FIRST VIEW

Here is the first collage out of the series of five, I printed the chosen people out on a laser-jet printer at school, so that the images were as saturated as they could be, I also adjusted them all to black and white and changed the levels. I had to pick the photos of the specific men carefully as I needed to make them all...

FRANCIS BACON

I was showing Nicholas some of my current work for the MGM project and was discussing the reasons why I was doing the photo montage of the modern gentlemen in the eyes of the people I have asked. We were looking at the preliminary collages and he commented it reminded him of work that the painter Francis Bacon...

NEWSPAPER E-READERS

Here is a great article about the newspaper. It is a great piece of writing, and really supports the reasons for why I want to have a newspaper as the object to hold my information. Check it out.

MCSWEENYS NEWSPAPER

FORMAT

I have been thinking over the last couple of days how to make my ideas into a physical state, I was thinking pretty much over the last week that I was going to make a book, however after having a re-think about why i was actually going to do a book and there was specific reason why, however I have thought of something very similar but with solid reason for why it is going to be objectified within its state, this is a newspaper.

I have chosen a newspaper for a number of reasons these reasons are as follows,

To me a newspaper is something that can be read quickly and easily, containing one specific or a lots of different content.

When I was younger the newspaper would always be read by people wearing suits, or people who fitted the stereotype of the notion of a gentleman, which I think is interesting, because the content within the 'old' format would be perceptions that are very current however are related to this old notion of a gentleman.

A newspaper contains both image and text, which a lot of the time are peoples views, made up stories or plain facts and figures.

Lastly I think a newspaper would be a nice outcome in terms of the way its looks and feels.

DAMIEN BLOTTIERE

Damien Blottiere is a photographer, a artist a creative director among other things, his work is seriously good, one piece that was pointed out to me was the work he did for dazed and confused magazine last December. It was a shoot for Calvin & Klein, and it was named cut and paste, the photos for a start are really well...

MGM 003

Here is the third MGM. For now these are just experiments so the quality is not great, but you can see how it would work, and I think aesthetically it looks interesting and logically the image makes sense. I am now trying to think of ways to put this in to an object, be it a book, a poster or a film...

MGM 002

Here is the second installment of MGM 002, I have been thinking about ways of representing the modern gentleman, and generally there are a few categories these men fall into, they are things like, sport, politics, theatre, fashion, literature. I think it would be possibly interesting if I did all these categories separately, so...

MGM 001

Here is the first MGM collage, as i have said in the last post it combines, the perceptions of people I have asked about who they think the modern gentleman is. With this I can then combine all the aspects into one. I have been trying to think of ways to represent the modern gentleman from different peoples perceptions...

JOHN BALDESSARI

John Baldessari is a conceptual artist from america. His work heavily involves the use of found photography and appropriated images, juxtaposed with text. I was pointed in his direction by my brother, who told me I should check him out as it was relevant to what I was trying to do within my work at the moment, what with...

B O A S

Blogging On A Sunday... Here we are, on a sunny sunday afternoon, today has been a successful day so far, in terms of work and in terms of finding things. Our resident sculptor BH has found us a new table and chairs for outside which in the words of Jean Paul Sartre is 'tres bon', means we can sit on something other than the floor now. ARR is producing bright objects left, right and centre. NF is eating some lovely home made sunday dinner somewhere in the depths of london, so all in all a good sunday so far.

A/B/C

THE MODERN GENTLEMAN

APPEARANCE

BEHAVIOUR

CONCEPTION

CONCEPTION

I have received a fair few answers to the questions I asked a range of people about there thoughts on the modern gentleman, there have been mixed responses to all the questions, humorous, negative, serious, thought provoking. Its also been interesting what everyone says, because its always different, which I guess...

APPEARANCE - BEHAVIOUR - PERCEPTION

The idea of appearance and its inter-relation with behaviour is an interesting one, especially the fact that appearance is something visual that everybody can see, however behaviour is something only a select amount of people can experience, this is where the perceptions of people come into play, due to the fact that what...

APPEARANCE / BEHAVIOUR

There is one underlying theme behind all my research at the moment, from the questions I have asked people, to the books I have read, this is the interrelationship between appearance and behaviour, how do they interact with each other? Is it possible to have one without the other? Is it possible that you wear the clothes or do the clothes wear you? Its an interesting thought and I think this is the route I am going to go down, not too sure how yet but ill get there.

