Work

Mex Work

Incognito Perform Exhibition

Final prints.

So after deciding on using the second palette I had created, my layered illustrations came together a lot quicker as a collection. I have been working tirelessly on photoshop, playing around with compositions, layers and colours. Some prints are a lot simpler than others using repetition and typography, working with different scales and sizes. I am extremely happy with the final prints I have created, I think this is mainly because I worked hard on drawing to begin with and I think that has payed off with creating better prints.

Kraak Gallery. Exhibition venue.

So we found out that our exhibition was going to be held in the Kraak gallery in the Northern Quarter. It is going to be on thursday the 16th May between 5-9pm. The Kraak Gallery is a great space and we are teaming up with the rest of Record and Play groups to display our work. I am super excited to exhibit my work to the public here! I created a Facebook event and have promoted it on our Mex Facebook page and my own twitter account.

Final tutorial.

So today was our final group tutorial with Artemis and Hannah , we had to tell them our final idea andwhat we were making and presenting in the exhibition! They liked my prints and suggested I create little books of my original black and white drawings  with my contact details on so people could take something away to remember my work by. I really like this idea and if I get all my prints finished in time I'm going to try and do it. We also talked about how we were going to hang our work and what we needed for the exhibition. I have decided to put my prints in a range of A3, A4 and A5 white frames. I am going to arrange them randomly on the wall, I think the white frames will look good against the colourful prints. I am going to try and finish my prints this weekend so I can print them and buy frames before wednesday when we set up.

Group Communication

We have been keeping in contact as a group through social media, we haven't been meeting up as much as the beginning as we all seem to have separated off onto our own work path. Our group really get on and work very well together, in the first couple of weeks we were meeting up a lot to discuss and brainstorm ideas. It took us a while to come up with our final idea but we all contributed to it and went together to pick our items. After choosing our idea and items we all decided to create our own individual projects from them. Our main source of communication is through a private Facebook group. Twitter didn't seem to be working well for us as a few members of the group were finding it hard to grasp and keep on top of their account. The Facebook group is useful for any questions we have or when were are generally stuck. It is there to act as a support and organisations but also for group discussions when we haven't been able to meet up. We are all keeping updated on each others work through our blogs which we regularly check. Due to the fact we don't have twitter we decided to make our project available to the public through Facebook. We have created a Facebook page which people can like it's called 'Project Mex'. We have all been posting pictures of our progress on there and we will use it to promote our exhibition.

Private Facebook Group

Our project Facebook page

Facebook page feed

History of Wind Up toys.

Today I decided to research into the history of wind up toys to see if I could find anything interesting that I could expand and build my project from. Wind up toys date back in history to the fifteenth century . Karel Grod a german inventor, created some of the first toys. Wind up toys were initially for royalty and were much more elaborate, with a very complex system of gears and springs. 

The earliest mechanical toys were typically made for affluent European aristocrats. In the 19th century, increasingly affordable version of these toys were made by makers like Lucien Bontemps in Paris. Bontemps' wind up character dolls typically performed movement to the tinkling of music boxes. 

By late 1800s , simpler wind up models made from painted tin were created just for children. To make products more cheaply, manufacturers used materials like cardboard, composition and tin instead of expensive porcelain or wax.

Victorian toys reflected the social and political climate, in which they were made. Circus - themed toys were also common, aerobatic clowns who appeared to walk on their hands or suited rabbits playing drums. 

Companies like Strauss, developed wind up designs in tin to compete wit international imports. As toy trends evolved during the 1940s and '50s, wind up designs reflected new childhood favourites from Disney characters to cowboy figurines to robots. The use of plastics and other synthetic materials following World War II resulted in a decline of win up toy production.

Drawing Development.

I have started drawing from observation, I was working with fineliner drawing the animals in very accurate detail. Similar to the way Raqib Shaw works. As text is very key in the nursery rhyme book I decided to play around with scale and placement. I decided to draw animals that have been humanised thus also relating back to the animals that are drawn with clothes on in Shaw's work. I have been trying to combine the drawing and text together. Im going to research further into the idea of wind up toys mechanisms, photographing and drawing from them. I am hoping to then combine my drawings of the humanised animals with the machinery and text, layering them to create an almost three dimensional print.

Final Concept.

We were trying to come up with ideas for a concept that allows us to create a range of outcomes for an exhibition ie print, instillations, drawings, paintings or films. We wanted 175 to be our starting point, so we came up with the idea of going to a junk/vintage shop and buying a range of items for the price of £1.75. From these items we would then research them and create a series of works from them such as observational drawings and paintings which could then lead to a range of prints , we could photograph them and create instillations from them. We are also going to film our journey and experience of going to the shop and buying the items. We are hoping to have an exhibition as an outcome with a range of works either individually or collaboratively produced based on the items we bought with £1.75.

Unit X Concept Brainstorm.

After we all presented our posters and concepts we talked through them as a group, we brainstormed our favourite which was the idea of culture. We began to look at culture closer to home, Manchester is a very large city with numerous mini communities and religions.  There is also a lot of history in the city with a lot of business and industry. With a large city comes a lot of poverty, since moving from Cardiff to Manchester, a major thing I noticed was the amount of homeless people living rough on the streets. The idea of talking to the homeless and filming them and their story was thrown into the mix but after further discussion we decided that this idea was too closed and also very risky. We wanted an idea that was open and we could create numerous outcomes from. We were also finding it hard to relate the homeless idea back to the number 175.
We are going to go home tonight and think more thoroughly about ideas and come back to brainstorm them with the group tomorrow.

Poster

I decided to do my poster on the fact that the Flatiron building in New York is on 175th Avenue in Manhattan.  It is considered a groundbreaking skyscraper. I have a keen interest in architecture so I wanted to look at this further but also relate it to the local area. I decided to look at addresses around Manchester. I looked for a range of buildings that were number 175, I found a wide variety from tall, old hotels to small terraced houses.
We had to present our posters and give a small presentation on it.