Studying Graphic Design at MA level has given me a unique opportunity to interrogate the multifaceted nature of my own creative identity. Through a dynamic range of self directed projects, I have been able to explore my passionate interest in nature, environmental issues and animal rights through a range of experimental approaches and methodologies.
Having reflected upon my academic and professional experience working in the creative sector, I recognise that my practice can be characterised by the following modalities; fine art (painting and sculpture), graphic design and animal advocacy. This week I aim to critically analyse each area in conjunction with one another in order to discover deeper connections which may lead me to my final MA research question.
Fine Art Practice
Having studied a BA Hons in fine art (2014-17) my experience on the Graphic Design MA has been largely defined by an interest in the theoretical boundaries between art and design. Studying their separate functionalities, from art as ambiguous expression and design as creative strategy/ problem solving has enabled me to explore the space between and experiment with unique ways of bringing my artistic perspective into a graphic design context.
How can I develop a unique creative practice/ identity that is effectively positioned at the intersection of art and design?
Being particularly interested in the sublime, my fine art practice has focused largely on the finite human condition and universal themes of natural cyclicality. I have explored this through the use of organic media and transitory processes in a figurative context, symbolically referencing the tension between human ephemerality and the arts as an endeavour to transcend mortal limitations through the creation of enduring objects.
*The act of making art to me has always felt like a cathartic pursuit to understand and come to terms with the unknown and unsettling facets of the human condition. For this reason, module 1’s emphasis on the idea of ‘self’ was fascinating to me, enabling me to re-examine these themes through an alternative language, media and context. Although I have explored many other issues, themes and creative strategies, reflection on this project has clarified how my fine art perspective offers a unique practical, visual and intellectual approach which should be embraced as a creative superpower in the final major project.
Module 1: The Self
Fine Art BA, Loughborough University: 2014-17
Animal Rights/ Welfare
Design for Social Good/ Activism:
Being passionate about animal rights and environmental issues, my work has been particularly concerned with design as a tool for transformative social change through visual activism. As animal rights issues are heavily connected to mass consumerism, I have also examined how positivist design strategies can be used to effectively position brands and initiatives which seek to interrupt the demand for animal derived products through ethical plant based solutions.
Work from Module 1-2
Module 3: Business Plan
“It is the human earthling who tends to dominate the earth, often times treating other fellow earthlings and living beings as mere objects. This is what is meant by speciesism. By analogy with racism and sexism, the term speciesism is a prejudice or attitude of of bias in favour of the interest in members of ones own species, and against those members of other species. If a being suffers there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration. No matter what the nature of the being, the principle of equality requires that one suffering can be treated equally with the like suffering of any other being.”
– Earthlings (2005).
“As often has Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: In their behaviour toward creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplify the most extreme racist theories the principle that might is right.”
– Enemies, a Love Story 1966, Isaac Bashevis Singer.
“We need a better and wiser and perhaps more mystical concept of animals … For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear… They are not brethren, they are not underlings… they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth”
– The Outermost House Henry Beston (1928)
Professional Practice
As an in-house graphic designer for Valentte (a natural skincare and fragrance brand) and Ancol Pet Products (an industry leading pet accessories manufacturer) I have had the opportunity to visually explore themes of nature, sustainability and animal rights/ welfare issues as part of wider design and marketing strategies.
The overarching thread amongst these projects is a passion for nature and the transformative power of art to interrogate our social and existential relationship with nature and non-human animals. For this final major project I intend to holistically analyse my recent body of work in conjunction with my longer term inspirations and creative ambitions. I hope that this will enable me to develop a refined focus point which acts as a springboard to generate a meaningful final expression/ assertion of my artistic identity.
Creative Heritage
Reflection on G2E720 – Histories & Futures
For this project I conducted ethnographic research into my grandparent’s pottery studio (1981-2001) and the evidence of its legacy both in the village from where it operated and on my own creative identity and career. By interviewing my grandparents on their experiences and thoughts on the industry, I was able to draw links with their work and my own deep fascination into themes of ephemerality and the eternal.
