The Big Five Exhibitions
- Olivia Katrina Lucie Goodenough
- Oct 30, 2016
- 3 min read
I went to five exhibitions, the Tate Modern: Living Cities and Louise Bourgeois. The House of Illustration: Quentin Blake’s original illustrations for “The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots” and Laura Carlin: Ceramics. Davis Zwirner and the last gallery was the Gagosain Ed Ruscha Extremes and In-between.
Tate: Living Cities Group Exhibition
Love this interactive piece of work i had great fun of walking on it literally made me feel like a giant and I loved every second of it.
Ed Ruscha Extremes and In-between
Within the Ed Ruscha Extremes and In-betweens exhibition I could instantly see a connection with the appearance of he’s work, very simple with well thought out use of typography, layout and scale to create range of readably to unreadable words depend on your position within the room. I believe the type face seemed overall unfamiliar to my knowledge of fonts, the appearance of sharp corners of each letter gave a strong sturdy appearance and this made me think it looked more numerical then words however this could be due to the use of capitals. I believe my instant connection with his work was due to the amount of negative space mirrored in the environment of his work presented and the layouts use, with little colour consisting of block earthy tones, which he refers to as “a colour that forgot it was a colour.” It wasn’t until I reached the second room that I started to really understand the reason behind his work. I like the way within his paintings, the use of typography to represent scale therefore I started to understand the reasoning behind why the words to the end reached unreadable a reference to being less visible therefore further away E.g universe, Galaxy. His use of typography isn’t one that I would necessarily use however the appropriateness of the font is definitely influenced by his area of research, and within my practise I always use research to influence what colour, font layout used and the appropriateness of all of this.
I went to the House of Illustration and saw the exhibition of Quentin Blake's original illustrations for The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots, the recently re-discovered Beatrix Potter manuscript, published in September. I know in my practice that illustration is difficult for me as I have a very logical way of thinking and when I see something that I cant understand or make sense of makes me feel angry or stupid. However Quentin bakes drawings are a childhood memory and are easily readable and normally has the advantage of including a narrative. I’ve always been a fan of his work and Beatrix Potters, I still to this day drink my cuppa tea in a Quentin Blake mug with a drawing of the witches. I believe my fascination and admiration of his work is the effortless pen marks so energetic with confidence, something I could never accomplish freehand, which probably makes me admire it even more. Unfortunately we couldn’t take any photos within the exhibition, which annoyed me however on reflection you probably do pay a lot more attention at the work then if you’re trying to get a good photo. The drawings on display were selection of pages from within the book, most of the scene were drawn within a square full of warm tones and black line drawing, however the pages with the scene normally including the environment a person or animal, artistically to look at however probably weren’t my favorite. Round the corner of the room he displayed simple drawings very small images with lost of white space framing the drawing, a simple one colour with black pen of two brown boots sitting alone without anyone wearing them. For me these one piece or object description offered me so much more enjoyment to look it and probably my graphic design mind however I really liked the balance of breathing space around these drawings. I’ve realised for me it not just the illustration that is important I take great consideration on how I present my work with layout and text, within the exhibition they also had a fully printed copy of the tale of kitty-in-boots and as I opened it instantly felt annoyed by the distracting size of text within the book and creamy coloured pages not presenting the drawings as clean cut as they were on the walls.
I believe it is just as important to identity the similarity within our practise and others as well as recognising the areas that make our work different, the more we recognise our difference the more we will learn and be more self-aware about our work and why we create such pieces.
