PUTTING COLOUR IN THE CITY

Throughout this unit our goal has been to celebrate the art school through colour and channel that colour into the city, after today's group meeting we talked about covering random objects such as lamppost's, telephone boxes and traffic cones in bright pink fabric (bright pink to represent 175 logo - the school) to add colour into the city - exploring the idea of covering the city with colour, after the meeting I walked around Manchester taking photographs of busy and random area's around the city. my aim was to pick an object out of each pictures and edit using the app 'colour effect' to make it stand out in bright pink - make it look odd. 

Here are some examples of the photo's I have edited - 

The object's I made bright pink were as small as a sign to as large as a building. I think that these photographs are very effective. the pictures represent the art school pouring into the city and the student's 'colouring the city'.

DECIDING A VENUE

Today we had a tutorial with Julie and had a discussion about where we are going to exhibit our work, a possibility is the Bayhorse Pub in the Northern Quarter. people who I have spoke to who have been there have said it is small but quite rustic which i think could work well with our work.

DRY THE RIVER (HORSES)

This is the 'Dry the river' project, the video above pretty much explains what they did. This was shown to me at yesterday's tutorial. I found it interesting how people reacted to the '3D Poster'. with this in mind as a group we have decided to create our own 'tag' which will be put up and photographed in various places around Manchester - it will be interesting to see how people react to it being there, they will question it, why is it there? what does it mean?.... but why should it not? 

YARN BOMBING & TREE WRAPPING

Yarn bombing i believe is also another type of 'temporary graffiti'. yarn also adds colour to things that it is knitted around, for example - a tree stump is dull & drab, but when yarn is knitted/wrapped around it, it becomes interesting! Colour tends to make people stop and look at something - especially if it shouldn't be there, they question it, why is it there? what is the point of it being there?

I think that using yarn to wrap/knit things with to create colour in random/odd places also will inject my skills into the group. 

Yarn Bombing Examples

This makes me think of the term 'Dressing The City' which indicates to 'Colour The City'

Yarn being wound around tree's also reminds me of artist's 'Christo & Jeanne Claude'

Christo & Jeane Claude

I came across these artist's when discussing wind speed in my group, they wrap and cover/cloak tree's & create curtains of fabric in unexpected and random places on a huge scale. they use the wind to pick up the fabric to create a ballooning affect.

You can see the tree silhouette through the fabric which i think is a beautiful effect, and would look amazing with coloured fabric wrapped over it - we could also wrap fabric around other objects such as, phone boxes, post boxes, seat , tables and so on... anything! why not?

175 WORDS

After a morning of brainstorming with the group we all decided to split up and under go different tasks - as we have a lot to do with only just over 3 weeks left, Olivia and Hannah had the task of creating a mood board, Liam went to take photographs of Manchester with a 'wet paint' sign (in the morning we had talked about paint and how we could use it - but it doesn't actually have to be there and we were interested in how people reacted to the sign) and me and Camilla went into the new cafe in the art building and asked 175 people to describe the new art building in one word,

 this was an experiment to see if they had a similar idea to us of it being 'grey' and 'concrete.'

we asked each student/tutor/workman/staff to fold up the paper so we couldn't see the word. after collecting 175 words we sat down as a group and looked at what words came up - we were right - there were no words like 'colourful' or 'exciting' it is in fact the students that create this colour - without the students it's just a building. 

common words were 'big', 'grey', 'concrete' & 'dull' - but some did say it was 'airy', 'congregated' & 'social' which are needed in a creative space. 

what was also quite interesting is that we gave everyone a black pen to write with and at the end of it we had 174 in black and one in red. 

we next intend to present and photograph them in an innotive and interesting arrangment linking to the art school.

COLOUR IN THE CITY II

I have started to research how graffiti and street art is presented in city's/towns and how the simplest logo/spray of colour can add interest to the city - and makes people look in a dull & drab place and see it differently. 

Lego Wall Art

Cracks in old crumbling dull wall's are filled with constructed Lego piece's in a variety of colour's  - this is a different type of 'graffiti' that in general it is thought to be, but is interesting to see - it's like the city is being 'rebuilt' with colour, the sign of a new generation.

Rio Street Art

Cracks in pavements, wall's etc are filled with yarns/thread's that are bound together/crocheted. these appear in random places around Rio - various coloured threads are used - this is similar to the Lego - rebuilding with colour. This also reminds me of 'yarn bombing' which I previously looked at in my 'Origins' project. 