Chapter 4: Earth and Fire
What drew you to pottery as a process or material and what does it mean to you?
[Grandad]: I was always fascinated by the fact that it was the earliest material and Homo sapiens began to use it in order to survive. The ancient magic of earth and fire creating something permanent and immortal.
I was really touched by my grandfather’s perspective on pottery as it aligns perfectly with my own. Pottery is a fascinating exploration of the transient and the permanent, evoking deeply primitive themes of mortality and eternity. I have always been intellectually and creatively captivated by these ideas, exploring them in my own practice. The act of unifying the elements of earth air fire and water is deeply symbolic and oddly grounding and mindful.
This was a particularly transformative and empowering project for me, as it facilitated a deeply personal interrogation into my own creative heritage, enabling me to understand my connection with craft, place and the emotional resonance behind the profoundly symbolic act of pottery.
How can my contemporary design practice honour my creative family heritage and background fine art?
This could be an effective research question offering a personal and specific focus with enough breadth to meaningfully explore ideas of mortality, nature and the sublime in the visual arts.
Creative Heritage: G2E720 Ethnographic Research
Fine Art Practice: Ceramic Sculpture
The notion of creative boundaries separating art from design are particularly interesting to me considering feedback I had from lecturers during my BA in fine art, regarding my ceramic sculpture being more ‘product design’ than fine art. Although this was an important transformative experience leading me to more experimental media, it never sat well with me that I was discouraged from pursuing a traditional skill that I had spent years nurturing.
Even though those sculptures were not seminal ground breaking examples of high art, they represented my own purest, unique and uncensored relationship with art, and my pursuit to use symbolic imagery and material process to explore the unknown, connect with profound universal ideas by experiencing a sense of transcendence beyond the human conditions boundaries of time. Considering this, I wonder if this project could become an opportunity to revive my passionate interest in craft, with specific reference to figurative representation and portraiture.
Potential Areas of Interest:
- Expression vs objective design functionality
- Boundaries between fine art, craft and design (Craig Oldham lecture)
- Renaissance influences – humanism, naturalism, anatomical research
- Mythology, history, naturalism, symbolism
Potential Research Questions:
- How can design be used to achieve legacy/ what is the role of legacy in the creation of art and design
- How is the concept of death influential to my creative practice?
- Offers the opportunity to explore the generative potential of the awareness of mortality, the sublime, Alan Watts, Damien Hirst, Edmund Burke.
- How can contemporary design practice connect audiences with the eternal through primitive media and craft?
- How can primitive materials and craft be referenced in contemporary design practice to create profound new meanings
Artist Positioning Statement from BA Hons Fine Art:
Natural Cycles: Spiritual Dimension Between Art & Nature
Paganism & Druidry
How can ancient pagan imagery and typographic forms, such as the runic alphabet, be reimagined in to explore new meanings in contemporary design practice?
The symbol above represents extinction. The circle signifies the planet, while the hourglass inside serves as a warning that time is rapidly running out for many species. The world is currently undergoing a mass extinction event, and this symbol is intended to help raise awareness of the urgent need for change in order to address this crisis. Estimates are that somewhere between 30,000 and 140,000 species are becoming extinct every year in what scientists have named the Holocene, or Sixth Mass Extinction. This ongoing process of destruction is being caused by the impact of human activity. Such a catastrophic loss of biodiversity is highly likely to cause widespread ecosystem collapse and consequently render the planet uninhabitable for humans.
Nature & The Sublime in Romanticism & Gothic Art
How can traditional painterly techniques, such as chiascuro and sfumato, be interpreted in contemporary design/image making?
Ode on a Grecian Urn, John Keats
John Keats’ romantic poetry has been highly influential to me as an artist, inspiring me to explore romantic concepts of nature and the sublime. Ode on a Grecian Urn particularly resonates with my interest in the relationship between human fragility and the endurance art. The figures represent ephemeral moments of universal sensory human experience which are immortalised on the ceramic urn, a motif of permanence, human creativity, and continuity. The urn therefore becomes a powerful symbol of the arts and its capacity to generate awe and sublime responses by connecting us with the vastness of time.
