Designs of the Year 2013 & The Sea Chair Project: Sublime Design, Simultaneously Technical and Ethical.

Yesterday morning I attended the early breakfast press view (the first ‘breakfast’ view I’ve ever attended where there was no breakfast! hmph) of The Design Museum’s Designs Of The Year. Luckily, the show was so fantastic that I didn’t even notice my grumbling tum: 99 designs chosen by a panel of artists, architects, curators, designers, journalists and other experts, tidily packed into the first floor of The Design Museum.

This year the majority of pieces were either heavily technically or ethically focused, with a  strong emphasis on 3D printing and aid in third world countries. The winners will be announced in due course, the jury hoping to pick category winners by the end of this week, but top of my list are The Sea Chair, Little Sun and Kit Yamoyo; three stunning examples of intelligent, and potentially life changing, design.

My review of the entire show is on One Stop Arts, but I’d like to to also tell you all about The Sea Chair, which the very lovely Kieren Jones also took a minute to tell me about.

I had no idea about the effect that the dumping of plastic had on our world environment before 10am on Tuesday morning, but it turns out, it’s pretty huge. Simply put, there are gyres in our sea which act as whirlpools which collect debris; this has now resulted in three enormous plastic islands sitting just below the surface – all ‘out of sight and out of mind’ until now. These islands, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the Indian Ocean Garbage Patch and North Atlantic Garbage Patch are breaking up and the light plastics they contain are beginning to wash up on British beaches.

The project begun when Kieren and a few friends heard a radio piece about an enormous bundle of debris which had arrived on a beach in the Southwest, and decided on a whim (in hindsight a pretty profitable whim) to drive down and have a look for themselves.

Arriving on the white sands of a postcard-perfect beach, the group thought it had been a wasted trip, but after a closer look begun to notice fine grains which floated where others did not: ground down plastic, the waves a ‘plastic soup.’

Chatting to the local fishermen who, like many tradesmen are suffering due to supermarket exploitation, the group came up with an idea: why not trawl for plastic instead?

The collaboration between Kieren Jones, Studio Swine and the seamen of Hastings has now resulted in a line of unique three-legged stools, all made entirely from discarded plastic, melted and formed at sea, upon the boat. The stools are crude and heavy and the process messy and smelly, but they have an identifiable charm as clunky symbols of a small plight to help save our seas, our jobs and our livelihood as a whole.

The finishing touch to these stools acts as a nod to the fishermen who brought this project to life, and for me completes the story: tied by a ragged rope to each stool is a small tag noting the coordinates of where its plastic body was harvested, melted down and reinvented.

The Sea Chair Project is in its infancy, but I hope that it continues to be nurtured and to grow into something which really makes a substantial difference to our great British seaside.

Here’s an amazing film featuring stunning shots detailing The Sea Chair process – a must-see, and I hope you also enjoyed the full review of Designs of the Year.

Open Source Sea Chair by Studio Swine from Dezeen on Vimeo.

I want to live in a Hobbit House…

I don’t usually watch Grand Designs…well not that often…when I last caught it a couple of weeks ago I fell in love with this Hexagon House in Cambridgeshire. The guy who built it, Kelly Neville, is a little bonkers but in a good, ambitious way and a genius craftsman. The whole thing is made of wood, clay and insulated with straw and is designed to be entirely self sufficient as well as stunning. I think it appeals to my inner-eco-warrior, and possibly -child as it sort of reminds me of the teletubbies’ house. Yay!

Above is a sunset evening during the five year build….

…the hexagonal staircase, banisters crafted from a wood that is apparently ‘impossible’ to work with…

….the internal stairs are wrapped around a six hundred year old tree trunk, which is also…

…a wine cabinet! Hurrah!

Last but certainly not least, my favourite bit, the hand made glass bath!

I want to live a Hexagonal House with a garden growing thirty different kinds of fruit and veg, and paint the Cambridgeshire countryside from the veranda by the pond…or possibly just sit there and sip wine from my six hundred year old cabinet while the sun goes down… Please?

Loving this snippet of early summer

Stuart Whipps: Why contribute to the spread of ugliness?

Stuart Whipps’ new exhibition at Ikon, Birmingham is a medley of archival pieces, ancient photography techniques and new digital media and it’s fascinating too. It pushes all the right buttons for me – it’s intellectual, historical and strives to preserve images of the past while asking the audience what beauty is to them.