A. SAUVAGE - THIS IS NOT A SUIT

Here is a video from the designer A. Sauvage shown to me by Lauren Pires, the concept follows a simple logic within a strong framework. To explore the word suit and what it suggests. In each case, The designer invites subjects to wear garments from his collection and encourages them to express who they are whilst wearing a suit with no directorial...

HARD GROUND

Hard Ground is a book of Michael O'Brien's portraits of the homeless and original poems by Tom Waits. Waits 'the poet of outcasts' poems capture the nature of these homeless people of America, with fantastic photography from O'Brien, this book is something that is so simple yet evokes a lot of thought, I guess this sort...

TO MEET & GREET

At the 'Evolving English' show yesterday I noticed a book, that wasnt a guide to as such but almost a dictionary of how to meet and greet people, It was written nearly 100 years ago, and to an extend was relevant today in terms of behaviour, not in terms of the english language, it read,

How to meet a friend

'How doth your wife?'

'How doth your children?'

...to which you should reply

'They are fine thank-you'

Thought this was quite appropriate for the work i'm doing at the moment.

INFORMATION PLAYGROUNDS - ALAN STERENBERG

Today for info playgrounds we went to the British Library, to have a look round the exhibition they have there at the moment, Evolving English which is all about the English language and the roots it holds, everything from slang, medieval manuscripts to sound recordings. It was a interesting exhibition, which was well laid out, with clear and concise information. There was one part where you can give your voice to the British Library, in which you talk into a phone and they record your voice for their records, which I had to do, so did. We then went to a meeting room and had a talk from the head of exhibitons Alan Sterenberg. He spoke very honestly about the things that went on there which was good to hear, and about some points that he thought needed to be apparent throughout an exhibiton, these were things like,

Make sure when presenting things like books or other objects, to do it in such a way that it isnt boring.

Getting the message of the exhibition across quickly, so that people know what its about and if the only thing they take away with them is the desire to look up what the exhibiton was all about then at least it had some form of effect on them.

If people come out of the exhibiton having learnt something then you have succeeded

Word of mouth to promoto a show is sometimes the best method.

These among others were useful points that i'm sure will be utilised within the final year show, but only time will tell.

DOWNTOWN FROM BEHIND

Ben just emailed me Downtown From Behind which is an amazing blog based in NYC, its basically photos of people riding bikes from behind, such a simple idea but is amazing, also has the backdrop of New York which always helps things. You need to check it out.

THE MODERN/PRESENT

I feel that when I hear and use the word Gentleman I think of all the things that I associate a Gentleman to be, this personally is someone who wears a three piece suit, has a good haircut, has a nice watch a good pair of shoes, has good intellect and is nice to people. However the point of this work is to show that the sterotype of a gentleman has been lost.

However if you think of the modern man then other bad connotations may arise, the modern man could be very far removed from this gentleman figure that the connotations altogether of a gentleman are lost, this is why maybe mixing the two together is the right thing to do.

Having modern and gentleman all in the same boat, creates a new meaning for modern or present gentleman.

THE RULES OF A GENTLEMAN

I stumbled upon a site named 'The Rules of a Gentleman' a few days after deciding to work with the subject of the modern man, or gentleman. It is an interesting site, as it has little rules that come out every so often about things a gentleman should do, weather it is relating to appearance or behaviour, it is also interesting because you can add your own to the site, they also sometimes have a 'please note' at the bottom of them with something funny written about the rule or sometimes not. I feel that some of them are the obvious sterotype of what a gentleman should be however some are not quite as obvious, for example the more obious rule is

'Ties are meant to compliment a wardrobe, it should never be a main focal point'

and a less obvious one goes something a bit like this,

'Your outlook on life defines how you react to those life chaning moments' (please note - those reactions can define your life)

YOUR PERCEPTION

The preliminary questions for my work are as follows...

THE SARTORIALIST

Scott Schuman is the man behind the blog the sartorialist, I have been looking at this site pretty much every day for a good few years now, and feel that i take a lot of inspiration from the photos that Schuman takes. I really like the way he has kept true to his blog format, keeping the name the same and the look the same...

WHAT IT ONCE WAS

'To a degree, a "gentleman" signified a man with an income derived from property, a legacy or some other source, and was thus independently wealthy and did not need to work. The term was particularly used of those who could not claim nobility or even the rank of esquire. Widening further, it became a politeness for all...

BASQUIAT

The late Jean Michel Basquiat was an unknown graffiti artist living on the streets of New York, rising up to being the darling of New Yorks art critics in 1981. I have been looking at a lot of Basquiat's work recently, everything thing he did from being the graffiti artist samo to the critically acclaimed artist Jean Michel Basquiat...