Main themes: Connection with time, eternal, nature, relating to universal ideas and experiences, emotional feeling of unity and connection with humanity across time, empathy, catharsis.
Keats, J. John Keats, (1973) The Complete Poems. Middlesex, England: Penguin Education
How can design be informed by fine art and literary concepts of catharsis and universality?
Contemporary Pottery: Sagar & Roku Firing
Saga pit firing is an ancient, yet endlessly experimental process, using organic media such as banana peels, hair etc to create unique chemical reactions producing unrepeatable surface colours and effects. The visual result is raw and organic celebration of the transitory properties of the materials used and the unification and permanence of ceramic process.
The striking results are highly graphic and reminiscent of abstract expressionist paintings. How can this process be used to inspire my own visual language in the context of graphic design?
Home: Connection to place
My time on the MA course has been tumultuous, due to a sudden change in personal circumstances that required me to move location and take 2 years intermittence. After spending 5 years living between the Staffordshire Moorlands and the Peak District, I struggled emotionally with feelings of loss and grief when I moved back home to the West Midlands to be close to my family. Although I had a valuable support network here of friends and family, I felt displaced and grieved the connection to place and nature that I’d developed in the moorlands. Since settling in the Black Country I feel more connected with my new homes history and natural spaces, however this experience has led me to consider the concept of home and place from a deeply personal and emotional perspective. A romantic yearning for nature has been a consistent theme within my work from the beginning of my career. As the Black Country represents industrial heritage and the oppression of nature, I wonder if there is an opportunity here to explore these topics from a historical, symbolic and highly personal perspective?
Contemporary Fine Art: Tracey Emin
Art & Catharsis
- Conceptual art and creative process: emotionally healing properties of creativity
- Personal experiences – emotions mind map – Tracey Emin’s ‘Everyone I have ever slept with’ tent piece as a universal reflection on human relationships.
When you’re dealing with paint… what goes through your mind is like having the most hardcore deepest philosophical emotional argument with yourself about everything. And so I learn lots about myself as I’m working. And if I don’t then I’m not satisfied and I wouldn’t want to be an artist.
I don’t want to make nice things, I don’t want to make decoration/ design… I need to do what I’m doing, this kind of weird lonely pursuit of trying to understand who I am. And if I can be honest with myself it shows within the work and then other people get something from it. A good example of this is the tent (everyone I ever slept with). One of the best comments that I have about that tent is that someone goes into the tent and when they come out they think of everybody they ever slept with. My names in the tent are of no importance to anyone else – your names are important, your experiences are important and if my work can open up other experiences for people and make people more aware of themselves then I’m doing a really good job. It’s not about me, it’s about what happens after me.
Resources
Practice | Lecture 1 – Publishing Multiplatform
- Intern – created based on a core belief in the vital role of diversity within the creative industry
- Inclusiveness – diversity of voices for a functioning industry- empowering young people to build career – access to creative industry – objectivity, variety in perspective.
- “Creativity/ culture is one of the most important tools we have within society to facilitate better conversations, to build empathy, to build understanding and to make sense of the world around us”
- Crossing boundaries – educational, cultural, geographical
- Physical product – practicality of shipping, distribution, stock
Practice | Lecture 2 – Social Change UX
- Social dimension of graphic design role: inform, inspire, influence behaviour and create potentially transformational change
- Victor Papanek also offers really important words around the potential of social design. An industrial designer, he wrote the book Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change all the way back in 1985. In ’95 he said, “The future of design is bound up with the key role of synthesis between the various disciplines that make up the socio-economic political matrix within which design operates… an ecological worldview could change design”. What was revolutionary for Papanek’s time is now generally accepted: design is not only about giving form to something; it is a tool for political transformation that must consider social and ethical points of view.
- Social Design: contexts and histories: look locally and globally – marginalised voices
- archives
- Language and voice; the engagement, community and ethics
- The fourth issue-based projects: personal voice from a personal perspective.
- Walking – exposure to contemporary landscape and communities
- Participatory forms of research: British council, community engagement, effectiveness of reciprocity
- Role of documentation and recording in order to meaningfully capture contributions. Design your research as you go.
