Our Borders Issue (20/Spring-Summer 2011) is now available! Get your free copy at the UAL Student Union, 272 High Holborn, London WC1V 7EY, or at a UAL campus near you.

Turning Things Inside Out: Graduate Shows at LCC
Text and photography by Xanthia Hallissey

ROUND ABOUT is a four-part exhibition showcasing the work of graduating students from LCC.

Phase two is called INSIDE OUT, the first of the graduate shows (after WIDE OPEN for Foundation Art & Design students). It features work from five different courses Book Arts & Design, Film and Television, Photography, Photojournalism and Sound Arts & Design, which kicked off on Thursday 2nd June 2011 with the private view.

In true ROUND ABOUT style LCC was full of visitors walking around hoping to catch a glimpse of the next big thing. Students did not disappoint, the range of media used was impressive, the variety of subject matter even more so. The Photojournalism students were especially good in this sense. Natalie Naccache’s photographs make a social comment about the much-unpublicised plight of ‘Single Fathers’. Her exhibit was reminiscent of the home itself, using different sized frames and a cloth covered table presenting the single father home as a different kind of normal. Rather than documenting humans, Lucie Jordanna Cohen decided to document the sky at night in her astronomy series, ‘A Space in Time’. Lucie juxtaposes the touchable, man-made elements of Earth (brick, artificial light, parked cars) with that which is entirely out of reach (moon, stars) to create an otherworldly experience full of tension, but simultaneously peaceful.

Little pocketed rooms throughout INSIDE OUT ensure the exhibition is full of surprises. One Space is dedicated to Su Lin Booker’s ‘Recorded Fragments,’ which uses projected imagery and mirrors to fragment a family photograph. As well as showing a disrupted, evolving image separate audio tracks are strategically placed around the room allowing the viewer to hear the voices behind the family experience. It’s a clever device that lends itself well to the separate-togetherness of family, and there is a beauty to it too.

Another individual room holds Sophie Hall’s ‘When Eyes Touch’, where two women are shown on screens apparently naked and staring at eye to eye, an experiment in trust and not looking down. The set up of the room makes the piece more powerful; the screens are placed on opposite walls allowing the viewer to turn from screen to screen wondering who will break first. Across from Sophie’s work lies a purpose built person sized gazebo tent by Marianna Kaye called ‘Joanna’s Story’. Inside viewers are encouraged to sit, listen to the story and watch changing light projections of planets play out, literally bringing the story to life.

The use of different media in the exhibition is expansive. On the theme of identity, Christian Anderson’s ‘Blackness Confirmed’ stacks up different sized televisions relating to parts of the face, and they change constantly. It’s a positive, affirmative statement about equality, and it’s fun to watch too. Jatinder Kailey’s ‘Exoticism Constructed: From Southall To Punjab’ uses a painted background of a distant land and shows it pinned up in more familiar surroundings. Jatinder explores the storytelling element in understanding her own Indian heritage, and tells that story back to the viewer.

As well as installation projects, INSIDE OUT is full of more traditional approaches to media. Constantin Cerdan’s ‘Channel 951’ is a series of three photographs each with a little something missing, for example the central image of a sofa has a cushion missing. It challenges what we think we know and asks the viewer to look twice. Jessica Smith’s laser cut type in Book Design tells a story in an open and transparent way, so it makes sense to see it on a wall and not closed in a book instead.

Back in Photojournalism Hannah Boatfield took a trip to different artists studios in her exploration of  ‘Artworlds’, it is project that looks at individual expression and command of a space. Essentially, that is what INSIDE OUT is all about, it’s a show giving students the chance to show viewers what they’ve been up to, but more than that it’s about turning perceived notions of art and design INSIDE OUT.

Artists with websites:
Natalie Naccache: http://www.natnacphotography.com/
Lucie Jordanna Cohen: http://www.luciejordanna.com
Hannah Boatfield: http://www.hannahboatfield.com
Marianna Kaye: http://www.mariannakaye.com

Inside Out
BA (Hons) Book Arts & Design
BA (Hons) Film & Television
BA (Hons) Photography
BA (Hons) Photojournalism
BA (Hons) Sound Arts & Design

The exhibition was open to the public: Fri 3 – Wed 8 June 2011
Venue: The Gallery, Upper Street, Lower Street, Well and Atrium Galleries, LCC, Elephant & Castle, London, SE1 6SB

LCC Summer shows run until 8th July. For more information please check the events page.

A is for Jewellery
Text by Xanthia Hallissey
Photography by Anna Johnson

A Alicia is a jewellery company with a difference. On setting up her own practice, founder Anna Johnson didn’t want to litter the market with plastic, throwaway items. She took the idea of waste literally, sourcing vintage and fair-trade fabrics to make eco-ethical jewellery and a homeware company with heart. When asked about what motivated her to set up the company, Anna replied: “I’ve always wanted to be able to feel that I’m doing something positive in the world.”

