Artist Research: Chara Lewis Lecture

Earlier in the week I attended a lecture from Chara Lewis- a lecturer at MMU, and a third of the collaborative practice, Brass Art. I found her lecture very useful- it was very interesting listening to how Chara adapts her practice in order to work as a collaboration, as well as learning about different pieces that the practice have created. 

It was encouragable to hear that at first Chara felt as though working as a collaboration may have been difficult, especially the unknown of how two other people may work, and how completely different each of the individual ideas could have been. She then went onto say that the difference in opinions and knowledge through the individual outlooks became a positive way of working- although the three practitioners had similar outlooks on work, it was nice to be able to work instinctively too. 

Another interesting idea that I gained from this lecture was the use of "play". It was apparent that enjoyment and entertainment were used in the creation of Brass Art's pieces, adding to the bonus of working as a collaboration. As part of my notes I wrote 'ideas for play: gathering props, positioning, "taking a step back", photography, drawing, HAVE FUN WITH IT' . 

Using these idea, I am feeling much more confident about working as a collaborative group. It is already apparent that the seven of of have both similar and contrasting ideas about Unit X, but so far this is showing as a positive experience, as we are all able to bounce off one another's idea and begin to understand each others' ways of working. 

http://www.brassart.org.uk

Unit X Communication

As previously mentioned, for Unit X we are expected to work as a collaborative group of seven, with mix of art practices. Our group, Revolt Three, is made up of four textiles, two film and media, and one fashion student. Working this way means that we are all able to rely on one another's strengths and areas of expertise, in order to make a combined development/ end result for this unit. 

An initial thought that the seven of us had revolved around the idea of communication as a group. Seeing as some of us had never met one another before, the first thing that we did was to introduce ourselves at the meeting in Hilton House, but also to exchange phone numbers, emails, and set up a Facebook and Twitter account, in order to keep our communication flowing in a number of different set ups. 

Having a Facebook group is proving to be extremely useful. We are all able to keep one another up-to-date with our ideas, and when needed, give inspiration and information to each other regarding meetings, work and general questions. We are still in the early days of working together, but momentarily it seems that we are all taking unit x positively, and hopefully will continue to use our methods of communication to keep in touch. 

Unit X Meeting

I thought that this afternoon it would be a nice idea for our group to meet for lunch, just as a way to socialise a little more outside of the Hilton House surroundings, and get to know more about one another and our specialised areas. We met in the union bar, eager to see how one another were getting on.  Not much had been done since our last meeting, which was understandable because we all had first drafts for our contextualising side of the course- which meant that it was a nice meeting just to have a few hours of time out .

Saying this, we did continue to think about our project , and started to throw around a few ideas about final pieces- nothing set in concrete though. We first began by adapting the number one hundred and seventy five- thinking about creating one hundred and seventy-five somethings... bunting pieces to show the celebration of the coronation... patchwork pieces of a victorian dress... we weren't sure yet. We then thought about creating a garment- it would be difficult and test a lot of our abilities in the group, especially film students. A film was also an idea, something that I had never personally done before, but that wouldn't be an easy task.  We were trying to think of something that we had all never done, so maybe photographs? Anyway, I felt that we were at least getting somewhere, and left feeling very positive that unit x was going to be a lot more enjoyable than anticipated in the first week. 

Unit X Development of Initial Ideas

Approaching the idea of 175 felt extremely difficult- what does this number mean? How can it possibly be adapted into art?. As a group we decided that we were going to base our project 175 years prior the now. 1838, the coronation of Queen Victoria.

The first ideas I have when thinking about this topic are Queen Victoria as a widower when her husband Albert passed away; the colours used in Victorian era fashion and the significance of these colours; and finally the V&A museum. I am personally trying to avoid the fashion idea as it really doesn't personally come across as appealing, and feel that if I look more at the Victorian period as a whole,  it will allow a much more broader size of topics to delve into through-out this unit.  For starting points, I have decided to look at the colours found in Victorian costume and their representations of the era, embellishment and fabric types. 

After sitting down together as a group this afternoon, my ideas have become a little clearer. The types of research that I am now looking at more closely involve the Victorian era of fashion, bunting/ celebrations that were involved in the coronation of the Queen, empire, power, colour and detail. Other idea that were sparked in conversation included the idea of restriction to the body through costume- I loosely based my previous unit, Data on the idea of restriction and corsets, so may look deeper into this idea in the coming weeks.