- Make it personal – most transformative projects are personally driven. Looking inwards can also be looking outwards.
- “I think it’s really important that we also, whilst working with and looking for bigger social and political subject matter, we consider where we are in relation to that work. Looking inwards can also be looking outwards and, whilst we always want to find the bigger story of graphic design’s role in the world, starting from yourself can be a really important moment”.
Design for Social Good: Reflection on Previous Practice and Influential Activism.
Practice | Lecture 3 – Academic Creative Practice
- The role of academic writing in a research driven creative practice: helps guide, complete and conclude research (also creates wider ongoing questions)
- Iterative process of writing making and reflecting
- Authoring: “you’re actually not just writing; you’re authoring, and that’s a really key mindset to put yourself in because authoring raises many challenges. At this point I would look at a quote that I found by Alain de Botton. He’s a famous author and he has this quote where he says, “In writing a problem down or airing it in conversation we let its essential aspects emerge. And by knowing its character, we remove, if not the problem itself, then its secondary, aggravating characteristics: confusion, displacement, surprise.” What he’s saying in this quote is when we start writing things down, we start to see new connections, but we also start to see new problems. And to do authoring at the level of a doctorate or at the level of an MA dissertation is a skill. You may end up becoming published and obviously that requires a real high level of craft in your writing.
- “Often, I think research is concerned not necessarily with finding out something you don’t know but with finding that you don’t know something. On many occasions, when we look at research what we’re actually doing is questioning what we think we know.
- there’s this myth about how a PhD is supposed to add to the body of knowledge in the world, and to some extent that is very true, but actually what you’re trying to do is not necessarily create a huge splash with a huge revelation, but actually just add another rung to the ladder; you’re building on what is already out there.
- Research Questions: What are the properties of parafiction when applied to film? Why can parafiction be viewed as the most compatible mode of documentary of our time? What approaches to the application of parafiction can curatorial practice learn from film?
- Contextual review: Now, I’m going to be referencing Authoring a PhD by Dunleavy quite a lot over this section. Again, this book is in the bibliography. Any accessible piece of text, whether a PhD or dissertation, will include orientating devices such as advance notice of what’s to come – summary, for example. This is about managing your readers’ expectation and pulling them through your text, so it comes back to this idea of understanding your readership. In addition, academic dissertations usually require very developed apparatus for going through a particular work undertaken in a wider context of scholarly endeavour. This is called a literary review, or more likely in art and design, a contextual review. A contextual review is exactly what it sounds like; it’s a thorough explanation of the literature and work that’s already out there around your subject. When I say work, as we talked on before, this could include projects, experiments, packaging, typefaces, films as well as writing. Your contextual review provides the foundation for your writing, it almost acts as a backbone, reminding you at all times what is already out there and the knowledge upon which you’re trying to build. Taking this out of academia for a minute and thinking about commercial design practice, I’m sure many of you who work in practices have done competitive reviews before when you’ve been doing work for commercial clients, and that’s very much the same here, just perhaps with slightly more rigour attached to it. At this point, it’s important to think about the purpose of a contextual review, you work should be insight-driven. In layman’s terms, you’re trying to demonstrate to the reader where the gap is and why you think it’s important to fill. Your contextual review will often be the first part of your writing, where you lightly address some controversy or nexus of debate within your chosen subject. You’ll discuss positions and you will need to affirm your loyalties. Your own positionality will come into the debate at this point. Now, when we think about this general idea of accessibility, one of the things this really means is structure. Creating a dissertation or a PhD is likely to be the biggest piece of writing you’ll ever do and as the length increases, the more unwieldy it can become. When planning any writing, I would recommend following some sort of process that works for you. Let’s consider a microstructure first, such as maybe a chapter. One process could be to generate first the main points you want to make; all the topics and things that you want to cover, get them all written down. Secondly, organise these points into an acceptable structure – a narrative structure that makes sense is what we mean by ‘acceptable’. Finally, construct text into grammatical paragraphs. Those three steps again: generate the main points you want to make, organise them into an acceptable structure, construct the text into grammatical paragraphs. Phillips and Pugh, referenced in the bibliography, identify two key types of writer. This is quite interesting actually; I’m really interested to know from everybody who’s watching this what kind of writer they associate themselves with.