THE GENTLEMAN

SELF INITIATED BRIEF 001

The notion of a gentleman has changed since fifty years ago, is there a definitive character of a gentleman anymore? Now that the class and race system have been broken down, what is the new perception of the modern man?

The first of my self initiated briefs is all to do with the modern man, and if the perception of a gentleman is still alive today, is being a gentleman about the way you dress, the way you act, both or something completely different altogether?

This project is all about modern culture, and social documentation of self expression from a range of people across Britain. It is also about the appearance and behaviour of the perceived gentleman and the inter-relation between the two of them.

UP CLOSE

I have said previously when I went to the 100 club i took over 200 photos and these were the final edited down photos which i used within my work, I think they are a nice range of photos, with things that generally look pretty horrible but somehow there is a nice feel behind the photos. The place is a dump but it dose take...

REVERTING TO TYPE - STANDPOINT GALLERY

Yesterday after our crit Henry and I went to the reverting to type exhibition at the standpoint gallery on coronet street. The whole exhibition was devoted to letterpress, with all the work having come out of the letterpress method. I dont think i've ever seen that much letter-pressed work in a room before, some of it was...

DEVELOPMENT OF IDEAS

Over the last few days I have been experimenting with my designs for the 100 club poster, with tear off flyers, playing with type and pictures that i have taken, here are a few rough examples, think i'm heading down the route of the 2 columns and small bit of type. I want to basically have the feel of a gig poster for the 100...

PERFORATED

I have been playing around with the idea of perforation, and how to best use this method to produce some form of tear away flyers and create some form of debate/argument amongst people, almost anonymously, however the final outcome of this will have an effect on what people in general think what should...

THE 100 CLUB CURTAINS AND CHAIRS

Today I went to the 100 club with Henry, it was strange seeing it completely empty on a Friday lunchtime at 12 oclock, however this gave us the platform to take some amazing photos of the place. It seems to be quite an easy place to get a good photo, probably because of the history that has gone on within the four...

CBGB NYC

CBGB's was a music club at 315 Bowery at Bleecker Street in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was similar to the 100 club due to the fact that it was a small venue in a big city that had hundreds of amazing bands playing at it, night in night out. However the plight of CBGB wasn't great as it closed in the summer...

TEARING UP THE DANCE FLOOR

Today was the first interim, for this I had whittled down my ideas that i have previously spoken about to one main idea, this is the tear away flyers idea. The flyers are going to be the same pattern as the wood panels on the floor in the 100 club. The idea being that when a flyer is ripped off a part of the 100 club goes with...

WOOD TILED FLOOR PART 2

In a previous post i said i couldnt remember what type of wood flooring the floor in the 100 club was, however today i found out it was a herringbone type of structure as you can see in the photo, now to construct the perforation pattern.

OLD TIMES FLYERING

I am starting to really warm to the idea of tear off flyers, it reminds me of times when i used to stand around giving out flyers for gigs a few years ago, something i think every music fan should do at one stage or another, i know nicholas my man does it on the regular, he seems to like it... when its not pissing it down anyway.

BEAUTIFUL LOSERS

This is a documentary film about that focuses on the careers and work of a collective group of artists who since the 1990s began a movement in the art world using D.I.Y. aesthetics from skateboarding, graffiti and underground music such as punk rock and hip-hop. The artists discussed and interviewed in the film include...

INFORMATION PLAYGROUNDS - JONA PIEHL

This was the first installment of the information playgrounds series, in which Annagrete is commanding. The first talk we had was with a designer called Jona Piehl who has been designing graphic systems for exhibitions and museums around which travel around the world. It was a interesting insight to the world of exhibition design, and the aspects that went into designing something that had to be accessible from so many different levels, and the amount of planning that went into this. Looking forward to next week where were going to the british library for some talking.

THE WHEATSHEAF RIP

This book is quite relevant to the 100 club brief at the moment, due to the fact that it was a local pub called The Wheatsheaf in Borough Market that was closed due to the network rail extension. The book was shot by John Ross who is an amazing photographer from london, to commemorate this local pub. It is full of the...

THE DISFIGURED 100

I have been pondering over this idea for a while of concentrating on the things that are really bad about the 100 club, the broken chairs and tables, the weird smell of the place, the tatty stage, and the hole ridden floor, apparently sometimes they dont even have ice at the bar, or didn't used to anyway! I was also talking to Henry (who happens to be doing the same brief) about this factor too, that concentrating on all the bad things actually isn't a bad thing at all, because all these crappy factors of the club actually fill it with character that no other place could emulate. The way id do this is to take photos of all the disfigurements within the club and then have some form of type around them, this idea however doesn't really open much of a debate up with anyone, it just sort of is there, I guess you could argue that it is advertising it to make sure it stays open...

