More about the Art Lending Library, via a site/system/identity designed by VIS-COM-DES people Sebastian Gorton Kalvik and Sophie Dyer. Includes an interesting set of educational events.
Photography: Colin Gray
Archive for the 'Alumni' Category
Vis Com person Lu Sisi collaborates on Colour Deaf, a forthcoming exhibition and residency at the Telfer Gallery. The gallery is run by other vis com person, Natalia Palombo.
From the age of austerity to a Compendium of Joy, documentation of a recent exhibition by vis-com people Jess Copsey and Oona Brown, and below, a sublime passage from the introduction by fellow vis-com person Sam Bellacosa;
With Our not-so-distant forebears, raving ’til dawn in the expansive fields of the English countryside, borrowed a synonymous term to describe the chemical effects of methylenedioxymethamphetamine, a synthetic stimulant producing heightened states of euphoria and a general feeling of well-being and camaraderie. They called it Ecstasy, from the Greek ekstasis, or, “standing outside oneself.”
The French have a characterization for the universe of petit vices to which Ecstasy belongs—the condensé de joie, or ‘condensed joy.’ In tablet form Ecstasy is the Eucharist of late-20th century clubbing subculture, your communion for a few quid. In Christian theology, this tenet—that the bread wafer constitutes the symbolic body of Christ—is known as Transubstantiation; we are brought closer to the Holy Spirit through consumption. When we consume Ecstasy, or cheap lager or copious triple-vodkas for that matter, we are both spiritually and physically altered. This is called being “off one’s face,” and in some major way we lose the material sense of self–our face in the mirror—and join a collective identity of the truly fucked, a frenzied body of pure, condensed joy.
Whilst on the subject of Argyle Street area goings on, I believe the Relocated Gallery / One Hundred Pound Shop is due to open (or rather have an opening) on the 1st December.
Vis-Com-Des person, Alan Cameron, has an exhibition opening this week:Thursday 6th October 2011, 6pm – 8pm Trongate 103, First Thursday, (via GPS Newsletter.)
Good Press is a new outlet, based in Mono (temporarily, while they find a permanent space), from this Friday the 7th October, starting with the first exhibition, The Family Show.
The Family Show will be exhibiting 30 UK and International artists (two of which; Oliver Pitt and Jess Copsey, are recent GSA graduates) who mostly work with illustration and painting. It’s also a fundraiser for their permanent space, with all the original works being available for £30 for those who may wish to buy them!
In the bookshop there will be a large variation of different independent & self-published books, zines and other printed and handmade things. All Com Des people are invited to attend, more background info here. If you’re interested in selling zines etc, they’ve asked interested parties to get in touch directly, just via that web link, that one, back there.
Oliver Pitt (Vis Com Person) is one of a group of alumni representing Glasgow School of Art at this weekends Vault Art event. I might be missing something but the main vault website seems a bit thin on information, but there are various talks and events and things happening too.
Vis Com person Lu SiSi features as one of 5 to watch in this month’s Creative Review Graduate Special. A nice wee feature on one of 2011′s top graduates.
(It’s obviously been a long time since I paid money for a magazine – five pounds and ninety pence it was!)
