Visit to Liverpool's Art Galleries:
Thursday 23rd February.

WALKER ART GALLERY:

I was excited to visit Liverpool's collection of galleries, as well as the beautiful city itself which is full of cultural sites and history. First, I visited the Walker Art Gallery, held in a beautiful 19th Century building are classical pieces from the 17th century onwards, as well as a range of modern art, selected by John Moore University. The first room I went in was the Sculpture gallery, followed by the victorian and 18th century art rooms. I sensed very much a theme of stories: each sculpture and painting portrayed a story of someone I had heard of, be it from Fairytales, The Bible, Literature or Greek Mythology. My favourite Sculpture was "Puck" by Harriet Hosmer, based on the Mischievous Sprite from Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream":

I then went on to the Victorian Gallery, which housed some beautiful paintings, again, based on famous names and stories I was familiar with:

"The Expulsion of Adam and Eve"

"The Sleeping Knights from Sleeping Beauty"

"Perseus and Andromeda"

"Isabella and Lorenzo"

"Echo and Narcissus"
This was my favourite painting in this area. I am very intrigued with the Greek Myth of Narcissus and am interested in artists' perception of the story, be it oil paintings to reflect clearly what is going on like Waterhouse's work here, or surrealist work, such as "The metamorphosis of Narcissus" by Dali:

I think the reason I enjoyed these sculptures and paintings was that on one hand, they are beautiful, careful works of art which one rarely sees being executed in today's rushed lifestyle. Some of these will have taken years to paint, and use colour and light delicately, in a way rarely used today. I am interested in stories such as the ones portrayed in these pieces, and often use them to inspire my own work, however I, like many other artists of this age, use a lot more lateral way of thinking.

In comparison to the beautifully delicate way these artists use colour, I came to view the Modern Art gallery. These pieces use bold colour, and concepts quite different and controversial from the stories used in the Victorian gallery, and many are influenced by other cultures, such as japanese:

I was inspired by these modern art pieces. I loved the Victorian styles, however admire the bold, arrogant way that colour and shapes are highlighted in many of these examples. The last one, "Oriental Garden, Kyoto" by Bruce McLean, reminded me of a mark making exercise we did during our last project. I thoroughly enjoyed making our own painting tools, and created some interesting patterns, here, it looks like McLean uses different techniques to get the forms he desires, or even improvises with them to see the outcome.

*Henri Matisse*

BLUECOAT DISPLAY CENTRE:
I was looking forward to seeing this gallery, it is a very beautiful old schoolhouse, however as a gallery I found it difficult to comprehend and find my way around. The only display I saw was "Colin McPherson: The Proof Principle".

This installation was complicated, and hard to get your head around for a while, but the use of photography, film and textile installation was interesting. It was a good response to McPerson's task, to demonstrate the power and the certainty of photography as a means to communicate proof. The way it was displayed, in a clever simple, clean layout contrasted the complicated task McPherson was demonstrating.

Sampling unit:
Ordered Opposites: Rural/Urban: Hard/Soft
Evaluation of Project 2:

In past projects, I have found a weakness in not carrying out appropriate and on-going research. In this project I feel I have embraced my own challenge of conducting thorough research using myriad techniques and materials. I have made relevant connections between my research and practice, for example:

I took this photograph of a building in Spinningfields, Manchester and looked solely at the structure of the building:

After investigating the structure of the building in my sketchbook, I created this piece of development to begin thinking of how I could use my materials to re-create the forms.

I am happy with this as my first 3D Construction sample, as I felt I carried out good research, development of ideas and then the final idea, using quite literal thinking, to create a hard & soft themed garment.

I always make sure I use context in my work, to give my samples a meaning beyond aesthetics. A good example of this is my “Filing Cabinet” piece. On my walk through Manchester, in which I set out to find form and structure in the city, I discovered the “Filing Cabinet” building:

This image inspired me straight away with the shapes and I started thinking of different ways to present my ideas:

I wanted to come up with a more lateral design compared to my last sample, so played with my ideas, leading to this garment design:

In an effort to maintain my Hard & Soft theme, I created the body of the garment to have a soft, sleek bottom seam, to contrast the square shapes. This leads to my next design, and quite an important self- discovery- my mark making techniques. During tutorials my tutor has pointed out that my work is very similar to that of a print students, a workshop I didn’t think to do as I thought I was a more constructive designer. However, in our Drawing Day task, we created our own brushes and mark makers. I used visual images from my sketchbook and experimented using my mark makers, oil paints, acrylic paints and charcoal. This task really inspired me and lead to me developing my marks in to 3D samples. Here is one example:

I took this photo during a walk through Blanchland in Northumberland during the Christmas Holidays, using this image, I created this mark making during the workshop:

I then went on to create a 3D sample using the "Filing Cabinet" idea:

I feel that this work further proves my lateral thinking ability, as I have taken a visual source and developed it in a non-conventional way. This is also my risk-taking piece, because instead of creating a sample using calico and chicken wire to enable structure, I used advice from tutorials, as well as advice from the Drawing Day, and created my own print, to apply to my development from “The Filing Cabinet” piece.

Throughout this project, I believe I have used my time efficiently. During the knit workshop I was still a little weary about making connections between my research and practice, because I carried out a lot of visual and contextual research over weekends and the christmas holidays, so I found it difficult to narrow down ideas.

Although I created plenty of samples with developed colour themes, I didn’t feel any of them were very final to the point of being able to imagine them as a garment, however enjoyed making the sample boards- which could eventually lead to more developed samples if I went back to them.

This allowed me to do my research a little differently in the 2nd part of the project, because I was doing 3D Construction I knew that I should just begin my looking at form and structure. I believe the last month of the project went quite well, as I had planned to create 2 or 3 quality samples, with well developed connections between my research, my hard & soft theme, my materials, workshops and practice.