WOOD TILED FLOOR

I seem to remember yesterday the flooring being this wood tile flooring that you get in old town halls and things like that, I remember looking at it because of someone saying that there were holes in the floor and I wanted to see if there really was, which to be fair there was, anyway I have just been thinking of...

TEAR OFF FLYERS

Over the last day i have been trying to think of ways to engage people that enables them to have an opinion of there own and being almost anonymous. I think that it would be hard to come out as a music lover and say that they actually thought that the 100 club would be best to go due to the fact that it will be subject...

ON THE GRAPEVINE

I have heard that the 100 Club has been saved from closure, this cant be for sure but apparently there has been a sponsor involved, so the 500,000 pounds that has needed to be raised to keep the club from closure has presumably been made, or given to them? This on first looks is a great thing, and all the people that have worked hard to get this have been rewarded, however i still feel that the vibe of the 100 club may go, due to the fact that sponsors are getting involved. These two conflicting ideas of it being great that it is being saved, but is it going to lose its atmosphere are something that i find really interesting, and feel it will open a wider debate, from the music lovers who wanted it to stay open to the people who wanted to close it and turn it into something else... More ideas on how to do this tomorrow, as a few of the ideas that i had to do with either saving the 100 club or closing it are obsolete now.

ITS GOT CHARM

For the ongoing list of things I need to do of late i actually achieved one today, this was to visit the infamous 100 Club, i dragged my flatmate Ariane along with me for the ride too (lucky her). Having only seen it from the outside before i didn't really know what was in-store for me, only that it is a bit tatty. We arrived at the venue and the first shock...

BANKS VIOLETTE

Banks Violette is a artist based in New York, his style is amazing, intergrating his stark, clean output, compared with his dark subjects that he bases his work upon. His work is such a nice thing to look at, with the range of lighting and usually some form of glossy black surface and ghostly white areas.

INITIAL THOUGHTS

The 100 club is going one or two ways for me, this is, it staying open for a while to come yet, due to either sponsors, the council changing their mind about rent or them getting a sudden burst of money, or people flooding through the doors.

JEFF HORTON 100 CLUB

"I knew people would be up in arms but the last thing I want to do is let my creditors down. I am acutely aware of how tatty the club has become. It always was a sweaty basement but, even by those standards, it is starting to look bad. There are broken chairs, the pictures need replacing and there are holes in the dancefloor. I don't want it to die a lonely painful death. If I have to I want to put it to sleep with dignity, like a faithful old pet."

This quote was taken from a recent article on the closure of the 100 club in the independent, this club obviously means a lot to many people from britain, and i'm sure worldwide. This is reminiscent to the closure of CBGB's in New York in 2006, Did its closure though only make it more of a legendary venue, there was a film made about it and all, maybe the 100 club will become a Hollywood blockbuster hit sooner than we know it...

MAKE WAY FOR THE NEW OR KEEP WITH THE OLD (100 CLUB)

With the next few weeks focusing on the 100 club I am starting to generate ideas, one of the main ideas I am getting is to let the 100 club go down with dignity. A main example of things going down with dignity are the bands who play there themselves. This is a factor about music that frustrates me, when a band break up through either a clash of tastes or personalities to stopping at the height of ones career, and the five, ten, fifteen years later they decide to get back together again, which some may think is great however I always feel the vibe of the music, the way a band play together is never the same as it was when they were together all that time ago.

Having said all this I feel this is why maybe the 100 should go down with dignity, and go out on a high, because I think if it were to stay open it would become a place that it never intended to be, and would get corrupted in some shape or form, obviously i cant read the future but this is a pattern that happens throughout life, people change, they grow, we evolve, tastes change and nothing stays the same (for long).

So with my reasoning for my view on the 100 club out the way, it means I can really concentrate on a way to get this message across to people, weather they agree or disagree, and i think i have one or two different ways of showing this visually. Check back for updates soon.

THE 100 CLUB

The 100 club is located on the increasingly busy oxford street, and with rising prices for rent it is under the threat of closure, it has been an established music venue since the 1940's, with the first movements of jazz being played there, since there has been many legendary gigs there from everyone to The Stones to Paul...

2011

2011 the year to concentrate on all things design, art, fashion, life, politics, health and anything that is anything. Its going to be an exciting few months, with hopefully a great outcome, here we go...