University Campus Suffolk

We’ve come too far to give up who we are, so lets raise the bar and a glass to the stars.

Around the building here at UCS there have been some statistics placed on the walls with vinyl lettering. I was made aware of these after a tutor came to find me to tell me they were going up, but to be honest you can not miss them as they are so big. The tutor explained to me that these statistics hold no actual weight in regards to official stats and they were just an accumulation of a survey taken place by the Sunday Times. I found it rather amusing because with putting these signs up it appears the university is trying to grasp at anything to be taken seriously as a facility of higher education. The fact that when I tell anyone I’m at UCS they refer to it as the college perhaps proves that the university needs to make a real push in promoting the their institute as a serious place for higher education. Don’t get me wrong though, I am not intentionally attacking the university, I myself, although there are flaws within the course I am attending, will support this course for the tutors support and their encouragement for self directed exploration within your own practice. There is always a tutor available to talk to if you need them and always tutorial slots for you to sign up for as well as being able to email the tutors anytime. I can not speak for other courses though.

So I decided to make my own student satisfaction stickers, these were really just to reflect how no matter what you put on the stickers, if they look professional, then they will be taken seriously. Although I suppose the very last UK LEADERS satisfaction sticker I made was a direct attack at the university as it appears that Fine Art is constantly being questioned for its relevance within the building we occupy. Are we just too radical? Are we out of control Mavericks? Are our creative minds a true burden to others? Is it wrong to think that as an Arts and Humanities building we are free to express, experiment and produce work that perhaps does make a mess?

Below are some of the examples I included, as it turned out I was unable to put these in place, I had every intention to but tensions are running high with regards to Art students abusing their work spaces and the big wigs who walk around once a week to look at who is in the studio space. I think basically they want to turn the whole building into a Graphics Suit.

UK LEADERS

Student Satisfaction: Slowest lift ever!

Sunday Times, 2012

UK LEADERS

Student Satisfaction: Moderately used notification boards

Sunday Times, 2012

UK LEADERS

Student Satisfaction: Fully functioning light switches

Sunday Times, 2012

UK LEADERS

Student Satisfaction: Rather dimly lit lift

Sunday Times, 2012

UK LEADERS

Student Satisfaction: Sensibly placed Fire Exit sign

Sunday Times, 2012

UK LEADERS

Student Satisfaction: Semi opening window

Sunday Times, 2012

UK LEADERS

Student Satisfaction: Missing ladies toilet sign

Sunday Times, 2012

UK LEADERS

Student Satisfaction: Nearly empty water dispenses

Sunday Times, 2012

UK LEADERS

Student Satisfaction: Readily available fluorescent lighting

Sunday Times, 2012

UK LEADERS

Student Satisfaction: Multiple doors to multiple rooms

Sunday Times, 2012

UK LEADERS

University Satisfaction: A push for a decreasing Art and Design department

Sunday Times, 2012

Dear Sir or Madam would you read my book, its took a year to write will you take a look??

This past week has been one of true panic, decision making and true team work, I have had very little time to welcome my usual allotted margin for procrastinating, It has been that bad that I am yet to venture out to see Iron Man III on its opening week, a venture that was unheard of with the release of the first two.

This week has been so busy because of the ever approaching deadline for the degree show catalogue design that the printers is wanting for a draft copy. It appeared that with the deadline approaching, our chief designer was in need of some help, so I stepped up, I very much enjoy the designing of poster work, flyers and now, the degree show catalogue. So over the past week I met up with the wonderfully helpful and talented performance artist Amy Sage, who has taken me through a crash course in Adobe InDesign, allowing Me and Matt have pushed on with completing the final draft of the catalogue, not forgetting the input from the other students on the course.

Visualising a finished catalogue with so many peoples involvement is such a hard thing to do, creative control needs to be enforced and unfortunately you’re unable to please everyone, no matter how hard you try. I’m including below the conversation we had over our Facebook page, it’s in reference to the images we are including on the inside cover sleeve both front and back of our degree show catalogue, I think this shows the steps needed to problem solve and overcome difficult decisions. I think a very important skill I have gained and added to throughout this last year of the degree course, is the ability to express and explain my ideas and back them up to my fellow students, explaining to them the advantages and gains from doing things a particular way, through doing this I feel I have been able to gain their support and trust and so far we have been a very solid and successful year group…

The images I have included are that of the conversation process we have for decision making over our Facebook group page, I think including pieces like this enables you to see how a decision is made through many parties.

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The best things in life are free, but you can give them to the birds and bees, I want money… that’s what I want

I decided to take a break from my on going studio practice, the reason for this derives from a conversation I overheard in the sculpture studio a couple of weeks ago, a level five student was talking to a tutor about how he felt his work needed a more commercial look if he was going to make it appealing for public selling. The tutor’s reaction was to tell the student that for this to happen he would have to change his whole approach to his work and basically only produce work that sells, therefore turning himself into a cheap representation of an artist whose art could quite happily sit amongst the shelves of The Range or Dunhelm Mill, waiting for the next uncultured swine to come along and purchase an item to fill their magnolia painted walls.