Anna is a graduate of Art History from the University of Kent, but the practice side of her career was really developed during her MA in Fine Art at Central St Martins. Now making jewellery, she nicely synthesises her art history and fine art backgrounds. Anna always felt inspired to stand out of the crowd, saying that the idea to start an ethically aware line felt natural. She explains: “In a way it didn’t really feel like a choice, I just couldn’t stomach the idea of running a business who’s supply chain involved exploiting other people or the environment.”

Although Anna is ethically aware, the aesthetic of her work is still important to her: “Of course, there’s the ethical side of knowing how and by whom something is made, but then there’s also the sheer joy of living with or wearing beautifully, thoughtfully handmade products.”  By using textured materials such as handmade beads, vintage kimono fabric, pompoms, in clear, bright colours, the pieces fit in comfortably with current fashions. Anna lists her inspiration for the line from diverse sources such as Japanese craft to simply having the television on whilst sewing; these wide-ranging influences highlight the sense of fun evident in her personality and in her work.

By going back to process and thinking about how things are made every step of the way, Anna is part of a growing number of designers putting production first. Her ethos is inspiring, believing that each of us has the opportunity to be ‘green’ with our work by thinking of the making at the offset. “I also truly believe that all our tiny individual actions really can be part of a bigger change,” says Anna.

Reflecting on her studies, Anna muses: “It’s hard to describe quite how much my Art History studies have influenced my creative practices – they gave me such a wonderful source of reference points that play a part in everything I do.” Hinting at a holistic view of life, A Alicia is not just a business prospect but something Anna really believes in.

For organic, fairtrade fabric visit the Organic Cotton website.

Visit Anna’s online shop, visit Anna’s mainline and wedding websites.

Media Event: Art on New and Mass Media
Text by Laramie Shubber
Photography by Jack Nelson

Last Tuesday saw the opening of an art exhibition about new and mass media by Fine Art students at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. With stigma already attached to the media, creating an original and captivating exhibition was going to be a challenge but curator Jack Nelson, along with six fellow artists, pulled it off.

Yulong Wang used video to present poetic messages. He employed digital manipulation to make his actors into extensions of himself and gain ‘control’ of their interaction.

James Ravinet presented five photographic prints, which, according to Ravinet, present “aesthetically stimulated questions towards digital and physical construction, [examining] what’s real and what’s not.”

Yasmin Maksousa took a comical approach; she presented media images with beards. Of her work, Maksousa states: “I’m drawing a comparison as to what it means to be a journalist and how this affects our sexual behaviour.”

Lindsay McMillan and Bradley Steptoe joined forces and presented a hilarious film installation showing a dispute over money between Bradley and eBay user ‘pjbj43.’ The secretly captured footage was presented in a re-creation of the living room setting at the time.

A degradation process was shown in Arthur Girault’s etchings. Each plate was dipped in an acid bath, which modified the plate and the image, highlighting how consumerism is affecting our health.

Jack Nelson displayed work which looked at the disregard for nature’s power. His installation entitled Vacation acted as a reminder that whilst we revel in technology, nature is the world’s ruling force.

Speaking about the exhibition more broadly, Nelson says: “This show comes at a time when the ‘developed’ world is increasingly dependent on modern technology and continuously seduced by the visions of advertising, videogames and TV shows.”

It was a great night that had added entertainment from up-and-coming musical talent Heptathlon, as well as the fresh takes on the many forms of media.

The Media Event runs until the 26th March at the Central Saint Martins Gallery in Southampton Row. To contact Jack Nelson visit his website. See video below for Heptathlon’s performance.

Mahjong Cards: Playing East and West
Text by Andrea Fam
Graphic design by Joshua Lee

Joshua Lee, currently on the BA Graphic and Media Design course at LCC and specialising in Information Design, has married ‘East and West’ with his graphically enhanced versions of the popular gambling games, Mahjong and Poker; he decided to use the Mahjong tiles of the East and playing cards of the West as the elements of focus.

He was tasked with redesigning 7 traditional poker cards.  “Since mahjong is an activity that’s etched into the spirit of the Chinese New Year festive season, I decided it would be fun to have Mahjong tiles to represent the card,” Lee explains, “It also functions as a reminder of the tradition and keeps the spirit in place.”

