For a short time in July, 6-29th, the V&A displayed a small exhibition titled 'Britain Creates 2012: Fashion + Ar Collusion'; commissioned as part of the London 2012 Festival. It featured nine parings of fashion designers and visual artists who each created a collaborative piece of work. It was 'an opportunity to acknowledge and promote the long-lasting relationship between fashion and art'. Each collaboration strived to merge the creative heads of the artist/designer...becoming dartists! A piece that particularly stood out was the only wearable piece in the exhibition, by Giles Deacon and Jeremy Deller. Deacon is known for his playful approach to clothing, whilst Deller is a video and installation artist who is concerned with taking his work beyond the gallery walls into everyday life. The pair were united by the idea of 'art for all', a principle promoted by William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement. The print design that covered the full-body running suit and flowing train was resultantly inspired by a William Morris stained glass window. I think Deacon and Deller's piece has successfully connected a variety of disciplines. It has progressed from a delicate and dynamic piece of craft-work to a digitally manipulated image through to a strikingly dynamic piece of clothing. The mixing and merging of mediums was a significant principle in the postmodern movement 1970 to 1990. However, this aesthetic is still very much visible in current creative expressions; exemplified by this exhibition. Postmodernism offered an explosive reaction to the modernist ideals in art and design represented by groups such as the Bauhaus. However, the Bauhaus movement also sought to blur the line between disciplines, and created a united workshop environment that is seen in creative education today. 

Stained glass window of King Arthur and Sir Lancelot, by William Morris

Giles Deacon + Jeremy Deller
'Untitled'
2012

Deller described the final piece as an 'Arts and Crafts suit of armour for an athlete'. The artists subsequently planned to incorporate their design in this summer's olympics by printing it on marathon blankets and other items to be handed out to runners and spectators. This effectively expands on the artists original intentions of creating art for all! 

Left to Right: Giles Deacon and Jeremy Deller

Another piece that caught my attention was a large, textured inkjet print by Matthew Williamson and Matt Collishaw. Williamson is a British fashion designer whose signature aesthetic is defined by bright and intricately detailed pieces. Collishaw is a London based artist who uses photography and film to explore   ideas of illusion and desire, questioning the notion of everyday conventions. The collaborative piece has used one of Collishaw's butterfly artworks as the basis. His large prints have been created by crushing the wings and body part of a dead butterfly between the glass plates of a 35mm slide. The crumbling result is then scanned and moved around on photoshop. The art critic Ben Lewis described them as C19th science meets C21st technology. Williamson reacted to the print by highlighting the iridescent scales and recreating the crumbling texture of the crushed butterfly. He used a bright and delicate arrangement of sequins and stones to create areas of varying relief. The overall piece, made a striking impact in the exhibition, which measured over 2 metres in width. The adorned butterfly lured you in to analyse its abstract beauty...the beauty of death. 

Matthew Williamson + Mat Collishaw
'Lepiszoulo'
2012

Close up of 'Lepiszoulo' 

showing the Williamson's sequined relief (approx 1.5cm)  applied to Collishaw's butterfly inkjet print

Left to Right: Matthew Williamson and Mat Collishaw

As 'touristy' as it sounds, I couldn't visit Barcelona without taking a two hour train up the coastline to Figueres, the birth place of Salvador Dalí....and the location of his own museum 'Theatré-Museu Dalí'. The museum dominates part of the old town with large titled eggs and a protruding glass dome.

The museum had two main sections, designed by Dalí to be as much an art piece as the work it contained. The first section incorporated a central courtyard with gold manequins looking down at you from every window. The maze of corridors and rooms that surrounded the courtyard, immersed you further into Dali's surreal world.

The Mae West room.
After walking around the seemingly disjointed display of  facial objects,  a narrow stairs led you up to a large magnifying glass...revealing the face of Mae West.

The Mae West Lips sofa, designed by Dali in 1937.

The second part to the museum was titled Dalí·Joies and exhibited his sparkling jewellery designs. Dali explained that 'Anthropomorphic subjects appear and reappear in my jewels. I see the human form in tress, leaves, animals.'

"Without an audience, without the presence of spectators, these jewels would not fulfil the function for which they came into being. The viewer, is then the ultimate artist." Dali 1959

I also visited Barcelona this summer....

All these photos were taken at Antonio Gaudi's El Parc Güell. Despite it being a tourist hotspot, it was still intriguing to stroll around the curving paths and wonder in and out of his naturalistic and surreal creations.

