Unit X - College Four

Unit X - College Four - Zines - Group Work

As a way of keeping in touch and making sure our ideas are always shared, as a group, we decided to set up a Facebook page as a way to stay up to date with anything that is happening. It was also a way to post images and suggestions about the zine.
After a group meeting, which I couldn't attend due to illness, my group decided that the punk zine was very much in danger of becoming just the same as all the others that have been published before, something I agreed with. They decided that we should focus on the people that made the whole movement of punk come to be, all the way back 500 years, focusing on the people that rebelled before the rebellion was deemed cool. This is something that really drew me in and I was excited to get started.

Unit X - College Four

Unit X - College Four - Zines - Group Work

After the lectures with Simon, we were put into groups and told to come up with and idea of a zine. I thought the group work was very interesting as it gave a wide range of ideas and inspiration and it meant that jobs were divided up making the zine a team effort. My group met in the special collections, where we were allowed to look through zines that are in the special collection and books that featured a wide range of zines. This helped with inspiration and easier to decide on an idea. 

Our group decided on the idea of creating a Punk zine, as the lectures has inspired us all and it was something that was an interest of us all. We started our research by just collecting general information about Punk zines; the style, the content, the illustrations, the distribution.

These were some of my research mind maps on the idea of Punk.

During the visit in the special collections, I found a book called 'PUNK' which was a book dedicated to the Punk zines and included photographs of the zines and the productions of them. 

These are some images that I felt most inspired by to help with my idea of the Punk zine 

   

 

Unit X - College Four

Unit X - College Four - Zines - Simon Faulkner Lectures

The lecture that were put on by Simon Faulkner were very appealing to me. The topics brought up in his lectures were very interesting and really appealed to me.

The first part of the lectures; Zines as Counter Culture. The first point that I was interested in was the history of the zine and what the zine was actually used for. ‘The Situationist International’ (SI) was a group, formed by Guy Debord, who used the zine as a way to rebel against the norms of society. I really enjoyed learning about this side of the zine and seeing how it can be used in a way to convey a message to the people without using the idea of mass-production and ‘selling-out’ just for the message.

            Another point that I really enjoyed, focusing on the first part of the lecture, was the section about Laura Oldfield-Ford. Her zine, ‘The Savage Messiah’ and was very psychogeographical. It tracked Oldfield-Ford’s travels squatting around London during the 1990s, each issue was a different part of London. What I really liked about Oldfield-Ford’s zine was that it showed that you did not need a fancy production team or a wealth of machines to create a good zine, with good material and beautiful illustrations. She created her zine whilst on her travels.

            Finally, my favourite part of the lectures came from the second section of them, ‘Punk’s Messthetic’. These lectures focused on punk, its history, the movement, the fashion and the music. I cannot say how much I enjoyed this lecture. I was really interested in the zine ‘Sniffin Glue’ which was produced by Mark Perry from 1976-1977. This was the ultimate zine of punks. Perry was right in the middle of the punk generation and wrote first-hand about his experiences. It was the punk’s ultimate guide to being punk. With only a limited edition copies, and them being produced with a ‘kids typewriter and a felt-tip pen’ I was drawn to Perrys passion about his zine and the punk movement.

Unit X - College Four

Unit X - College Four - Inspiration 

During my time off during assessment/feedback week, I decided to take a trip to London to see some of the exhibitions that were being shown and to relax a little bit before the new brief and to maybe gain some inspiration. 

These are some images from the 'Hello, My Name is Paul Smith..' exhibition that was on at the Design Museum. I really enjoyed this exhibition as it was more focused on the way that Paul Smith works, rather than the work he produces. I shows his thought process and all the work that goes into getting to the final piece. I felt very inspired by this and it showed me a new way of thinking and expressing my ideas and work. 

Another exhibition I visited was the 'Warhol to Picasso' exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum. I thought this exhibition was interesting but not for me. I was very heavily focused on printed textiles rather than a wide variety of the different types of textiles. I did find some new textiles artist to research and it did open my eye to the different types of printed textiles, but it wasn't for me. I also visited the 'Richard Hamilton' exhibition that was on at the Tate Modern. I'd come across Hamilton before but never really looked into his work before so I thought it would be good to visit an exhibition of his. I really, really enjoyed his work and the Tate had made the exhibition really big, featuring all of his work with a lot of information about each piece and him. 

As well as doing some drawings, I also tried out a new app that I downloaded on my iPhone. The app was a photography app, Pro HDR, which takes high-resolution images. However, when taking the photos the image was not kept the straight, things moved around, and the outcome was really interesting and I think these pictures have come out really well. 

Locating - Evaluation

Locating - Evaluation

Overall, I have quite enjoyed my personal and live brief during the locating brief. I really liked the subject matter that I focused on, and would like to carry this on into another project.

I believe that honestly, I could have done a lot more work. Having focused on the idea of a fashion brief, something that I have never done before, I really struggled with what I had to do. I struggled with that to produce as a sample and what to show for my drawings, as I had only ever stuck to a typical embroidery structure when producing work, trying to do a fashion brief just completely scrambled my brain. As it is something i've never focused on, I had a lot of things that I did not even know you had to take notice of, such as cost of materials, time, money, colour, texture, etc, etc. However, I have tried this as a brief and it is something that I will not be returning to. I am glad that I have done it, as I now know that I want to be more art-based and that fashion/creating a fashion garment does not interest me at all. 

I do believe that some of the blame is on me. During the time that this brief has been running, I have been struggling with a lot of problems and stresses at home, which has been quite hard to juggle work, university and home life. Unfortunately, I have let these stresses take over and just spent my time trying to sort things out and worrying. I have not connected with my uni work as much as I usually do. I should have been using my work as an escape or to take my mind of things but instead I did not and I know exactly where I have gone wrong and I know that I should have produced a lot more work. I know exactly where I wanted to go with this project right from the start but however, things did not turn out how I wanted them to be.