The Courier

Since being at university here in Newcastle, I have got interested in working in the media, and so have lent a hand to the university newspaper, The Courier. I have written for the Arts section, and here you can see two opinion pieces I wrote concerning Brexit and the Museum of Modern Art's (NYC) recent Emoji exhibition.

Semester one - printmaking strand

The second strand we completed is one in printmaking. I'm not a massive fan of printmaking, I do not enjoy the lengthy process and the unreliability of it - how you can spend ages on a plate and for it to turn out nothing how you expected!

Below are just some example of hard ground etchings and chine-colle collage.

a collaborative chine-colle and etching piece. All photographs found in POP magazine.

Semester one - sculpture strand

As part of our first semester at Newcastle University, we have to do three of four strands - printmaking, painting, sculpture and performance. Thankfully I managed to be in the group which doesn't require my dire performance skills.
The first strand for me was sculpture. This is the finished product after three weeks:

The brief: we each had to take a number from the hat, and each number corresponded with a random object the tutors had chosen. We then had to make something that would "exhibit in a future museum."

I was given these. I knew immediately that I wanted to taken this rigid structure, cut it all up (which meant using a band saw and getting to know woodwork technicians very well) and attempt to make a fluid shape. Why not make it difficult for yourself?

I then began using the block to create something of a sphere. 

I then had the idea that, to give this the futuristic theme, I would fill this "sphere" with discarded rubbish - also very cheap and easy materials to source! My idea was that the dystopian future had run out of landfill on land, and was having to hang it in the air. I also had to figure out how to suspend the  sculpture. 

I decide to use some of the unused structure I started out with to hang my piece from. I liked the juxtaposition of seeing where I started out, and where I had ended up, side by side in the same sculpture. 

I spent a fortune trying to figure out how to hang the sculpture. I bought various lengths of wire and cables, but settled on this white electrical cable, which I secured into place using the small white cable clamps on top. I was upset as I wanted to the sculpture to be hanging as if from nothing, and the white cable was quite visible. It did however create a nice link between the starting and finishing point. If I had more time and money, obviously I would look into it harder. I would probably hang them from the ceiling and create many of them, perhaps casting them in plaster so they were entirely white, devoid of colour in relation to a dystopian future.