Another Gaudi creation that was hard to miss was the Casa Milà, more popularly known as 

 La Pedrera (the stone quarry) as the façade was intended to resemble an open quarry. The apartment house was commissioned to Gaudi by the industrialist Pere Milà and his wife Roser Segimon and took seven years to build, 1905-1912. It featured many of Gaudi's renowned design elements, including the single undulating façade, organically shaped wrought ironwork and natural forms coated in broken pieces of ceramics. The use of ceramics was termed trencadís in Catalan Modernism, which involved creating mosaics from broken pieces of tile and dinnerware. Gaudi offered a slightly alternative approach to this technique by covering architectural structures in brightly coloured shards of ceramic.

White pieces of ceramic often came from broken cups and plates disregarded by Spanish manufacturers. Gaudi had utilised the neutral colour to cover large, twisting structures that greeted you when walking out on to the top of the La Pedrera...as well as being visible form the streets below. Up close however, it was interesting to see that some of the pieces appeared to have melted and pitted under the intense sun.  












Other chimney forms were ingrained with a mosaic of broken glass bottles. 

The inside of the building presented a selection of rooms that had been kept in the style of the early C20th living. Other rooms and corridors exhibited examples of natural objects that inspired Gaudi's designs, alongside his architectural models. A display that particularly stood out was a suspended chain model that revealed Gaudi's design for the church at the Güell colony, it was titled Estereo Funicular. The display was mesmerising in the way that the reflection offered clarity and structure to the hanging form.

One of the aspects of Guadi's work that I found most intriguing was the way he interpreted natural forms in an intriguingly surreal style. The pieces he designed inhabited a new form of life. 

Continuing the wood theme...at this year's Treasure exhibition, held in Somerset House, I discovered the work of Diane Turner. The South African jeweller combines sculpted wood with gold and silver plating. Turner explained that the crater shown in the piece below was hidden within a piece of wood that she bought and was only discovered upon slicing and shaping it. She subsequently incorporated it into the design by plating it in the same metal that encases the geometric 'tree'. I think Turner's use of wood and metal presents an interesting example of how wood can be used in contemporary jewellery. 

Weird, woody forms also appeared on the beach in Southwold I visited this summer...

There were a few other intriguing sights along the Suffolk coastline...the power of weather to manipulate and form our landscapes and nature has always fascinated me.

The clustered and compressed appearance of my 20 piece collection shares a similar aesthetic to chipboard. Although it is a common manmade board I find it's aesthetic appearance rather appealing. As did a fine art student at this years Chelsea degree show, who had created a chipboard 'print' jacket. It was also interesting to see a textile student using different colours and textures of wood to create constructions that complimented their garments.

Towards the beginning of my 20/21 project, the annual 'Collect' exhibition was on display in the Saatchi gallery. The four day exhibition showcases a wide variety of galleries involved in contemporary crafts. Two galleries that I was happy to see again were the Marzee and Gallerie RA, which are both located in Amsterdam. I was fortunate to visit both of them on a course trip. One of the jewellers presented by Gallerie RA this year was Boris De Beijer. His pieces are made by setting objects in resin and subsequently slicing and reconstructing the pieces into brooches. This sliced aesthetic was interestingly something I was looking at in my 20/21 project. Another piece that inspired the development of my own project was the work of Carina Chitsaz. Her geometirc structures that look a little like they've dropped out of space are made using silver, steel and graffiti. 

 Boris De Beijer

Carina Chitsaz

A few other things that caught my attention, were the clustered ring creations of Karl Fritsch. I have previously been intrigued by Fritsch's work as he challenges the associations of precious stones and metals. I also enjoyed the hybrid creatures made in porcelain by Hanne Tyrmi. 

Karl Fritsch

Hanne Tyrmi

Whilst the pieces I saw at the Collect exhibition inspired the design development for my 20/21 project, It was interesting to see the sliced creations of...after I had completed it. The large exhibition at the Natural History Museum was both intriguing and unsettling. The images below show a section of a sliced giraffe and the cross section of a rat.

One of the final projects of my second year involved creating a batch of 21 wearable pieces, followed by 20 identical pieces. The brief was largely open- ended, leaving it for us to decide the material, concept and techniques. Whilst being slightly dazzled by the endless possibilites, I began to loosely focus on the Bauhaus notion of creating order out of chaos and challenging material perceptions. I was interested in creating structure out of 'mess' and slicing and sculpting cross sections of colour. I was equally interested in manipulating materials to create hybrid disguises.

After a lot of experimenting, I developed the idea of using wood veneer, which I chopped into tiny pieces, and forming them into clustered fold structures. The folded shape was taken directly from my previous experiments with acetate sheet, where I looked at applying the 'butterfly effect' to form. Throughout my development and final 41 piece collection I experimented with polypropylene, glass, card, acetate, clear resin, clear silicone rubber, brass rod and wood veneers. Below is one of the 20 identical pieces I made to be sold next year.