Monday 1 February 2010

Absolute Rubbish

This is the governments solution to the alcohol awareness brief that YCN set and I worked on as my competition brief. It's crap.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2TUZQ-waXU

Seriously government, give me a job and I will do it better. Give anyone below the age of 40 a job actually. Just stop stop stop churning out this crap.

Jumble Sale


We raised £102 in the end - a pity as we raised the first £85 on the first day alone. Friday was not busy at all, obviously a lot of people go home or don't have uni, but we've learned our lesson about Friday's now. There's some stuff left though so hopefully an opportunity to make some more cash, and every penny counts!

Sunday Outing

After spending the last week and a half doing a lot of nothing since the deadline, I decided to go to a few galleries to spark up a few new ideas and enthusiasm. There wasn't much worth seeing to be honest I was a bit disappointed, but here is the best of the day.

The Cornerhouse





A strange exhibition about Cairo, a town in America... or something. A lot of it was (in my opinion) bad collages and random bits of found stuff in cabinets. Didn't really capture my interest until I got to this film. It was captivating and atmospheric, very simply each clip was doubled on the screen, creating interesting symmetry's. The film ended with two men shooting at each other, even though it was two seperate clips, and a train crashing into itself and disappearing. Since I was inspired by La Jetee and made a film for my silence project I have been paying much more attention to films and especially noticing how simple it can be to make something very beautiful.






This animation by ... was made entirely by scribbly drawings, and covered some interesting points!
If you've got 5 mins I would pop in, it wont take much longer than that. If not you won't be missing much!


The Manchester Gallery

Again, there wasn't much to inspire here. Some more animations in the downstairs gallery by... Nothing special - just some animals moving. Animation is quite a simple thing to do I think, you have to be original and good at art direction to make something good. These animations could have been done by a novice and do not deserve to be in Manchester gallery!

I did find this beautiful piece of furniture though - I love furniture! I can't wait to get my own house and have enough money to furnish it!

Check out the Goya prints too - you can't take pictures of them but they are so intricate and a few famous ones in their too, definitely worth visiting.


The Waiting Room

I couldn't make the opening night to Dr.Me's exhibition so thought I would pop in and have a look. I only managed to make it to a few over the months as well, which was a shame, but still I think they have done a great job putting this together, so well done if you're reading!


This kind of work isn't really my thing or what I would usually pick out - the artists on display all work in a similar style and aesthetic which isn't really me. Still, it's good to keep my mind open to all visual styles!


Urbis has left the building

A summary of the last 6 years of amazing Urbis popular culture exhibitions. I didn't realise how sad it was that Urbis is closing until I got here, actually I think its a travesty. There is no other gallery in Manchester that offers the same calibre of exhibitions as Urbis, it has offered a vital connection with contemporary Art and Design and the North, bridging the gap of London galleries. I think this is a huge mistake for Manchester's creative community and status, we will probably begin to lose out too other northern cities now. And a football museum? I think it's about time Manchester tried to develop itself past the pigeon hole of football (and football hooligans, violence and mess) and thought seriously about what else it has to offer as a cultural city. This is obviously about money and not a lot else.