As the department gets ready to start a new year as Communication Design, we need to decide what to call this blog. My suggestion is that we just keep the URL as it is and the blog title stays the same, but put communication design in the byline. vis.com is too good to give up. In other blog related news, only a year or so off the pace, I’ve uploaded all the additional websites I can find* for graduating students from last year and this year to the vis com person list on the right. They are, in no particular order;
http://www.andrewgrahamdesigner.com/ http://uberdesign.eu/ http://nikiblack.co.uk/ http://www.sophiedyer.net/ http://www.trakke.co.uk/ http://walterhamilton.co.uk http://www.arielrosenelson.com http://www.deanpauley.co.uk/ http://cargocollective.com/maeveredmond http://cargocollective.com/meganrobinson http://ftjelly.com/ http://cargocollective.com/liangsu http://tausiroko.com/ http://cargocollective.com/aileencrossley http://eleanorhodesdon.weebly.com/ http://www.essillustration.com http://sideandback.tumblr.com www.fangzhou.co.uk http://www.heathermore.com/ http://cargocollective.com/jamieallanshaw www.marymoorelowenfield.com http://cargocollective.com/oliverpitt/ http://cargocollective.com/roberthetherington http://www.jamesedwinbettney.com/ http://louisebichan.tumblr.com/ http://www.lynseymarshall.com/ http://www.nickmilligan.com/ http://www.sarahamyfishlock.com/ http://shonacameron.tumblr.com/ http://ellentm.com/ http://emieye.com http://makotoyamada.com/ http://iamlisha.com/ http://daphneofthedunes.blogspot.com/ http://louiseduffy.com/ http://madeleineritchie.co.uk
When working through the degree show catalogues from the last two years quite a lot (particularly from this year) seemed to be dead links. But the prize for most deliberately/unintentionally(?) daft link goes to Rory Hamilton who put this in the catalogue: http://www.roryhamilton.com/
*By ‘find’ I mean flicking through the catalogues. If you’re a vis com person and aren’t on this list but would like to be, please get in touch with details of your website and year of study at GSA.
1st Year Department of Visual Communication
London Study Trip
24-27 January 2011
25.1.11
DAY 1
VISIT / 10.00am
- Company / Alex Swain
http://www.company-london.com/
- An informal insight into business acumen combined with how to take a client on a creative journey.
VISIT / 11.30am
- The Association of Illustrators / Paul Ryding
http://www.theaoi.com/
- There is very little former graduate Paul Ryding does not know about contemporary illustration.
VISIT / 1.00pm
- Tomato / Michael Horsham
http://www.tomato.co.uk/
- An intimate sharing of large and small projects from one of the most influential agencies. There portfolio goes back to 1991 and are continuing to work with Underworld.
VISIT / 4.00pm
- Pentagram / Jane Pluer
http://pentagram.com/en/portfolio/
- One of the most impressive offices in the creative industries with a workshop to match. Imperious work delivered with style and elegance.
26.1.11
DAY 2
VISIT / 11.00am
- Browns Design / Jonathan Ellery
http://brownsdesign.com/
- Jonathan engaged with the students immediately by asking how they defined art compared to design. Award winning work from a man who applauds the students form outside London including The Glasgow School of Art.
VISIT / 1.30pm
- Field / Vera-Maria Glahn
http://www.field.io/
- A German duo working with all the latest programming software and code to produce really beautiful ‘cross-media’ work. Cool rooftop garden with views over to the City of London.
VISIT / 4.30pm
- Build / Nicky and Michael Place with former graduate Lynne Devine
http://wearebuild.com/
- Michael allowed us to touch, feel and sniff the quality of his best design for print. Designers Republic guru happy to be working in a small agency with one of our best graduates.
Former (and hopefully future) speaker and Vis Com graduate Paul Ryding, working on www.thehoxtonwindowproject.com. Click through for work-in-progress video.
The Foulis building (along with the Newbery Tower and ref) is coming down in the summer of 2011 to make way for a brand new “striking and inspiring world-class building” for The School and for Glasgow. I’m gathering and recording memories and stories of the Foulis, so if you have any recollections or anecdotes (no matter how mundane or random) please leave a comment or email me at walterhamilton [at] hotmail [dot] com. You can find me in real life in the Graphics studio, 1st floor, Foulis building, 158 Renfrew Street, Glasgow if you want to have an analogue conversation about it.
Also, please let me know if you have any suggestions or ideas for what the new building could/should be called.
Thanks.
Venez découvrir, autour d’un verre, Manystuff #1, One possible catalyst, publication de design graphique.