 

The first piece we come to is a two channel video installation titled England and the Octopus, Beauty and the Beast. Both films focus on different parts of Snowdonia; the first takes place on a constructed viewing platform for a waterfall, a ‘beauty spot’ by definition, whilst the second explores Blaenau Ffestiniog, a town deemed to have “insufficient natural beauty” to be included in Snowdonia – despite being right in the centre of it. The films question what is beautiful and why – are we predisposed to see something as beautiful because it’s labelled as such?

The second channel takes the audience through the hills and valleys surrounding  Blaenau Ffestiniog and down into the slate mines which scar it, and is narrated by the soothing voice of a Welsh woman. The piece is saturated with historical references – the script she speaks is in fact a Welsh translation of a text written by Clough Williams-Ellis, the architect who chose to exclude the village from Snowdonia and which directs the working classes on the ‘right way’ to experience beauty.

The title of the show, Why contribute to the spread of ugliness?, is also that of Whipps’ second piece – three projectors display a combination of Whipps’ own photography and stills of 487 boxes of archived paperwork from the John Madin Design Group, which was given to the Birmingham Central Library and which the group itself designed. As the library is currently awaiting demolition, this archive is soon to be homeless so Whipps is working with others to organise and save these images which encapsulate 1970s Birmingham.

Without the work of Whipps, not only would Madin’s construction be lost, but his archives too: the exhibition reveals a compulsion to preserve places, images and items which other people have simply disregarded and disposed of.

Stuart Whipps is on NOW at Ikon until the 5th Feb 2011!

Grand day out part two: Architects Build Small Spaces @ V&A

Next stop: V&A.

We headed down into the sauna that once was Southwark tube station and headed off to South Ken to see what the V&A had to offer…and the answer was A LOT. Too much for us to get through!

As we walked in we spotted the beautiful courtyard filled with people lazing about on the grass and indulging in some (mmm…delicious) ice cream. We quickly joined in.

Not only does the V&A itself have brilliant architecture but at the moment they've got a free exhibition on called 1:1 Architects Make Small Spaces – seven little structures are dotted about the site and we managed to find four. 

The first was out in the courtyard, the sunshine glinting off a gold roof supported by gnarled ash trunks. On closer inspection, the entire structure – floor, walls, roof – were all created from five ash trees, cut in half and carved into. Ratatosk is the title of this piece, meaning drill-tooth, and it refers to a story from ancient Norse mythology about a squirrel. Part of this story is inscribed into the split trunks on the inside of the structure. It's an exquisite piece of carpentry, the beauty of the natural textures and decay of the trunks is exposed and contrasts with the carefully carved calligraphy. After seeing this one we went off in search of the rest of the exhibition!

Next up we found Ark: A towering stack of bookcases standing two storeys high holding thousands of books. We followed a spiral staircase up through the bookshelves which face inwards, allowing visitors to grab a book and have a read on one of the sheepskin seats which give it a homely, comfortable feel. Even on this busy weekday in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the V&A Ark feels like a quiet spot where you can just sit, read and be peaceful.

Finally we found the main room for 1:1 and in this huge dark space we also discovered Woodshed and Spiral Booths. These didn't offer the same story as the previous pieces and we were left feeling a little confused and disappointed; however having read up on the pieces I now have a much better understanding! Not to self: must not read a book by its cover.

Woodshed is actually made entirely from wood produced by wood thinning in Wales, a necessary process which results in tonnes of cheap wood and therefore the means for cheap and eco-friendly rural studios.

Spiral Booths was completely lost on us: A tall glass and metal box, which like Ark held a spiral staircase, here leading off to red curtained spaces. We went through these thick velvet curtains and looked around for speakers or an object, we found a switch, had a "should we…shouldn't we?" moment and went for it.

A spotlight flicked on…

Hmm…

Nope. Nothing. Bemused we kept hunting for more hidey holes and found none. Turns out that Spiral Booths is intended as a purpose built space for performers so in practice visitors would draw back the curtains to all sorts of live art installations. Actually a brilliant idea and one I'd love to see in practice! 

To all Architecture students: have a look at 1:1! I haven't seen it all and although I'm completely clueless when it comes to architecture I found it really interesting and I'm sure it'd be a great inspiration!

An artist, a photographer and a fashionista take a trip!

Part One.

EXPOSED at Tate Modern.

Definitely worth the £10!

 

So yesterday two friends and I spent about seven hours looking at photography, illustration, painting, costume, architecture, fashion and jewellery…phew!

We wandered up the south bank to the Tate Modern past hoards of people queuing for the Eye and tried to avoid some bizarre looking performers.

