Real Venice, Museum of Everything

Last Sunday, I saw some exhibitions at centre of London.

First one was Real Venice, photography exhibition held at Somerset House.

I have been to Venice once. Some of the photos at the exhibition remind me of the beautiful city, but some of them showed me different aspects of it such as ordinal people living there or modern offices. I personally like the photos by Japanese photographer Hiroshi Watanabe used as a main image for the exhibition. His black and white photos of people wearing traditional carnival masks were striking to represent Venice yet very elegance and even have divine beauty compared to commercial photos. The carnival mask of Venice is known for its vivid colour and decoration, but by reducing them, I think the photo succeeded in discovering its own beauty in simplest form.


The next one was a contemporary show of The Museum of Everything at Selfridge.

The Museum of Everything is a museum for works done by people who suffer a variety of psychological, neurological, or physical problems from all over the world. 

At first I found it really interesting that how they built the show space. The space was parted into several small rooms and the works were fully hanged on every wall exactly like the museum itself.  To be honest, it might make audience hard to see each work, but also make them feel like if they are in the museum at the moment. Each work was very energetic and had a strong character reflecting each artist. Some of them had remarkable colouring and some were seriously detailed by persevering which I can hardly imitate.

For the last, there was a huge structure, the Monument to the Third International, designed by Russian and Soviet architect Tatlin Vladimir in front of Royal Academy of Art for upcoming exhibition. Although this tower is not as high as his original plan, which was as tall as Eiffel tower in Paris, it has a worth-seeing strong impact just being there.

Moments in Time

Today I went to see Dominic Wilcox's watch sculptures at Dezeen Space in Shoreditch.

It was really hard to find the place and the showspace was quite small, yet the watches were worth seeing.

Hide 'n' Seek

“A pig tailed girl hides behind a tree from a searching boy.”

Adventures of a young vegetarian

“A small girl attempts to stop a butcher chopping up a pig by hanging on his arm while the pig floats away.”

Sitting Man

Watch Sweeper

“The numbers and hands of a watch are swept away by a watch sweeper.”

The unrequited handshake

The outstretched hand of friendship is continually rejected.”

The idea to put people on each minute hand and second hand was absolutely wonderful. As the vintage watches are working, the people on each hands keep moving, sometime coming closer and sometime farther. Wilcox's work reminds me this proper thing that "time is continuous moments". In the glass domes above watches, there are different worlds of people inside and they are living in their own moments of time. I love the artist because he always uses everyday objects but represents them in unexpected way.  I also like his charming sense of naming each watches. Wilcox's magic to change watches into tiny worlds was really enjoyable!! 

Well, because I'm a big fan of Dominic Wilcox, I asked for price of the watch(it wasn't shown in the space), and it was.......more than £600!!!! I shed tears on the way home....... (joking!)

Descriptions of watches were from:
Moments in Time: Watch Sculptures by Dominic Wilcox
http://www.dominicwilcox.com/watchsculptures.htm

Dezeen Space
54 Rivington Street, London EC2A 3QN
www.dezeenspace.com

Failure

A week past since I started my new course at Chelsea College. In the end of the first week, there was a project which my group failed to do it. We were given a huge sheet of plain white paper and had to make people interact with it.

We started the project with brain storming about what can we do with the sheet of paper. We got several ideas we like such as free hi-five, free candy, finger printing, huge picture flame, information paper.... Finally we end up with making a poster which attracts people to see it. However we all believed that our poster could be interactive for people, we completely failed.

It says "LOOK CLOSER" and there is a tiny message below the arrow.

