Exhibition Review

Exhibition Review

TINTIN: Hergé’s Masterpiece

I visited the tin tin exhibition in Somerset house. The comics are illustrated by the self taught artist Hergé (real name:Georges Remi, 1907-1983) (BBCnews,2009). Tin Tin is one of the most popular comics until this day. It is about a young journalist and his dog going on adventures together. Even though there is not much information to find on the Somerset website, I was able to find out that Michael Farr helped to put the exhibition together (BBCnews, 2015).

The layout and the feel of the exhibition was quite unusual. It felt like a collectors home not like an art gallery. There were two fire places in each room, opposite each other and there were 3 rooms in total. When you walk into the room you immediately notice the illustrated picture frames which showed different characters from the comics. The rest of the left wall was dark and light blue striped. 1 or 2 miniature models of locations shown in the comic were placed almost In the center of the room. When you enter the each room you would immediately see the wall opposite of you that has photographs, the year number, and information printed on it. The fireplace was placed right under the information with picture frames carefully assembled on top of it. On the right wall you could see large frames 2 or 3 in each room. Those contained newspaper articles, original drawings and final prints. On the right large windows were covered with illustrations from the comic book so that almost no light would be able to shine through anymore. Everything had a very familiar feel to it. Almost like you would enter someones house.

The style of the exhibition suited his work very well. Also the atmosphere was very enjoyable and relaxed. The curator even included distortion mirrors in the first room on the left wall, which lightened the mood right at the beginning of the exhibition. Also the rooms of the summer set house were very suited for the exhibition. the old windows, and the wooden floor, even the fireplaces, and the vintage lighting were perfectly fitted to the purpose of the exhibition.

The whole concept was to explore ‘the evolution of the artwork of Hergé’ (Sommerset,2015). Which I think was very well communicated. I personally really enjoyed the curation, but also that it stood out from other exhibitions I have visited in the past. I liked that they not only concentrated on his work but also on Hergé himself and included photographs of his workplace and friends. They incorporated his style very nicely and presented his work well. There was a good variation of model making, illustration and background information.

Overall I think the exhibition was very fun and enjoyable and a very good weekend activity however if you are looking for something challenging and view changing this exhibition would not provide that. But it was very hard to get bored in that exhibition which I think is a very positive aspect.

 

Bibliography

https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/visual-arts/tintin

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-34846206

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7820247.stm

CTS+ISHE

“What is History?” was one of the questions we attempted to answer in CTS. We did a task called automatic writing, this should help us getting new ideas and putting our thoughts on paper without filtering. My thoughts on that question are that history are events and stories that happened which affected a large quantity of people or even the whole population, it could have also been something that provoked change. In our everyday life we see objects or places daily which represent a certain part of history. History is affecting and changing the population it is the substance that formed our world to how it is now. Those were my initial thoughts on that question, later on we learned about narrative and illustration and how it is used in the representation or documentation of history. Also the agency plays a big part in communicating history. Life doesn’t have a beginning or an ending but we try to make a narrative to make sense of it. Also illustration is very important to history. It helped to represent and document certain events and to communicate what happened. Agency is an other aspect of history especially how it is communicated. For example museums would be an agency. It is also interesting to think about how do they represent history? what bias do they have? and what kind of side are they taking? We also listened to: http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-fancy-shape/. which is a very good example of history and how it is affecting the modern creative community.

WHAT?
WHO?
WHERE?
WHY?

For example we had to talk in groups about a movie or anything that had some kind of history and figure out what it is, who created it, where is it from, why is it important. We talked about the brother Grimm. Their original stories were very scary and not seen as suitable for children nowadays. But for example I can remember having a book as a child that illustrated quite harsh and brutal life lessons and I thought that was ok, I didn’t see that as an issue at all and was also not disturbed by it. So we were thinking about that parents are becoming more protective of their children and that those stories rather became a problem for them than for the children. Disney has taken some of the stories and extremely changed them. Everything that could have been seen as disturbing got replaced with butterflies and rainbows. The gist of the story was sometimes not that different to the original but they always had a happy ending and the parts that were brutal in a disturbing way were altered. But when you think about it they disturbed children in a whole different way. Every princess or main character is skinny and beautiful, you never see an actual “ugly” girl get her happy ending and it is just full of things that should not be acceptable because it teaches young children the wrong things. For example: that only if you wear makeup or have a nice dress you will be accepted, that beauty is more important than anything else and that being with someone or marrying is the most important aspect for a happy live. Which I think sends the wrong message and in a way brainwashed a whole generation which could be linked to eating disorders and anxiety. An other group picked Harry Potter and we discussed why it was so appealing to many people. Ellen suggested that so many of us like it because it is stimulating the dreams and wishes we had as children.

