Nottingham Young Creative Awards 2013 Hidden Nottingham

Firstly we were given the life project brief and we then had to select the catagory that we wanted to enter our project into. My project comes under the catagory of Visual Arts.

Project Brief

MY CONCEPT

- My teenaged friend has just had a baby and to me is a herroin

- To celebrate and to appreciate teenaged mums for their hard effort and to stop people from looking down on them

MY IDEA

- I have produced two baby grows one showing my intention wich is to celebrate teenaged mums and the other one is to show people how important it is not to give this negativness about teenaged mums and how terrible it can be


HOW DOES FORM FOLLOW FUNCTION?

- The peices are deocrated with embellishments wich then lead the audiance to be persuaded by the meening that I am portraying
- I have used genuine baby clothing wich are made to fit a baby of the age 0/3 months old. I chose to use a baby grow becuase it creates impact as it is the clothing that is closest to the babys body and we all recognise its shape
- The stitching follows function as traditional handmade baby clothes would feature embroidery however I have subverted this by creating scars and tears out of embroidery stitching


SUSTAINABILITY

- I have used meterials that are around my house to embelish them both
- I tea stained one of the baby grows using used tea bags
- I am using a blog so that I do not have to print off pictures or text
- For my screen print samples I printed onto found meterials from college
- If I had a chance to re do this project I could make it more sustainable by using found unwanted baby clothes from charity shops or friends and family


CROSS CULTURAL

- I am using old fashion toys for the screen print to relate my project to older generations as well as teenagers
- I have used the idea of the stereotypical lifestyle that people in Nottingham, which is a multi cultural city, project onto teenage mums.


MY BRIEF - Based on my friend. To celebrate teenaged mums
SPECIALIST CATEGORY - Screen print onto baby grows (instantly recognised as being close to baby) and embellish positive and negative baby grows using stitching, embroidery and found objects
INSPIRATION & STARTING POINTS - I was inspired by my friends personal story of being a teenaged mum and the reactions strangers gave her
CLIENT AND/OR USER - The audience is to all the people in Nottingham including the younger and older generations but it is aimed at teenaged mums
DESIGN RESPONSIBILITY: SUSTAINABILITY, USE OF RECYCLING, SOURCING OF MATERIALS, CARBON FOOTPRINT, ETHICAL ISSUES - I am using a blog so that I am not printing pages out and I am using found materials in my work or materials that I already had at home

Map of Nottingham

To start off with I decided to print screen a map of Nottingham to show me the exact areas to focuss on.

Nottingham well known tourist attractions

I started off looking at Nottinghams well known tourist attractions to generate ideas.
Nottingham is know for;
- Nottingham Castle
- The caves and ghost stories
- The clock tower in market square
- Robin Hood
- The lace market
- The ice arena (Torvil and Dean)
- Nottingham Forest football team
- Nottingham Panthers
- Night life
- Fashion
- Some areas are well known for crime like many other cities however this is a negative thing and the project is about advertising Nottingham or hilighting a particular person or event

It was a good idea for me to list all Nottinghams well known aspects as these are areas to avoid as they are not hidden unless I decided to find out about one of them more in depth that is less advatised.

Mind map for Nottingham, Hidden and Sustainability

Lace

 

          Nottingham is well known for its lace. I thought that for an idea I could look into bra makings as lace is often incorporated into bra designs to make them desirable and sexy. The bra was a good peice to look at as it is hidden. If I was to make a bra I could make it sustainable by using peices of found lace, maybe off cuts from fabric shops.                                      

 

 

 

 

 

Patterns

 This is another initial idea I had to do with the whole aspect of hidden patterns inside clothing or bags. I decided not persue with this idea as I did not think it would give me enough to go on. 

James Jean

I am looking at his work as I like the way that he records information. I could use this aswell or instead of taking photographs. Not only does this way record what the person physically looks like but it also gives a sence of how the artist was feeling at the time or how they felt about the situation.

In a way more information is recorded by sketching rather than photography.

 I like the fact that this drawing is simple with no added colour. It is not needed unlike the rest as there are no layers to this sketch. This meens that it is easy to understand as it is.
I also love how the artist has drawn the figure and then on the left has zoomed into what he is doing. To me this composition is unusual and this is what makes it interesting. It remindes me of slides to a film.

 I find it pleasing to look at as the artist has incorporated different colours to show the different layers of drawings. This helps to identify the different events going on in the image. Without the colours it would look like scribbles.

 I like how James Jean has used lots of red here because it draws the eye there first and it makes you think about what the artist is trying to say. It looks like an injury as if the red is symbolising blood.

