Saturday 3 November 2012

September: A New Start - The Last New Start of Uni!

It's the start of the year again, but this time it's slightly different. It's the last time it's the start of a university year for me, but it's okay because even though i'm going to miss everything about this place and the people i'll be really starting a new part of my life. I really have to stretch myself this year and do everything I can do to help my future self to cope with being on my own and making it. 

Personal Project

So we started off our project over the summer, and it is going to continue on through the rest of the year. We have to look into a theme - I chose Michael de Certeau's theme of looking at the city and seeing it from a cultural perspective and also looking at the hierarchy, de personalised. So i chose to turn the tables and look at a 3rd world country and see how the effects of globalisation from western countries affect the culture and art. A lot of modern indian doesn't look traditionally indian and is quite minimalistic in contrast to ancient indian paintings and tapestries. I like to focus on the dated art and textiles to take inspiration from. I've been looking into printing and dying techniques but some of the ones i wanted to try were impossible to achieve with the limited resources I have and can be quite expensive, so i worked with this and decided to do some very typically western styles of print, e.g tie-dye, which was a strong part of the 60's fashion in western countries and also the more modern style of print which is now used in most print studios, acrylic screen printing. So with various ideas in mind, i went ahead to come up with some vague sketches  and experiments to lead on to the continuation project, the zine.

Negotiated Projects: Zine

So the first project of the year is our Zine. We have to make a series of images to go inside the zine and it has to have meaning relating to the summer project - it is a continuation of the summer project itself. Surrounding myself with indian imagery of every kind and looking at some of my favourite artists, i started to look at patterns and shapes and incorporate it within my work. I wanted to do something with animals - traditional indian animals with indian patterns. I thought I could create a mascot to represent the indian culture but some how make it so it was western too, i had thought about using the american colours but i had chosen a peacock as the mascot and i really didn't want to lose any of the colour on it, for me that is one of the reasons for picking it, because i love the colours of it so much. So without wasting any time to linger on the thought i just decided to go ahead and plan it all out and think about how i'd mix that in later on. We did a day brief on some studio rules on our first day, and that came into mind since the one i worked on with my classmate hannah was called 'accept mistakes and move forward' i look the meaning from the quote, like 'don't linger on problems, just experiment and go with it' kind of thing, so i just did what i thought would be best. As i was thinking about it, i'd got my material together and thought that it would be a nice idea to photograph it in a certain way, for example, wearing an american flag as a cape or surrounded with coke cans or something cheesy like that, which might work since i'd get to keep the colour but have the meaning i really wanted in it too. In the end it didn't really work out, and ended up looking really badly put together, since i left little time and was working with very few resources at this point. My ideas were thin and i wish i had left more time to think on what to do for it, but it is a lesson for next time really. 

Along side making the mascot i was reading more on the subject and came across and article on a man who lived in india a while ago before it became globalised, and remembered how it was, he moved away for some years and when he returned he could see and hear a difference, there were young girls saying really american things such as 'dude' and a McDonalds was no more than a 10 minute drive down the road now. So i decided i'd have those indian animals with indian patterns saying really american things like 'would you like fries with that?' and 'Well colour me stupid' - I think humour is a really good way with connecting to people and allows you to trust and create a relationship with the image and think 'Yeah, that's funny, I wonder who thought of such a silly thing' my idea made me smile when i thought of how it would turn out. I had tie-dyed some materials that were plain white, some with a floral pattern on, kind of like something you'd see from the western 80's and used that as a background for my animals. I decided gold was the colour to use as it would be traditionally indian and also it would stand out and shine on top of the bright tie-dye colours. I transferred my images on to screens and printed, some turned out really nice but with some, the tie dye background was too harsh and the gold didn't show up like i'd imagined. I did some tests on some bright green sating before and now i wish i hadn't taken such a big risk and tried it out on the right fabric. I carried on with our class quote in mind. Once i'd decided on all the quotes i got them out on to speech bubbles and inverted them, they'd stand out more on black against the harsh tie-dye. Once I'd fixed them together i put everything on to photoshop and tried to brighten up the images with the tools on there but i could only do so much without ruining the quality, another lesson for next time - do more tests! 

Having bought some hand made papers from turners in warm indian colours, i sewed my book using a coptic bind, which creates a plait pattern as you go along the spine, which i thought was a nice element since my work is full of patterns. I made a golden medallion on the front and it looked like an ancient indian book of spells and secrets, i loved it. I just wished the interior looked as good as the outside. My in-pages were in the theme of handmade things and i wrote a quote on globalisation inside.
Overall, I am very pleased with it, i think it's one of the best pieces i've done yet, I just have up until christmas to fix it completely and re-photograph it, and then it will be perfect.


With it now being the end of the project, the Salford Zine owner came in to give us some critiques on our work. I remember him saying that he didn't really understand the whole concept of mine, but he thought it was funny. He didn't take such a long look at it and i think if he looked through it he'd really understand the message i was trying to convey. I will take his words in to consideration though and see next time how i can improve the message that i am trying to convey. I am not letting him take my zine for the museum! I like it and i want it at home with me!




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