Art Trip!

Ok......well today I went up into London with my friends Jess, Carlene and Jim to see the Shadow Catchers Exhibition at the V&A.....
It was a really nice day today and we actually ended up going to the Tate Modern and stopping in Camden for a coffee too.........

Well here's the programme for Shadow Catchers.....which was an exhibition of camera-less photography and print work......I think that's all it was (that was all I saw :-s)

• Anyway the programme pretty much says this :- 'The essence of photography lies in its seemingly magical ability to fix shadows on light-sensitive surfaces. Normally, this requires a camera. Shadow Catchers, however, presents the work of five international contemporary artists - Floris Neususs, Pierre Cordier, Susan Derges, Garry Fabian Miller and Adam Fuss - who work without a camera. Instead, they create images on photographic paper by casting shadows and manipulating light, or by chemically treating the surface of the paper.'

So yeah.....it was definitely a strange exhibit to walk through, as it felt like you were walking past memories....which I guess is what a photo is, but it was so uncanny as you could see the shadow of something but there was nothing to make it........

Thanks to our wonderful student discount, the £5 ticket became a £4 ticket........yeah, in all honesty student discount is pointless if you're just going to take a pound off the price (I realise how stingy this sounds as it was only a fiver, but everything else is free entry and as an art student all the materials I have to buy cost me enough and that's without having to pay to get into exhibitions for my work and research)

Well here I am today....sporting a medal design on my right eye.......

Here is my wonderful medal necklace from River Island that inspired the multi-coloured medal.......I was having a rather victorian military look today, what with my long coat and my black victorian top and victorian travel pencil (the chain that you can't see then end of....sorry)

This was to show that the medal was on my eye......not just hanging under it.....I actually bothered to draw over my eye today and fill in where the cloth would be with a bronze eye shadow......everything else to do with the image is eyeliner.......I had a lot of fun with it today as I had a conversation with 5 different people throughout London first asking whether it was a tattoo (no), whether I drew it myself (yes), what it was made of (eyeliner), do I design tattoos (I have done for friends when they asked, but no I don't), have I ever done a tattoo (never in my life)..........so yeah, strange day also because I kept getting people telling me how cool my hair was............apparently people in London are friendlier than those in colchester :-s

Ah this is because I got a comment on my blog from Frieze I think? Where I said I was wearing my red coat that looks like paddington and they commented that it wasn't paddington as paddington has a blue coat......yes admittedly the OLD paddington has traditionally a blue coat, but the paddington I grew up with has a RED coat......hence I am right and you are right, but if I type it's a paddington coat please remember this pic and don't say I'm wrong :-p

This is the amazing piece of glass work that hangs precariously above the information and ticket unit......

This is one of the pieces that I liked in the Shadow Catchers exhibit......unfortunately the chair didn't come out so well........but basically there's this old fashioned wooden shair just sitting there, while the shadow shows the chair and a woman sitting on it......It's a very interesting piece.........other than these, I quite liked the Dye destruction work where you had an image gradually materialize in a sequence of images -

• Dye destruction printing is where you use direct positive colour paper to make a print. The paper was originally introduced in 1963 for printing colour transparencies or negatives. It's coated with at least three layers of emulsion, each of which is sensitised to one of the three primary colours. Each layer also contains a dye related to that colour. During the development stage of the image, any unexposed dyes are bleached out - hence the term 'dye destruction'- and the remaining dyes form a full colour image.

Well we got bored after a few minutes and wondered round the V&A aimlessly until we remembered that there was an exhibition on by Ai Weiwei at the Tate modern.........so we made our way over to there......this is the little piece of art someone placed on a random street lamp, it's nothing special but it reminded me of Jess as we'd given her coffee and well.......she was to put it lightly getting a tad bit hyper :)

Here's the sunflower seed exhibition by Ai Weiwei, they are all tiny pieces of ceramic work made to look and feel like sunflower seeds.......I really like it, although it's more amazing when you get closer to it........

Now here's a funny fact.......when you study art, you do have to work with ceramics and clays occassionally and the first thing they tell you is that the dust left from such creations is dangerous as if you breath them in they coat your lungs and act as a matt causing breathing to become difficult (a lot of people who work with ceramics know this risk).......so when you tidy up, rather than dust and brush everything away causing all the particles to get into the air you wash everything so that the dust becomes damp and can no longer e breathed in..............well, that's why there's now a safety guard around the entire exhibit and why the security guard has two pieces of equipment on him that beep when the amount of dust in the air becomes too much.......I think it would've been a lot easier if you had a sprinkler on them every few hours, but that's what you get when Health and Safety get involved (¬_¬)

They Look like REAL sunflower seeds!!! XD

SEE!! These are amazing and sooooo realistic!!! <3

This is my favourite picture and it was actually taken by my friend Carlene using my phone!

Ok, well after allllllllllll of that..........we decided a trip to Camden for a coffee and look about was in order........well, I found this in one of the pubs we passed and I had to go in there and take a pic, I'm not sure if you can see but it's a wolf on a starry night howling at the moon!! Points for creativity Camden! <3

And last but not least......one of the funniest pieces of design I have ever seen!!! A random giant chair hanging outside a furniture shop.......yeah, a shop in Camden is too cool to just have a sign, it also has to have a GIANT rocking chair so that people definitely know where they're entering! (because people obviously don't read signs anymore, they need to be shown in obvious manners!)

So yeah, that was today! Getting home was hellish as the tubes were either delayed or not working at all.......I'm not looking forward to making my way to my friends on saturday, but I guess I never the tubes as frankly people are horrible and believe they can stare and comment about you while you can hear/see/stand right next to them........seriously people, just because I look strange doesn't mean I can't understand you!!

Anyway, sorry for the random rant.......hope you like the blog xxxx