A walk around town..

Islington mill - sculpture night!

Tuesday 24th April saw a group of young, tallented artists hold a public exhibition in one of the cities most unique settings, Islington mill. (salford)

The mill originally started out as a cotton spinning mill during the industrial revolution, but is now home to 50 artists studios, 2 public galleries, a recording studio and night-club! Over the last 10 years i has evolved and is now a haven for artists, djs and party goers alike.

I went down to the mill with a couple of close friends, not knowing what to expect we wandered up to the old, delapidated builing with anticipation. The exterior seemed very run down, set off a back alley close to Salford Shopping City i was immediately warey. The ground floor windows were plastered with flyers advertisting bands, club venues and fanzines.

Upon entering the building we were straight in the heart of one of the scultures. Hanging from the ceiling were hundreds of red party hats, each tied onto differnt lenghts of invisible thread, creating a very striking first impression.


To the right of the main entrance we were offered a selection of free wines and beers, and following directly on from that to the right was the first of 3 small exhibition halls.
With about 4 exhibition pieces to look at we slowly made out way around the intricately hung and placed items. One of the works that i found particularly exciting was one created entirely from foam squares. Hung in a pattern from the ceiling they were for-mated to look like some kind of whirlwind. The spectators movements as they walked around created small gusts of air that made the work sway slightly in the breeze adding to the illusion.

Continuing on round the mill were further exhibitions made using all different media.
Some included

• Bulbs
• Jelotine
• Wire
• Paper
• Projectors
• Material

One aspect of the night that was especially interesting was the dj set in the back room. Surrounded by yet more art work a number of Manchester finest dj's played music into the early hours of the morning!

Beloew are some final pictures from the evening; 

Looking at transition

Taking the idea of transition i am going to look at how spaces change over time, i am particularly interested in looking at alleyways, doorways, pavements etc. I am going to try and tie this is with the old school/new school task.

 Looking at how places change is very similar to how the school of art has changed over the past 50 years. I am excited to work in conjunction with John from the slide library to research the history of the school. I am currently in the process of awaiting my slides to be emailed to me from john. 

Here is a selection of images i have taken around manchester and also some i found courtesy of the mmu slide collection flickr site.

Lauren Bowker talk

Lauren Bowker, a textile design for fashion student gave one of the most inspiring talks i have been to all year!

Originally a student from Bury college Lauren came to MMU hoping to get a place on the fashion course, unfortunately she was knocked back from the path and instead got a place on the tetxile design course, something she wasn't extremely pleased about. Throughout her time at MMU Lauren had a very broad range of outputs, working solely by herself in the first year, breaking her back and being on bed rest for a year, before returning to uni with a very different outlook on life.

Lauren began collaborating with science students in the second and third year and it was through this collaboration that she made a name for her self. She had a simple idea, clothes that changed colour depending on  the amount of air pollution surrounding you. The concept was great, but not without its difficulties, it took herself and her colleagues nearly a whole year to create a garment that actually fitted the idea, but finally it was created!

It was from this one show stopping piece that Lauren created a name for herself in the fashion industry. After graduating from MMU Lauren head to the Royal college of art in London to per-sue her career. Being approached my Marks and Spencer almost immediately was something that Lauren found herself  struggling with, the brief was simple, create a line of clothing for the 40 plus woman. It wasn't until the night before the deadline that Lauren came up with the whole collection, this was later used nationwide!

From this Lauren went on to work with the Airbus airline team to create a vision for a new slick interior for the 2050 design of aircraft.

She has also created a concept of Electronic wallpaper, the idea, as you can probably guess is to be able to change your wallpaper depending on your mood.

Website - www.PHNX.com

Initial project ideas

For my individual part of the project i want to look into how a space can change depending on its surrounding,  IE Markets, Alleyways, Hidden spaces etc. Here are my initial starting points;

• manchester christmas market
• northern quarter
• pop up spaces
• industrial places (how they hold hidden stories)

I will be using the following techniques to experiment with for the duration of the project. Photography, Digital prints, Lino cuts, Rubbings, Weave etc.

I am interested to look at places out of context and how its actually a surrounding that gives a place a purpose. To do this i plan to use a photomontage technique and switch images from different locations and then ask people what the image makes them feel. Hopefully this in turn will give me more ideas to work from.

Dave Mautry - Cornerhouse director

Here are some brief notes i took during Dave Mautrys talk at the beginning of the project. They may be useful as  a resource to work from to enhance your individual projects.

• Opened 1985
• At the forefront of contempary art
• Home to 3 galleries
• 3 cinema screens
• Cafe/bar area
• leading distributor of armish books

Dave spoke in detail about how the corner house make it there aim to work with new up and coming artists with in the local community, maybe this is something we could think about doing as a group?

It is important for the cornerhouse to help new artists with their careers and they are very hands on in setting up exhibitions with new up and coming designers.

The corner house holds a variety of different events, some of these include;

• festivals 
• exposure film screenings
• specialized films (No Blockbuster)
• films from Hong Kong and China 

As well as being known for its quirky films, the cornerhouse also has a reputation for its collection of books. With over 2,700 titles in its collection the corner house is a great source of primary research.

Slide Library - Josie Cawdry

The visual resource centre houses one of the most extensive slide libaries in the uk. John Davies (j.davies@mmu.ac.uk) gave a breif talk about the history of the collection and gave us the opportunity to look through some slides and find ones that strongly drew our attention.7

The Collection comprisions of 3 seperate parts

• Art/design slide collection
• Design council slide collection
• Lanten slide collection

The slides are individaully labeled, with each slide being given a code number and specific letter.

The team in charge of the collection have began the painstaking task of making each and every slide electronically avaliable. To view a selection of the slides online visitwww.flickr.com/photos/mmuvisualresorces

The average slide size is 24mm x 36mm, they are housed within plastic wallets and then stored in order of codes inside filing cabinets.

The slides were originally ised within the university for lectures and the images were projected for the viewing audience via special large scale projectors.

"the slide library, a one stop shop for images to use in lectures" John Davies

Originally slides were named 'Lantern slides' and were much bigger than other slides, measuring in at 3 inches. The film was sandwiched between 2 sheets of glass. In 1966, these type of slides begn to get phased out and the industry moved onto the more appropriate 35mm film (a thin flex sheet of film), which is still used today.

At present the future of the slide library in unsure, late last summer, the collection was moved from its original home, on the ground floor of cavendish and was scattered around the art building, posing problems for student and access.

With approximately 275,000 slides in the collection the issue arises as to where the collection will be housed when the old school moved to the new school in december 2012.

The collection has been growing since the 1960's and includes everything from art, arcitechure, fashion, teaching and the city of manchester. The collection is built up from proffesional photographer slides aswell as amatuer images donated to the school of art.

Below is a list of where some of the slides were sources from -

• Books
• Commercially produced merchandise
• Postcards
• Original in-house photography
• Original filmstrips

20,000 of the slides document the history of the school of art and date back to 1959.

If you wish to view the gallery, visit John on the ground floor of cavendish. (next to the weave room)