General Graffiti

Graffiti is found in almost every town/city across the world, although it is technically illegal, most people in modern times see it as art. Graffiti I believe is REVOLTING against working on a plain canvas or white paper - but explore your city, colour the city! create your city! I think temporary graffiti, such as posters & tags would work well in this project - put our colour stamp on the city, photograph our tag/art in random places around town, why not? 

COLOUR IN THE CITY

Today we brainstormed ways of which colour is put into the city, we came up with graffiti, street art and tagging. researching into this further in a group it was mentioned that famous rapper Jay-z's newest book 'Decode' was involved in a tagging project -

"When Jay Z decided to release his autobiography, he teamed up with search engine ‘Bing’ to create a truly outlandish, yet brilliant campaign. Pages of his book appeared in billboards, Gucci jackets and swimming pools around the world, whilst the collaboration with Bing proved to be a dream partnership."

People all over the world got involved in this project - another form of celebration, and his book was noticed and talked about, he REVOLTED against the usual way of publishing his book. 

HOLI FESTIVAL IN INDIA

The Holi festival is a famous annual festival in India where they celebrate colour by throwing powder paints at each other.

As a group we have decided that one of our events will be throwing powder paint's at each other - sounds silly but we have decided take 10 students from each disipline each have a different colour  - and have a paint 'war' celebrating the colour between students within the art school.

We intend to rent out a piece of urban wasteland in the northern quarter for the event.

These images are taken from the Holi festival - the colours are stunning and i think link well with the 'colour the city' idea as it is done in the streets of towns/city's across India

Researching into these types of powder paints- they are non - toxic so they are safe to throw and paint each other with as far a health and safety is concerned

Also were colour is concerned  - i think it would be good to use the common colour on the 175 leaflets and logo's which is a bright pink/fuscia colour.

COLOUR THE CITY - LAMBANANA & COW PARADE

When thinking about the theme 'colour the city' I have looked at previous projects that put colour into city's - I came across the Lambanana project and the Manchester cow parade. 

The lambanana project was created in Liverpool - school children and local business' colour designs were put onto a figure which is a cross between a lamb and a banana, therefore a 'lambanana' they were put in random 'dull' spots in Liverpool - it was a creative project which involved the whole city - the city celebrated colour if you will. 

The cow parade in Manchester is not just based in manchester - it is an international project, these cows are designed to local culture and appear in random locations such as train stations, car parks and in the centre of town. similar to the Lambanana project - it was a celebration as a city.

CHANGE OF IDEA'S

After having a group tutorial on our subject of '175mph Wind Speed' me and my group felt that we had to bring it back to the 175 year celebration of the art school, this project needs to be more 'fun' and a celebration of art. With this, we brainstormed idea's and after having a look at our research so far we have decided to expand the 'powder paint' research. We are celebrating colour; 'colour the city', if you asked someone to describe the city of Manchester 9/10 they would say 'grey' or 'dull', so why not colour the city? literally? metaphorically? why not? also thinking back to the art school - especially the new build, it is just a white/grey concrete building, it is the art students that fill it with magic (colour). 

With this we have decide to arrange a series of events/celebrations of colour which will be filmed/photographed and used into creating a 'zine', the zine will be filled with beautiful, colourful celebrations.

EXPERIMENTING WITH POWDER PAINTS

Today some of the group experimented with powder paints - wetting a piece of cotton fabric and blowing powder paints on to it using a hairdryer - this reminds me of the Holi paint festival in India - were powder paint in a variety of colours is thrown and celebrated.

After this we brainstormed idea of how we could develop this process further - you could do it on a larger scales for instance? have objects in front of the fabric as its blowing to create shapes within the paint? or people in front of it? the possibilities of what you can do when working with this paint are endless!

STANISLAV ODYAGAILO

'TO CATCH A WIND' PROJECT

“When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.” — Leonardo da Vinci

When we had our weekly group meeting this week, we shared our research so far in the project, and a member of the group gave the name of artist 'Stanislav Odyagailo' - his work looked interesting and caught my eye - i especially was inspired by the 'To catch a wind' project (pictured above) where a fabric (silk, chiffon or an organza?) to a model and is caught in the wind to give the effect of a butterfly - the moment is captured on a camera.