Post Pre-Post

I'm preparing two other posts. One related to the way I have looked at C19th type forms for the Dickens project and then into ornament. Another on a building collection of forms in the built or natural environment, to feed some conception of a modern ornament. So the commonality is ornament. This folds in, too, the previous posts on tropes and (motorhome) aspirational, sentimental graphic language. All of this is coagulating to give a language base for projects, predominantly the ROLU chair exercise but also work in steel and ceramic and some general thoughts on how I might draw with materials. Also some reference to the last post, thinking about inner-pink and colour being revealed out of a form or grouping. Was getting bogged down, so made these, in order to see something quickly, which helps.

Gnaw, colour

Let's Talk About Progress

Thursday 8 December, 5 – 6:30pm.
With Peter Nencini, Andrew Foster, Alice Moloney and David Garcia.

"In a bid to further understand what we mean by ‘Illustration’, ‘Let’s Talk About Progress’ is a discussion that aims to offer different perspectives that explore beyond the boundaries associated with our practice. With a panel of practitioners, educators and students, we hope this event can be used as a building block in an ever-evolving dialogue, intent on constructing a critical framework in which illustration can confidently speak about itself."

Lower Gulbenkian Gallery
Royal College of Art
Kensington Gore`
SW7 2EU

Free and open to all

Post-, Pre-

I've just ended a typographic project, for GraphicDesign&'s upcoming book, 'Page 1'. The research took me to some great early C20th type specimen books; one sandwiched here. Preparing a post on that, which involved some new variants of Make Do Type. Now thinking a lot about surface, material, for the project with ROLU. So this is a sort of buffer between the two.

Postmortemism

A few weeks now since visiting Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970–1990 at V&A. It did feel timely. A tough one to curate but something happened enough to make it resonate for weeks after. At the age and stage now to be presented with a lived-through history, which makes one much more aware of the edit and framework. In terms of the greedy eye — the elements which impact and feed concurrent working concerns — a film of Kazuo Ono, performing La Argentina, stopped my heart for a moment. Horrifying and beautiful in micrometrically equal measure (the c.1600s pre-perjorative meaning of the word 'grotesque' was fanciful, or fantastic). Rare to see an original form that shocks. This, attributed to Ono, sums it:

"There are an infinity of ways in which you can move from that spot over there to here. But have you figured out those movements in your head, or are we seeing your soul in motion? Even that fleck at the tip of your nail embodies your soul... the essential thing is that your movements, even when you're standing still, embody your soul at all times."

This 'embodiment' does remind me of the acute, needle-sensibility of Matthias Grünewald's The Crucifixion (1515) (via).



And the artificial limbs at the Wellcome Collection's permanentMedicine Man displays.

Tatsumi Hijikata, it seems, was the founder of the dance-form Butoh; but somehow in parallel, they took the form forward, albeit with divided concerns. Hijikata's work was more violently trangressive in its themes and spectacle, borne of a post-war, 1968-catalysed rejection of an undue, superficial imitation of Noh and of the West; towards a subversive, truly Japanese form.



Oddly, appropriately, I took to bed midway through this post and had a Butoh-infused nightmare. The first corner turned in the show featured two long-held-heroes; Ettore Sottsass and Tadanori Yokoo. This poster (via), from 1965. Learning from Las Vegas — as a documentation of the strip, rather than the later book — began in 1968. A group of the earliest works in the show are from this year too. Interesting to think of the student/worker protests as a cultural catalyst for Po-Mo. Born that year, so this genuinely felt like a lived-through span of a show.



Das Scweizer Plakat (1984) by Wolfgang Weingart, via MoMA.



And Kunsthalle Basel Kunstkredit (1976-77), also by Weingart; alsovia. A nice conversation was had, in front of Yokoo's and Weingart's posters, with some of my students. The Weingart characteristic is so much a product of its technical time; the make and then break with the Swiss typography amplified by the dot-screen photosetting of layers. Intrinsically planographic. But also the fragmentation is making evident the gridded alignments it breaks, so it's a respectful eruption. These were 'learning' posters for me, from an age when working out how something was made, from top to toe, was really important.

Adhocist Chair (1968) by Nathan Silver, via. The perfect incarnation of Charles Jencks' "using an available system". Furniture, architecture and ceramics to discuss from this show; perhaps in another post.

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.

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.

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.

Via.

Via.

Via.

Via.

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.

Via.

Drawing +/- : Wk01 Speed lines from TU+ on Vimeo.

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.

Écouter Avec Les Yeux

Just-finished stitch design; a piano stool commission for the excellent Andrew Rae. Colours are always open to change, when Sally is working each area. As said — with each new work — new stitches are folded in. We are going to use a darker linen, close to linen canvas; so it works authentically as a halftone, either side of which the whitish whites and blacks register equally. I'll write more soon, on the research and content feeding the imagery.

Schematics