 The person on the left looks as if he has moved possition by the way that James Jean has layerd the two men but they are clearly different people. Perhaps he has two heads? I personally like how the picture here overlaps onto the next page. To me this suggests that maybe there is some kind of a relationship between them both.

 I love the fact that the women has a zebra face. It gives a quirkyness to the picture. I find it interesting how James Jean has taken the zebra and has made a mask for her and has used the same print in blue over the picture. It looks abstract aswell as being surreal. I think that this picture is trying to show different angles and aspects of the same girl.

 

This sketch is so detailed and what I like about it is that not everything is layed out for the viewers and that it takes time to notice what is in the picture. Each time you come back to it you may notice something new. This image is extremely complicated and looks fantastical. It remindes me of a dream or perhaps what heaven or hell would look like.

Masks

I then got inspired by the meaning of hidden and the image of the girl with the zebra face and I remembered that the DJ SBTRKT always hides his identity by wearing different African masks.

Here is another one of his masks that he wears but he has many more! He uses tribal and African looking masks to express his culture without giving his identity away too much by showing his face. 

I then looked into traditional African masks to see the similarities between SBTRKT's 

If I was to make a mask I could make it out of found objects wich is what they would have done in Africa. This is a direct way of making my mask sustainable.

 

Gorillaz are a band who also hide their identities by usuing annimated figures to represend each one. These characters are used on their album covers aswell as on music videos.

Tribal scars

I became inspired by masks as ways to express identity and culture and then I looked at face markings and scars to show a tribe (a community) to me this is taken to an extreme where they actually are scaring their own faces in order to bring themselves together.

 

This also made me think of communities that we have today wich includes deforming the body for fashion.

How does Form Follow Function?

By Me

 

Here we then made leaflets in responce to the question of How does Form relate to Function? We then all got a coppy of eachothers in order to help us visualise the meaning of this 

By Jayne and Jess

By Anthony and Nicole

By Megan and Carla

 

By Sophie and Hayley

 

By Philip and Bart

Cross Cultural Influences and Design Influences

I looked in the dictionary to see what the definition of cross cultural and influence was.
Here is my understanding of what cross cultural influences are and some examples;
- Different people coming together and sharing their views and ideas
-  Culture is not just about where you come from and what religion you are but culture can also be eg; gay pride, womens rights, abortion rights, Harajuku Japanise fashion, beliefes, community. Culture is the way you live!
- Cultures mixing to create a new culture (multi cultural is a combination of them all)
-Different cultures influencing eachother
-Cultures are extremely mixed in Nottingham

Here is my understanding of what design influences meen and some examples;
- I believe that this is why something is and looks the way that it is created by who and what you come in contact with
- Picasso uses African mask (this would have portrayed a feeling of exoticness and mysteriousness)
- In Africa they carry babies in rags and this country has been influenced by this and have developed this by creating baby slings, this has now come into fashion
- Royal Pavilion in Brighton, cross cultural interior design. Designed by the King who had just finished travelling

Gavin Janjes

Here Gavin Janjes has used a picasso face in his work and an African mask. This demonstrates that it is multi cultural with influences. It looks like an obilical cord perhaps joining the cultures together.

BASQUIAT

I looked into Basquiat's work as I liked his style and he is an example of a cross cultural artist.

Nancy Spero

Nancy Spero's work is cross cultural as she is heavely influenced by Greek pottery as shown in this picture.

Deisgner Clothing with cultural influences

 

The patterns in Chloe's collection 2011 are inspired by native America Puru. This shows that the meterials she uses in her clothing are influenced by her surroundings  or things that she has come into contact with.

This line of clothing has been influenced by West Africa. This is shown by the fabrics as they have bright bold patterns. Also possibly Brazilian. Scar (early 80's, sideline to punk)

In some of Ralph Lauren's clothing it is obvious that there has been some influence from China shown by the patterns.

 

 

Natural Make-up idea

As a possible idea I explored the idea of creating my own make-up using natural stains from fruit or vegitables that are too ripe to eat or gone off, this would then be a sustainable meterial to use. I could use fruit or veg such as; beetroot, rasberries, blueberries and blackberries. I think that these would all give me good strong colours to use. I could relate this to Nottingham by doing a survey asking people the colours and products they prefere and then trying to re create this using my own natural ingrediants. I have decided that this idea would need to be for a longer project as I would not have time to experiment with different ways of preserving my make-up or testing it.

Jenny Saville

The human body form relates to its function as we are made to be able to do all the things that we can do but Jenny Saville's work shows extremely obese women. This breaks the boundries of form follows function as movement is limited with a mass amount of body weight like this.
Jenny Saville was possibly influenced by the society around her wich made her present women in this way. This shows that her culture has an impact on her design as an artist.