The kingpin of the task in question is Yong Ping Loo, an LCC Design for Advertising, Graphic and Media Design alumni. He created this design opportunity, simply because, as he puts it, “Poker cards offer the most potential within an already existing and well known frame, to produce something really new and interesting […] more often than not, you know your friend is a designer but you wouldn’t usually get the chance to see his/her work. Plus the diversity of styles and countries involved (the collaboration is between 8 UAL designers hailing from Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong) in this project had a promising outcome and it was worth it.”

These images represent a selection of Lee’s experiments with both the Mahjong tiles as the suits on the traditional playing card, and the reverse: the suits used as the characters and symbols on the Mahjong tile.

Lee’s choice of inspiration – the Mahjong tile as a parallel to the playing card– effectively highlights the symbiosis of the exchanges between the East and West today; the concept behind these visuals stand as a cross cultural marriage of both traditions as well as the acknowledgement of a globalised visual language.

See more of Joshua Lee’s portfolio and body of work on his website.

The aforementioned poker cards have been produced and can be purchased online.

Chelsea to New York: FIT Internership Winners
Text by Joe Young
Photography by Don Ackerman

Year 1 BA Graphic Communication students from the Chelsea College of Art and Design were recently given the once in a lifetime opportunity to win 5 places to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City for 4 months between August and December.

The brief was to come up with a piece of work which takes inspiration from some of New York’s most famous features such as the Statue of Liberty, the Pretzel, the New York Taxi Cab, the Grid Map and the Dollar Bill. The aim was to communicate exactly why they should each go to New York.

The winners, Don Ackerman, Joseph Egan, Sofia Clause, Miriam Abrahams, and Julia Salotti produced a variety of unique ideas from training to swim the Atlantic from Land’s End to New York, ‘living’ in the city for 24 hours and even bungee jumping! The winning work is featured below.

Don Ackerman

See photographs above.

For more of Don’s work, visit his Tumblr.

Joseph Egan

For more of Joseph’s work, visit his Blogspot.

Sofia Clause

For more of Sofia’s work, visit her Tumblr.

Miriam Abrahams

For more of Miriam’s work, visit her Blogspot.

Julia Salotti

For more of Julia’s work, visit her Blogspot.

Google Art Project: A Virtual Gallery Experience
Text by Callum Copley

Google have recently launched their newest project titled “Art Project, powered by google.” This website is the new way of experiencing some of the most expensive and famous pieces of artwork in the world and consists of a series of virtual galleries.

The virtual galleries run using software developed by google for it’s “Street View” maps. This sort of mapping allows the user to have a 360 degree view of the gallery space and navigate their way around to every corner of the room. During their virtual tour, users can also enlarge individual works by clicking on them. These enlarged views have been scanned using high resolution cameras, showing detail beyond that visible to the naked eye. Many pieces scanned to the detail of 7 billion pixels, 1000 times greater than that of a conventional digital camera.

The project features 17 galleries from around the world, with a total of 385 rooms to view. This means more than 1000 pieces of artwork from places such as the Tate Britain in London to MoMA in New York can be viewed from one screen. Another key feature of the site is the ability to construct ones own gallery. Whilst browsing the various galleries, it is possible to select works and curate your own personal collection of works.

One positive aspect of the virtual gallery is the isolation of images it enables. In a busy gallery it can be hard to focus on one particular image, with school trips sat in front sketching and the distraction of many other masterpieces on the walls. With the online scans, the user can take much more time, and appreciate the works in much more detail. On the other hand, the 3D detail such as that on oil paintings is lost.

Google are currently expanding the project to further galleries and even allow submissions from independent galleries and collections to be considered. An interesting addition to the project would be an archive of temporary exhibitions, complete with virtual tour. With permanent collections there is always the possibility to go and visit but I feel Google could make it possible for future generations to see past exhibitions. For example, I know I would love to have a virtual tour of the 1997 “Sensation” exhibition but thats not happening. If Google could enable it so people will never miss out on an exhibition like I have done then it could definitely enhance art education.

This advance in technology is no doubt a useful resource but does it mean the end of traditional galleries? I asked UAL students for their thoughts on the effect of this new project on peoples attitudes to traditional galleries.

“The site is useful for traditional art such as paintings but pieces such as Richard Wilson’s 20:50 oil installation simply wouldn’t work as an image or even a video. Pieces such as this are experiences that need the ora of being in a gallery space’” – Joshua Sperring, Fda Production for Live Events, LCC

“I don’t think that the online galleries will put people off from going to galleries if they truly appreciate art but for those students who find gallery visits a chore is could prove an easy alternative.” – Hannah Eggelston, BA Surface Design, LCC

Google have stated that the project allows those who cannot visit the galleries to appreciate the art. They also believe it will boost the number of visitors to the real galleries. Using both sources its possible to appreciate the detail of the online scan and the physicality of the real pieces. Personally, I believe that the project is a great thing and can work very well complementary to that of the real galleries.

