Detail from Su Kyung Lee’s The Imaginative Battle.
The Central Saint Martins MA in Communication Design graduate show was held earlier this summer in the spacious rooms of the high ceilinged Rochelle School. The quality was of an exceptional standard throughout, site and there were informative descriptions helpfully placed next to all the work.
Su Kyung Lee‘s The Imaginative Battle explored patterns of protection and destruction, website focusing on the visual aesthetics of destruction and chaos through patterns. Cells and germs became the camouflage, web splattered across and fired from tanks, rendered in glorious neon brights. An apt subject in these difficult times.
Matt Nicholson showed his work half spat out of a digital printer. Inspired by his desire for high status objects he can’t afford Matt reproduced them for free, using printed paper patterns to create giant wall sculptures. They even retain functionality: the Lieca camera takes photos via a pinhole. Follow Matt Nicholson on Twitter.
I was totally enraptured by Kanitta Meechubot‘s enchanting collages. A Garden of Illuminating Existence repeated and matched the branching nerves and veins of the body in trees and natural forms: merging memories and landscape. ‘To produce a map of experience through the internal landscape which changes with the seasons, is to capture the beauty of the illimitable renewals and decays of our existence.’ The real beauty of these pieces, with names like Six Feet Under Yew Tree and The Season of The Soul, was the fine detail used to build delicate pictures in 3D, including not only old photos and engravings, but real dried flowers and paint splats.
Sarah Langford was inspired by the movement of water, it’s necessity and destructive capabilities. Using scientific measurements she created beautiful textures to produce abstracts: parts and fragments of rock formations, shells, glimpses of the landscape being ripped and shredded by the passage of time.
Gareth Barnett was inspired by Brutalist architecture (my favourite, though not to live in myself…) and the hellish writings of the Marquis de Sade to create an investigation into the power structures and systems of control within an urban environment. The resulting 20 pictures were splayed across the wall, interlaced with projections. With names like Climax in Concrete and Fuck Me Building there was no escaping the ruptured baseness of his conclusions.
Carl Partridge looked to a place he’s never visited: America, believing that it’s easier to buy into the idealisation of America if you’ve never been. Using tiny shreds of paper and stickers, holographic beads, parts of adverts and marbled plastic he created delicate collages that seemed to question our love of consumerism. Follow Carl Partridge on Twitter.
For marvellous hand done typography look no further than Beth Salter. She was inspired by private conversations overheard in public surroundings. Me too, I love them! But mainly her bright letters were just a lot of fun. Follow Beth Salter on Twitter.
For The Fear of Life Ann-Kathrin Schubert had decorated discarded plastic bottles to become the most tropical of fish, tribal in their boldness.
Jesus Madrinan had taken a series of portraits in London nightclubs: Good Night London featured some suitably inebriated yet oddly disillusioned creatures.
Golbanou Moghaddas was influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer‘s philosophy of existence typified by unrest. Strange fattened figures tumbled from a bony etched pelvis filled with birds. Painterley strokes combined with fine etching skills.
Alexa Galea was inspired by human desire to control and tame nature and the wild, particular with reference to European folk art and ritual.
Oat Montien explored the relation between ritual and identity in contemporary interpretations of Thai traditions.
Paraskevi Ferentinou explored the ‘agency of furniture‘ in the role of children’s growth.
Ying-Chen Lu worked with 3D papercutting to create exploding type and depth in landscapes.
I could easily have missed Aindri Chakraborty‘s work which was nestled in a grimy corner, but I’m glad I didn’t as it was really rather wonderful: Heritage through Glass explored how the glass cabinets in museums separate the tangible object from the intangible visitor, and how stories are passed down the generations. People Tree and Conversations with Baba featured frantic truncated shapes, fire people and vomiting heads.
Written by Amelia Gregory on Thursday August 11th, 2011 12:12 pm
Categories ,3D Papercutting, ,A Garden of Illuminating Existence, ,Agency of Furniture, ,Alexa Galea, ,America, ,Ann-Kathrin Schubert, ,Arthur Schopenhauer, ,Beth Salter, ,Brutalism, ,Camera, ,Carl Partridge, ,Central Saint Martins, ,Climax in Concrete, ,collage, ,Communication Design, ,consumerism, ,Conversations with Baba, ,Folk Art, ,Fuck Me Building, ,Gareth Barnett, ,Golbanou Moghaddas, ,Good Night London, ,Graduate Shows, ,Heritage through Glass, ,illustration, ,Jesus Madrinan, ,Kanitta Meechubot, ,Last and Found, ,Leica, ,ma, ,Marquis de Sade, ,Matt Makes Stuff, ,Matt Nicholson, ,Oat Montien, ,Paraskevi Ferentinou, ,People Tree, ,Ritual, ,Rochelle School, ,Sarah Langford, ,Six Feet Under Yew Tree, ,Su Kyung Lee, ,Thailand, ,The Fear of Life, ,The Imaginative Battle, ,The Season of The Soul, ,typography, ,Ying-Chen Lu
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