So for the next two weeks over the Easter break the student spent his time in the workshop making frames for all his work, often spending more times on creating these frames than what the actual art work took to create.

(I realise at this point that I am yet to go in to real depth about my work, but look at these blog entries as a Magical Mystery Tour if you will, or a Forrest Gump box of chocolates, you just have no idea what you’re gonna get, what I have been working on will follow).

I have always been a great lover of street art, whatever your views on it you have to admit it has no constraints or limits, only the limit of the artists imagination, a particular favourite of mine is D*face. Based in London at the Stolen Space Gallery, he has become a world renowned street artist and his work has become very collectable, reaching very high sums of money. I remember reading about how D*face had made these huge spray paint can sections out of concrete and gone around London late at night with a friend in flat bed lorry with a crane on the back, dropping these cans onto pavements and placing broken concrete around them giving the effect that these cans were breaking through from the underground and were taking over. As it happens D*face did not restrict these sculptures to London, they have appeared all over the country, as well as South Africa, Australia and America. The iconic image of the spray can is what most represents the subject of street art, so with this in mind I set out to create visually appealing concrete sculptures with the subject of the spray can.

I had reached a point with my own work where I was struggling to justify making any more CCTV Camera trophies as I now had over twenty and that was the amount that I was aiming for. With the conversation in mind I was very keen to completely step away from my studio practice and do something completely different, something that I felt would appeal to the masses, that was very visually pleasing, something that really just cleared my mind and opened it up to new ideas for moving on with my studio work.

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and if you haven’t noticed yet, I’m more impressionable when my cement is wet

During my second year I started creating works from plaster that had embossed letters standing out from the flat surface of the plaster. The process was a very simple one, you first needed to create a reverse image into a rolled out sheet of clay, press letters into the clay, for this I chose to use magnetic fridge letters as I felt it gave a very child like approach to the process, once the chosen word or phrase was pressed into the clay in reverse a wooden frame was the put around the clay and excess cut away, creating a barrier around the clay for the plaster to be cast within. Once the casting plaster was poured and had set, it was lifted and released from the wooden frame and any clay remnants were washed off, leaving a crisp white embossed word or phrase.

This was the basis for progression in this process once I entered my third year. I wanted to explore the idea of modern materials that are involved in the construction industry, particularly the use of concrete. I substituted the casting plaster for a cement mix; the trouble I found with a pure cement mix is that without the aggregate or the correct mixing process, the works dried and became rather fragile, cracking and chipping on the edges and never truly picking out the embossed letters without leaving half of the letters still in the clay mould, which at times gave it a very worn and weathered look but often the word or phrase became unreadable. So instead, after research I experimented with a full concrete mix, which added strength and density to the finished works, becoming very solid and very strong.

University Campus Suffolk is situated next to Ipswich Waterfront, 10 years ago the Marina was a hive of new builds, old factories and businesses, including the old Paul’s Malt factory, which had been filling the air with a rather vile smell for as long as I could remember, but was now derelict and planning permission had been granted to transform the waterfront into a busy, exciting and luxurious place for wannabe London Yuppie’s to congregate and live. Unfortunately as reality can be a bitch, Yuppie’s never came, money ran out and building slowed to a stop. What is left there 10 years later is some very nice finished apartment blocks that are shadowed by a concrete skeleton of an unfinished build, but this was not the only concrete shell that Ipswich housed, they appeared thick and fast, some standing for 2 – 3 years as empty shells till another company came to take over the build and finish the initial project.

My use of concrete in my work is a reaction to the very fast construction of foundations and structures of tower blocks, moving from an empty lot to a fully standing, overshadowing skeletal structure. I choose this as the basis material for my sculpture because I am fascinated with how hard yet fragile it can be…

To explain, when you first mix concrete you have this liquid state material that can be released into a mould, after 24 hours you can return to that mould and what is left is the hardened version of what was in a liquid state previous, however, once removed from the mould there is still moisture present so it is still a very pliable material, not in a sense that you can twist and bend it, but you are able to remove any parts you don’t want with less effort than when it has fully gone off. So minor corrections can be made to a moulded piece and then once it’s fully dried you are left with a solid, heavy item, which even so is still susceptible to chipping. As well as its everyday use within modern environment, it’s the stages of process I am drawn to within the material which is why I use it.

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Like a drifter I was born to walk alone, but I’ve made up my mind, I ain’t wasting no more time and here I go again…

So I realise that once again I am here to play catch-up with my blog, but that is a lie as I haven’t actually made a true start on it. It’s not that I find it an overly challenging task; I think it’s more that I am yet to integrate it into my daily routine and time seems to have passed so quickly from when the start of the third year began and to now and I am yet to make an impact on it. I stated within my last blog entries that I will be catching up with discussing past work, but I feel that work has been and gone and I really need to concentrate on telling you about the work I have recently made and the work I am proposing for my degree show, that said, I will be jumping in and out of particular parts of the year that I feel are worth mentioning.