21/10/2011

Tape, Toy Soldiers, Boxing Gloves and Ball Bags



My limited edition packing tapes are available now — alongside other choice items — at NY's Chandelier Creative Limited Editions shop site. I keep them, sandwiched and tempered by masking, sello- and double-sided, in a Scooby Snack stack.

19/10/2011

Creamed Ware






Made these assemblages as response — in some way, shape or form — to the BBC's excellent Ceramics: A Fragile History. Episode 2 (of 3) focused on industrialisation, Wedgwood and Stoke–on–Trent. I was particularly interested in the coming about of Creamware, as a cheap alternative to Porcelain. It has its own dairy, opaque quality and reveals its mutton–dressed–as–lamb, earthenware body, when chipped. The death of the Potteries as relayed, was sad and frustrating in equal measure (as is the lights going out on so many famous Ceramics courses). Outsourcing of process was fatal in undermining the very thing that a market might value in the product: local craftsmanship. So the pieces here, comprised of cheap, import, mimetic materials.

01/10/2011

Go n-eírí an bóthar leat



May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.

From an Old Irish Blessing, via. Here, because the sentiment is close to that of a wind-beneath-my-wings motorhome livery.










As posted previously, I've become interested in the trope. This — edging toward cliché — but I've struggled with the distinction between the two terms, here and there. This may be wrong but tropeimplies a figurative device which is still relevant or useful, as opposed to redundancy and overuse of cliché. Both are interesting, as is the oscillating space — if it exists — in between. So the kind of nondescript, abstract form that somehow signifies a hoped-for lifestyle.

The top photos were taken between Montpellier, Nîmes and the Ardèche; the E15 Euro–holiday-route. The poor camera shake quality — by accident rather than design — glitch-propels the livery on its way to some campsite or other.




Also thinking about a mutation of neutral (perpendicular, grounded, tangible — or looking back at you), into aspirational (diagonal, buoyant, intangible — or looking away, at what you want to be) primary forms. There is some recollection of the way this first happened in the 1980s and the Thatcherisation of logos such as British Telecom and British Rail. Shown here, the BT logo 1980–1991 and then the rebrand 'Piper' logo of 1991–2003: "The reorganisation was named Project Sovereign to reflect the company’s commitment to meetings customers’ needs – ‘the customer is King’" (from Ask).
It's such a common migration of one to the other, across corporate culture. I don't care a jot about Kraft but am still dismayed, diverted by the overcooked euphemism of this redesign. Make today delicious. Via. Off to have a Crap Kraft Dinner.


Via. Requisite, pre-digital vector tool: the French Curve.






All brought together here: the sentiment and the tool. "Top North East Club Band 'French Curves' featuring Miss Jane Reed singing The Wind Beneath My Wings".



Here and there, identifiably a less liquid, earlier decade of livery. Stacked gauges of horizontal lines. Pre-tapering and whiplash. Like the first, tentative pinstripes of sponsored football kits, ahead of later gradated, flocked excess.