When talking as a group, it seemed that some of the members were already thinking about the unit as an overall result, some sort of final piece and how we could attempt to start tackling it now. Personally I feel that this talk came a little too early into our discussions, as I feel that we need to do a significant amount of research and sampling before we can begin to discuss any type of final piece. One thing that I have picked up on in past evaluations of my work is that I do not  do enough in the way of development of samples, so looking at fabrics and embellishments is allowing me to do so this time.

I have decided to keep a sketchbook to go alongside my blogging, just as somewhere that I will be able to keep all of my research, information and drawings in one place. As well as this I have set up a pinterest account, which holds some of my online inspiration for the research side of this unit. I am hoping that these will help both myself, and my group, on the way to achieving some interesting collaborations. 

Unit X: Colour

As I am focusing on the Coronation of Queen Victoria, and the uses of embellishments and colours, I began by looking at the meanings of some of the predominant colours, which I felt to be....

RED:  vibrant, energy, passion, love, strength, 'links with hell, danger and aggression', warmth, 'the symbol of life, love and lust', boldness. 

GOLD: strength, jewels, wealth, 'wearing gold in everyday life increases the idea of personal power and promotes courage, confidence and willpower'. 

BLUE: tranquility, cool, calming, peace, 'symbol of stability, trust and truth', confidence, depression, order, security, sincerity and spirituality.

WHITE: purity, simplicity, dignity, peace, clinical, 'the symbol of virginity', kindness, 'the complete energy of the light', new beginnings.

BLACK: power, sexuality, sophistication, elegance, death, widowing, mourning, wealth, mystery, unhappiness, fear, remorse, anger. 

I am wanting to include all of these colours into the development of our ideas, as I feel that it is a very important factor to trying to showcase our perspectives of 1838. 

Unit X Induction Brief

So here it is... Unit X. Yesterday we arrived at our Geoffrey Manton lecture, to be greeted by new faces from both Fashion and Film and Media Studies, in order to kick off our new project, Unit X. At first glance (and even now) we all seemed very intrigued and confused by the meaning of X. 

We were given the project topic of 175, as this is the 175th anniversary of The Manchester School of Art. Now, still completely overwhelmed by the idea of working with this number , we were sent away to research what the number, or numbers taken separately, could actually mean, and how they could be adapted into our practice. The first ideas that I researched came in all types of forms- from the idea of weights and that 175cm was the average height of models in industry, to the meanings of each individual number- which could have taken me through a journey of meanings and semiotics. At this point nothing made sense. I was looking forward to meeting the rest of my group- now known as 'Revolt Three' , tomorrow, hoping that we would be able to unpick the meaning of this number together. 

Meeting for the first time as a flurry of art students from different practices seemed both exciting, and slightly nerve racking, waiting for the rest of my new collaborative group to turn up. It was so lovely meeting the rest of the group that I am going to work with for the next ten weeks, having a mix of practices will be a really interesting approach to this unit. I have never had the opportunity to work as a collaboration before so think that it will be exciting to look at one another's strengths and work with them to not only project my own ideas and art work, but also combine with other people's work. Another positive regarding working with this group is going to be adding to my friendship group through this project. 

When we first sat down together, it was nice to hear about past projects that each of us had undertaken- the nice thing about Unit X is that I will be able to develop in skills that I have never before had chance to approach. As well as this, we began to think about the number '175', and created a mind map of the ideas that we had all researched the night before. Through the group of ideas, two stood out as the most interesting, and adaptable to our practices- the number 13 (addition of the three numbers), and that 175 years prior to the date, the Coronation of Queen Victoria. 

We have decided on the latter of our ideas to carry forward. We felt that there was a lot more scope for interpretation of Queen Victoria, and the victorian era. With this in mind, as a group we made the decision to go away and do further research into the topic, and have planned to meet at the Student Union tomorrow afternoon, to have lunch, get to know each other a little better, and work into our topic area a little more. 

I am really looking forward to seeing how this unit unravels, and seeing how our ideas can be translated through-out the coming weeks.

Unit X, Rebel .