Avec la participation de/ With:
Christian Brandt, Lorena Cardenas, Change is good, David Conte, Pinar Demirdag, Neil Donnelly, Laurent Fétis, Kees de Klein, Wayne Daly, Bear Demen, EventArchitectuur, Experimental Jetset, Robin Gadde &team, Rob Giampietro, Hannes Gloor & Stefan Jandl, Catherine Guiral & David Cluzeau, Arnaud Daffos, Vincent Lalanne, Aurélie Guérinet, Rikard Heberling, Hey Ho, Hyoun Youl Joe, Julia, Konst & Teknik, Sacha Leopold, Olivier Marcellin, Fanette Mellier, Pipi Parade, Please Let Me Design, Thibaut Robin, Grégoire Romanet, Mathias Schweizer, Maki Suzuki (Åbäke), Pierre Vanni, Karen Willey, Ivor Williams
Typographie: Jean-Baptiste Levée, Émilie Rigaud, Damien Fauret
Design graphique: SA|M|AEL (Samuel Bonnet & Maël Fournier-Comte )
Talks from two great designers, Roy Mohan Shearer and Emlyn Firth, this Friday (5th March), 4pm 2nd year vis com studio. Come one, come all.
I’ve just added a new Collection to Central Station. You can see it and read about it here:
http://www.thisiscentralstation.com/collections/pismo-%28typography%29.aspx
The focus is a rare typography manual I found in an old bookshop in Prague in 1999*. ’PISMO’ is an A3 sized folio containing a manuscript on the ‘history of writing’ and over 50 exceptionally beautiful, original loose leaves of individually drawn alphabets, some with diagramatic notation that demonstrate their construction.
Thinking about the legacy of not only Czech design, but photography and film of that era (eg Magick Lantern), and the latent influences of Constructivism and even Bauhaus in PISMO, I’d also be interested in suggested routes for further exploration/collaboration, perhaps working with visual artists, writers or film-makers.
Have a look and an explore and feel free to add to this discussion with more visual stimulus, links etc.,
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*The find was made whilst on a field trip as a student with the Glasgow School of Art’s Visual Communication Dept., led by Steve Rigley. Credit should also go to my friend and fellow ex-student Franca Fosco, who helped me buy the book, with a smattering of Czech translation.
The research project will be continued with Steve Rigley and Edwin Pickstone
Central Station, (a community for art, film and design), launches (in beta, but aren’t we all) today. Log-on, look around, sign-up, tune-out. GSA Visual Communication is on there, so you could even become friends with the course.
Beautiful Losers started as an exhibition in San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Arts Centre on Street Art & Culture about 4 years ago, then came the book and now the film. From the same Film House ‘Art House Films’ also comes Wendy Keys’ film on Milton Glaser ‘To Inform and Delight’, which among it’s cast includes GSA viscom graduate, Katja Maas, who for the last decade has worked as Milton’s assistant.
Beautiful Losers film trailer from beautifullosersfilm on Vimeo.
Opening tonight in Edinburgh: Grey Matter Exhibition, the result of a six month curatorial relationship between nine postgraduate students from the Centre for Visual and Cultural Studies at Edinburgh College of Art, and featuring Littlewhitehead (Viscom people, see column on the right).
A couple of weeks ago, in a bit of a small-world scenario, I found myself sharing a hostel in La Paz, the Bolivian capital, with another Vis Com graduate – Kat Carter.
Kat graduated from GSA in 2004, having specialised in photography, and is currently backpacking around South America for a few months, documenting her trip using a photo-blog as she goes. Some great shots and a simple, effective format for this kind of visual diary.
Details of this terms pro-practise talks, all in Second Year Studio, all welcome:
Tuesday 5th May, 4pm
Emlyn Firth + Louise Chappell
Friday 8th May, 4pm (still to be finalised)
Berlin Haushoch
Friday 15th May, 3:30pm (please note random meaningless change of time)
Kieran McCann + Tom Jenkins
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