We’d planned to make it to the Tate Mod, Saatchi, V&A and Photographer’s Gallery all in one day – in the end we managed seven hours (still pretty impressive I think!) between the Tate and V&A and then may have ended up in a pub for four more hours…

We arrived at the Tate to be greeted by the first pleasant surprise of the day – the Michael Clark Company’s dance collaborative taking place in the Turbine Hall! We stood watching twelve dancers performing a smooth warm up and practising a few steps before going to grab our tickets for Exposed:Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera. We intended to get back to the dancers as soon as we were done with Exposure but sadly we were so absorbed in the exhibition that when we finally emerged an hour and a half later the dancers had gone for lunch! Serious tragedy – so unfortunately I’m just going to have to go back!

I don’t want to give away too much about Exposure but it’s definitely an incredible collection of photographs. The pieces range from images taken during the 1860s when secret-camera fever took over to some quite shocking sexually explicit and violent images to recent images from no-camera zones. We all agreed that the first half of the exhibition was the best – before we reached what we insensitively nicknamed The Death Room – and that you only really realised how amazing the first few photographs were after you’d had a chance to take them in.

Particularly amazing were the series Heads by Philip-Lorca diCorcia (see man with beard at the top there) – shot with a series of hidden cameras and automatic flashes which were triggered as the subject walked by – and the collection of secret photography devices on show that’d been devised in the early 20th Century to catch people unaware. DiCorcia’s images are incredible: they look as if they were shot in a studio, the lighting and expression impeccable. Later on in the day we visited the V&A and the photography section included some of Gregory Crewdson’s staged photographs, his works appear to be snapshots from everyday life but in fact are meticulously crafted using false lighting, actors and sets. They have to be admired as they are amazing creations, but I think that diCorcia’s works and images like this are so incredibly interesting because they are completely real. No sets, no ‘photo faces’, no poses. Crewdson’s work appears so ordinary but its creation is extraordinary, which seems to defeat the point to me. 

This is why secret photography is so amazing, even when it isn’t shocking or candid it captures people in a way they would never be photographed otherwise. While staged photographs or organised photographs capture a frozen person, secret photographs hold personality in them too.

Exposure was pretty heavy-going in some sections and pretty vulgar too so just be aware! I was pretty glad my mother didn’t agree to a family day out at the Tate when I walked into Room 5 to be greeted by a wall of women in gimp masks! A lot of the work was sickening but also horribly fascinating – a series which we all found pretty disturbing was The Park by Kohei Yoshiyuki, documenting a group of voyeurs who crawl through Japanese parks late at night trying to get as close as possible and eventually touch unsuspecting couples. A shocking, grotesque and perverted ‘hobby’ exposed by secret photography!

We noticed trends in the photographs throughout the ages: sex, violence, humiliation, condemnation. The earliest paparazzi photographs are like a black and white version of Heat magazine, obsession with other people’s lives is an eternal human interest – seeing other people’s dirty laundry makes our own seem cleaner! 

The three of us travelled through from secret cameras, early paparazzi photos and images that exposed grim fetishes and prostitution and then ended up in Room 9. We all agreed if we were to see the show again we’d stop at Room 8 and make a quick turn back to those lovely images of Marilyn and Jackie Kennedy! The images of violence, war, lynchings and capital punishment were of course interesting but the exhibition should have really come with a warning as to be honest, us three girls are all complete wimps.

I faint at the sight of blood, our resident photographer felt too sick for lunch and my fashion student friend propped herself up on my shoulder when she followed me quickly out of Death Room. But despite how horrifying the images are, I’m glad I saw what I did and I admire those photographers for the bravery they show in exposing such atrocities. The photographs are actually fascinating, so fellow wimpy girls: be brave and have a look. 

Room 11-14 were all a bit lost on us as after the celebs, sex and death of the first 10 or so rooms, images from surveillance cameras don’t quite cut it. Exposure hits a climax of such powerful images which could easily reduce a person to tears – in fact I think the reason we didn’t cry is that you can hardly believe some of it is real – and so the ending is a little disappointing. Thinking back though, we were so dumbstruck by the the pornographic and violent images that if we’d been released into the middle of the Tate we wouldn’t have known quite how to recover. As it was we were still flailing about aimlessly and repeating things like “did you see.. with the window?” “oh my god yeah I did’t realise what it was until…” “wow.” even after a few rooms of much calmer – but in some ways more technically impressive – images.

I was intending to do an entry about the whole day but I’ve now spent about an hour on just Exposure. Goes to show how much of an impact it had on me! 

To sum up: An astonishing collection of incredible works but it could have been four shows rather than one. I guess a tenner for four shows isn’t bad then!

Next up…I’ll actually start on the four hours we spent in the V&A.