Landaan 19.08.11 - 20.08.11

So I had a great weekend away in London :) I got to The Vorticists exhibition at the Tate Britain which was fantastic - so much so that I bought a rather expensive exhib catalogue for £20 just so I could get copies of all my favourite pieces :) And I also got to the Print and Design NOW show which hence the name was a space full of flat prints on the walls, many of which I thought were okay but not amazing.BUUUTT, I did discover a few gems of work which I've thankfully been able to track back to their artists on one very handy bearspace catalogue online :)

http://www.bearspace.co.uk/index.php?orderby=product_name&DescOrderBy=ASC&Itemid=7&option=com_virtuemart&page=shop.browse&category_id=23&manufacturer_id=0&keyword=&keyword1=&keyword2=&limit=1000&limitstart=0&vmcchk=1&Itemid=7

They have photos of all the print work on the website but I'm popping my own photos of my favourites on instead because my camera has (hehe) picked up the colours better than theirs did!!

Ian Chamberlain - visited the BT Goonhilly Satellite Space Station where over 60 giant satellite dishes are busy sending and receiving TV pictures all over the world, while simultaneously handling thousands of international phone, fax, data and video calls. The prints he showed at the SW1 gallery were all etchings :)

Sat.5

Sat.3

Sat.6

http://www.ichamberlain.co.uk/index.html

Dawn Cole: has a fab website where she's got images of quite a few of her prints like these. I'm not really keen on the rest of the work she has done, it's much less colourful and although I generally love bold and simplified, it's this more detailed work that I like the best. These two photos are mine taken at the exhibition and the third is my favourite of her experiements from her website :)



Slipovers and Pullovers, Solar Plate etch, 2010




Want to be in her good books, Solar plate etch, 2010



Our cover model, Solar plate etch, 2010

Dawn is based in Birchington on the North Kent coast and works primarily in print. 'Dawn creates thought provoking works which are, at first glance, not always what they seem'. These prints are from her collection Knit 1 Purl 1 and I've not really figured the concept but I like the way she has used fragments of photographic imagery and then repeated them radially to create the doily lace-like prints. From a distance they appear to just be a geometric pattern but on closer inspection you then start to see glimpses of recognisable features; faces, hats, clothing.

Most of  Dawn's images have radial symmetry.
Other objects that have radial symmetry: Spirograph, Snowflakes, Starfish (pentamerism), Jellyfish (tetramerism), Corals (hexamerism and octamerism), fruit -  it basically pops up a lot in BIOLOGY and MATHS :) Plates!! Anything loosely bottle shaped or cylindrical from above :)

Two other artists that spring to mind that also work with radial symmetry are body jewellery maker Nora Fok and Natalie Langley - a Notts Trent graduate this year who works illustratively :)

Natalie Langley - 'inspiration is gathered from studies of practical objects, of which the aesthetics are regularly overlooked.'

Nora Fok's beautiful 'Mathermagic' (2005) wristpiece :)