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.