Today I went along to the Show & Tell at the Cornerhouse in Manchester. Each person chosen to show and tell had been selected by previous show and tellers! Unless they put themselves forward which hasn’t apparently happened for a while now! The next event should be in February in 2014 which is a shame as it was a really great event and they should occur more often.
Darren Nixon - http://www.axisweb.org/p/darrennixon
How we create images and meaning. He uses found images from newspapers and makes his own narratives, Darren is interested in how we find and extract meaning from the imagery we encounter every day. He fills his paintings with thinking and has began to look at photography. Darren tries to fill each piece with a narrative without actually telling a story. On occasions some of the paintings are grouped together for exhibitions, once the exhibition is over they become individual paintings again. During the exhibition they are given a new name when grouped together but regain their original name once the show is over. I would like to get in touch with Darren as this is quite an interesting idea, how does he chose how to group them? how are they arranged? why does he group them for shows?
Simon Austerberry - http://www.simonausterberry.co.uk/
Simon has designed a full working typeface called laser. He saw an exhibition about cycling and was taken in by one particular bike the Cinelli Laser. He liked the unique curve that the bike featured in it’s frame and used this as his starting point when creating his font, also taking the characteristics of it being very light and super fast! Simon took us through some of the letters in his alphabet, he focussed on the letter S, reason being he said that it is the hardest letter to design. When designing the letter S all was going well until he placed it next to other letters in the alphabet and then he realised it was far too wide and so had to keep tweaking until it looked right individually and along side other characters. Simon documented the process of making the typeface through twitter @typeinprogress
Hannah Gibson
Hannah is an Illustrator and also teaches on the Ba course in Salford. She loves to take polaroid and llama photographs which later inspire her work. One birthday she received the book Atlas of remote Islands (which i have since bought as a gift for someone else!). the book only contains birds eye view maps of the islands, there are no images. This inspired Hannah to create her own illustrations in a new style based on the stories about some of the islands (The above image is not from this project, I can’t seem to find any)
David Rublin
Architect, Planner, Urban Designer and Director of URBED. David showed us the large scale maps that he has drawn of various cities. they rally are quite spectacular. They look stunning on their own but when shown next to one another take on a comparative role by showing you the different structures of the cities. The maps can become quite large measuring 3 x 3 metres. He also draws the same cities but from different dates to compare. SO frustrating that I cannot find any images online of his maps as they really are beautiful.
Mark O’Brien - http://www.mark-obrien.co.uk/
Cardboard craftsman. Mark uses cardboard to figure out how things work, he began doing this at a very early age. he now crafts things out of cardboard which are used in advertising. Some of the objects Mark creates are huge, one piece was a suit of armour, another some guitars and amps. he had hoped people would pick them up and mess around with them but people tend to be rather precious about them and don’t want to handle his cardboard master pieces. Mark also works in with children in schools creating artists workshops, he says he finds kids really interesting and they really inspire him in his work.