The basic idea of our poster is that if there is something you can't see from a distance, people would come closer to see what is there. So we went to Vauxhall station where should be a lot of people there and especially at bus station, people standing and waiting for bus coming. In fact, there was no one who comes closer to the poster to see the secret message.
I think there are several reasons why our poster defeat our expectation. One is the location. Since other groups went to more tourist places such as Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar square, or Oxford circus where there are hundreds of tourists there. Compared to these places, Vauxhall station was not a place to find friendly people who will be curious about our project. Secondly, we had to work on people to focus on the poster, not just waiting from a faraway. Thirdly, I think we had to keep our idea much more simple rather than making a 'designer-like' piece. For example, the other group did 'free-moustache' at Trafalgar square and it was really successful. It was like an information paper that people can take a contact address in the bottom, but hand-drawn moustaches instead of contact address. People like free things especially if it makes people happy and if it is easy to take. The idea of free-moustache definitely enjoyable for people and the location was also perfect for that. If we have done free-candy poster, sticking candies on paper and people can take them, it would attract many people even if we done it at Vauxhall station because it is so simple and people like candies.
I think this project was a good try for me that I could learn many things from it.

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion

   On 29th of September, I went to Kensington Garden to see this year's Serpentine Gallery pavilion designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor.

It seemed like just a black box from outside.

There was a long corridor all around the building.

When you walk pass the dark corridor....

There was open sky garden inside with lots of sunshine!!

   I really like the contrast of the outside and inside. I think it was very effective that the architect hid the   garden secretly inside the black box. It made the viewers curious about what is inside and increased the beauty of the garden more when they found it.

The garden was a bit too wild compared to general English garden, but I think it goes well with the surrounded building. The building looks like very artificial because of its shape, rectangle, and its colour, black. But when you look closely, it is covered by organic net. I think this wild garden and organic surface related to each other to make the space more comfortable to feel the nature for the viewers.

   The building has no window or modern technique, but it was still a place for people to relax and have a rest. I really enjoyed reading a book and having tea while sitting beside the secret garden.

Degas

On the 28th of September, I went to Royal Academy of Art to see the exhibition of Degas' paintings.

I personally really like Degas' paintings of ballet dancers because of the beautiful soft colour, excellent composition, and the subject of painting itself.

This exhibition was not only just features Degas' paintings but also it explores Degas' figure of ballet dancers as accurate figure of motion capture. The interest thing I thought was that the way of how Degas observed his subject is related to the scientific study of motion capture. Before high-speed continuance photography invented, Degas tried to trace each action of dancers in his rough drawings. And he even he drew a girl from more than 20 different angles turning around to understand the girl as a 3 dimensional figure when he tried to make a statue. 

I found that Degas was not just a genius but a person based on lots of lots of study by himself. I think his idea and skill of observation were beyond technology at that time. It realized me that a great idea sometimes goes over technology.

V&A London Design Festival

After I saw 100% design festival, I moved to V&A museum to see some exhibitions written in a booklet of London Design Festival I got at the show.

Huge timber wave structure by AL_A.

It perfectly fits to the arch of the entrance.

POWER OF MAKING

Giant gorilla made of wire hangers.

This exhibition features various kinds of things created by skilled people from amateurs to pros.

I like the paper cut christmas letter, which looks like connected fine paper cut of address at first sight,

but when you open it, it makes a perfect shape of a snow flake.

Raphael's hall was full of people lying on nice textile.

It was a rare opportunity to see the great art works feeling like lying on a sofa at home.

There was a display of bookbinding.

The thing I really interested in was these maps.

These are museum guides created by different artists showing their recommended places in the museum.

The shape, reminds me scarves wore by old victorian people, really fits to V&A 

and it also attracts people to have it by showing fragments of pictures inside.

100% Design Festival

On 24th of September, I went to Earl's Court Exhibition Centre to see 100% Design Festival.
It was a good opportunity to see many latest designs from various fields at once.

Animal shaped chairs.

This is my favourite!

These are posters made of full text of novels.

Simple, but clever idea.

Art works by changing surfaces.

Box-shaped steel chair.

Most of the spaces were for interior and home designs so there were not so many graphic designs, but it was still very exciting for me to see many things and even talk to artists themselves.

New course

My new course at Chelsea College just started.
Graphic Design Communication........excited!