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.