Google Art Project:

Keren Dee: Erased Postcards
Text by Laramie Shubber
Postcard collages by Keren Dee

Wimbledon College of Art Fine Art alumnus Keren Dee works with postcards in her art to create unique pieces using mass-reproduced images of pre-existing works.

Keren Dee chooses to work with what people consider a negative aspect of the arts: art, and particularly photography within art, is often criticised for its mass reproduction.

“The Erased Postcard series attempts to turn this idea on its head by re-presenting each postcard as a unique object, whilst highlighting the futile endeavour of  searching for something new,” says Dee. “They are randomly deconstructed by cutting and mutilating, then playfully reassembled in a cynical attempt to find new possibilities on the banal everyday art postcard.”

Dee’s work has multiple borders, between reality and fantasy, between the obvious and the concealed. The title, Erased Postcard, suggests a political undertone: an idea of choosing to erase what has already been ‘laid down in stone’ is controversial in mainstream media. That is Dee’s intention however: the Erased Postcard series aims to erase the past as elements of the postcard are eliminated ‘until the invisible reveals itself.’

The ‘invisible’ is often in the form of ambiguous and comical figures at odds with the title of the original image. For example,  A Postcard of Henri Matisse’s ‘Trivaux Pond’ is transformed into a portrait of a green man wearing a goatee and a floppy hat; Ryan Mosley’s The Curious Tale of the Butterfly Hat is mutated into a manic-looking girl running from disembodied hands pulling her hair; Winifred Nicholson’s Flower Table becomes a servile nude man with large buttocks and wearing black thigh-boots, offering a cup of tea to an invisible master.

This lighthearted approach to art gives the series a certain accessibility that many similar works lack; something that I find truly uplifting.

See more of Karen Dee’s work on her website.

Sroop Sunar: The Golden Glassy
Text and photography by Xanthia Hallissey

“It looks like a fairytale castle,” comments an audience member whilst looking at Sroop Sunar’s limited edition print of The Golden Glassy and comparing it to an advert for Disney. The illustration is actually of a glass of whisky, a pub sign printed in Sunar’s signature style, bright colours influenced by her Indian heritage with a very British subtext.

Sroop Sunar graduated from Foundation in Art and Design at London College of Communication in 2006 and the Central Saint Martins’ BA Graphic Design in 2009. Her latest exhibition, The Golden Glassy, is about pub signs, but with a twist. Sroop has invented her own signs, interpreting the names of British Pubs such as ‘The Red Lion’ and ‘My Father’s Moustache’ in a way that is reminiscent of Asian consumer goods. The Golden Glassy itself is the name of a Pub in Punjabi, referring to a favourite Indian drink, a glass of whisky.

I was lucky enough to attend an ‘In Conversation’ talk on 21 February 2011 with Sroop and pub signs and names authority David Roe, who talked through the origin of certain pub names. The name ‘A Bucket of Blood’ for example, was apparently penned by the owner of a Cornwall Pub 200 hundred years ago when he pulled a bucket out of a well: inside he found a severed head. Other stories were less gruesome: the modern Pub name ‘The Office’ was invented so that workers could tell their spouses they were at the office, after hours. Listening to David and Sroop, I quickly learned how important narrative is in naming an establishment.

After all, isn’t that what pubs are all about? Telling stories, between friends.

Sroop Sunar: The Golden Glassy runs until 5 March 2011
, Monday – Friday 11am – 6pm, Saturday 12 – 4pm at The Arts Gallery, University of the Arts London, High Holborn.

For more information please visit the events page or Sroop Sunar’s website.

Mina-Milk: Randomizing Russian Fairytales
Text by Kate Nelischer

“It’s an adventure,” says Mina-Milk of her beautifully illustrated love story. “I took a set of Russian fairytales, cut them into bits of text, and brought them back together.”

Mina-Milk, a Camberwell Foundation Illustration and Design student, used this project to explore the relationship between written and visual means of communications. Text is used to maintain order and rigidity throughout the narrative, while her ink and watercolour drawings allow an element of chaos to enter the reader’s consciousness.

“The relation between image and text is between what we know and what we see,” she notes. Mina-Milk references her belief that our perceptions of letters and words are defined by knowledge and education, while our perceptions of images are defined by our own past experiences.

The book itself reads front to back and back to front, as the plot follows each of the two main characters. Using the fragments of the fairytales, Mina-Milk has constructed her own story by using Gustav Freytag’s seven-section plot pyramid to direct the sequence of events for both characters. It concludes when the two tales, and characters, finally meet in the middle of the publication – where they live together, happily ever after.

See more of Mina-Milk’s work on her website.