In ISHE we discussed how we put people in categories. What does it take for us to put someone in a certain category and how do we identify social categories. This can be applied to any kind of category really. For example if someone has a beard and wears skinny jeans is he automatically a hipster? Can you identify people by how they dress or how they speak? Comedians are also a very good example on how they observe certain social behaviors and exaggerate their behavior.

  
Worth having a look:

Roger Sabin-http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/may/10/league-extraordinary-gentlemen-jamilti-humbug

-https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Selected-Works.pdf

-Bart Beaty

 

 

Richard E Grant at the Summer Exhibition 2015 Review

https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/richard-e-grant-at-the-summer

Richard E Grant at the Summer Exhibition 2015 Review

Richard E Grant is an actor and a long time fan of the royal academies summer exhibition. In the video he shows us around the summer exhibition and talks about some of the artworks.

The video is fun but doesn’t present any useful information which I think would have been helpful. He talks mainly about which pieces he would personally buy which might not be that interesting to some people. It is also unclear what his relation to art is since there is no clear connection why he is “reviewing” the exhibition.

Overall he presents it in a fun way which might motivate some people to visit the exhibition. Even though he doesn’t include a lot of information I think it is still a good advertising for the exhibition.

Animation

I tried making an animation on photoshop. Since I first wanted to do a trial I haven’t worked on the illustration properly.

First trial:

second try:

Library session

You stand  in front of a bookshelf which is big enough to burry you deep in the ground, so many books and the choice is yours. You know what the book needs to be about but how to find it seems impossible. This situation is no stranger to me, or to anyone else attending university. Thankfully someone working in that wonderful confusing place called the library of LCC came in to talk to us today. Research methods was the main area we focused on in the lecture. Most of the content presented to us I had already heard before but never put more thought into it. Gaining a better understanding of the library and the sources made accessible to us through it.

Important to remember:

• Who published the book? Self published books are normally less reliable because they are in the end only an “opinion”
• Look on the second page of the book instead of the front. There is also most times more info about who published the book.
• Look for the content page to have a good overview whats the book about.
• Index is also helpful to find out more about the source.
• Think about why the book is published.
• Serial publications are also helpful sources especially when they are written by professionals. Look for Design issues.
• Peer review is very important. It makes the source more reliable.
• Follow leads on articles. Read what they have read to inform their research.
• Who owns the newspaper?
• Newspapers have political bias.
• Start research with reference book.
• ALWAYS credit images or other sources.
• Reference pictures: Who? When? Why? Where?
• Never quote from Wikipedia, it’s not reliable. Good source to get a rough idea what is something about but should not be used in serious research.
• Use wikipedia only as starting point.

Magazines to have a look at:

• http://www.varoom-mag.com
• http://www.eyemagazine.com
• http://www.baselinemagazine.com

ISHE

Article: “Why I write, New York Times book review. 1976”

Task: Read article and illustrate the content.

Questions to help with task:

1. How are mental images important to the author?
2. What does the act of writing mean to them?
3. What is the relationship between the writer and the reader made possible via imagery?

In a group of two we came up with this: 

 

CTS

We discussed how libraries are organized. the Librarian normally organizes the books and they decide in what categories they fall in.

The powerhouse was also an interesting project he introduced us to.

website: http://www.powerhouse.me.uk/projectinfo.html

intro to the project:

“POWERHOUSE

A multi-authored word composition from Cambridge University Library

Powerhouse Live 

As part of an artist’s residency at Kettle’s Yard, Bettina Furnée staged an 8 week continuous word association game at Cambridge University Library during Full Easter term 2008. The game started off on Tuesday 22nd April with a single first word ‘powerhouse’ on display in the entrance hall of the library, recorded by time-lapse photography. Every day between 11-12am, six library users or staff were asked by Furnée to respond with the first word which came to mind, to be displayed next (and so on). During any other time of the day further word associations to the latest word were submitted via this website, linked to the University Library homepage. The most frequently submitted response was displayed in the library at set intervals. Thus around ten new word associations were displayed each day. All words were colour coded by gender and by origin. A website entry could not be submitted without choosing male/female fields. A single word or concept was required. Multiple submissions made within a short period of time were considered as single entries. Offensive words, or words not in the spirit of the game, such as personal messages, were not displayed in the library, but were indexed. A list of 32 ‘banned words’ (the usual suspects) was subject to censure from the start.”

I thought it was very interesting what words came to mind and what were the most common words displayed. Since when I work on a project I often use word association to get new ideas and develop my work it, was interesting to get to know that experiment/exhibition.

After that discussion we had to go to the library to select one book related to our project without using the online service. After we returned to the classroom we had to put our book in a category. Since we are all interested in design and illustration the categories drawing/illustration and design were the busiest.