- Writing styles: holists (people who just tend to get it all out) vs serialist (plan their writing in detail before they write.)
- This is when you sit down with a piece of paper and you furiously write for hours on end until it’s all out of your head, and this style of writing generally involves creating a succession of drafts. For me, I can definitely see myself being a holist at points. The other week, when I was reflecting on a project, I ended up writing 8,000 words on it. My guess is when I’ve finished that text it will probably be more like 2,500 words but I just had to get it all out and I wrote 8,000 words in two days, I just really needed to get it all off my chest. This holist approach has a bit of a nickname, I don’t know how many people use this nickname, but it’s ‘making a string of sausages into a salami’, because essentially what we’re doing is getting everything out across pages and pages and pages and pages, which is, I suppose, the string of sausages, and then we’re compressing it and compressing it and compressing it into one beautiful piece of cured meat or salami. There’s a second style, which is serialists. Serialists plan their writing in detail before they write. They may sit with a piece of paper and write out very clear structures. They tend to write slowly and very methodically and there’s much less editing; every sentence is very clearly thought out. Funnily enough, sometimes I write like this myself, too. It depends what I’m writing about, but as I said, generally I think I’m more one of those kinds of people who just gets it all out. Whichever way you do write, remember that it’s harder for your readers to follow your thoughts as the text grows in size. It becomes more and more important to be clear and methodical and to return to your key themes frequently. This is really important. If you’re writing reams and reams of text, make sure you keep returning to your key themes so that you remind the reader what it is you’re exploring and what it is you’re talking about. The key, when thinking about a long text, is headings. Good headings should accurately characterise your text.
- Critically Analytical style vs descriptive writing: Descriptive writing states what happened whereas critical analytical writing identifies the significance. To give you some examples: descriptive writing says when something occurred, whereas critical analytical writing identifies why the timing is important. Descriptive writing might list details, whereas critical analytical writing would show the relevance of links between key pieces of information. Descriptive writing might give information, whereas critical analytical writing actually draws conclusion. Hopefully those three examples give you an idea of what I’m talking about here in terms of the difference between descriptive writing and critical analytical writing. To give you a couple more examples: descriptive writing might state the order in which things happened, whereas critical analytical writing might make more reasoned judgements. Descriptive writing might explain how something works, whereas critical analytical writing might indicate why something works.
- Use verbs or signal verbs that match the action. These examples are taken from a book called They Say / I Say by Graff and Birkenstein, which, again, is in the bibliography. When we talk about using signal verbs that match the action, what we mean is don’t say things like ‘she says’ or ‘they believe’, instead use signal verbs such as ‘urge’ or ‘emphasise’ or ‘protest’. If we think about verbs for making a claim, we can use words such as ‘argue’, ‘assert’, ‘claim’ and even ‘insist’. When we think about verbs for expressing agreement, we can talk about ‘acknowledge’, ‘admire’ or ‘endorse’. When we talk about verbs for questioning, we can talk about somebody advocating something or urging something or warning of something. Again, use signal verbs that match the action.
Practice | Lecture 4 – Design Craft
- Dove Press type – authority and idiosyncratic – emory walker and Cobden-Sanderson’s – solving the problem between the 2 mens approach – obsession and pragmatism to revive
- Partnership collapsed in 1906 and was dissolved in 1909 but Dove press contimued without walker.
- Through research on sandersons journals and his understanding of local place Green was able to identify the location where sanderson through metal type into the river to make it no longer accessible to Walker.
Theory | Lecture 1 – Theorised Making
- Explores how film operates within space – cinema vs gallery environments
- “Hopefully what you can see is that so far in this presentation what I’ve tried to do is talk about a huge area of research and then talk about how my practice, of how making this film
has helped me to define some of these qualities that I see is parafiction. And actually, see if they can be used as strategies. Can I make a film based on the things that I think parafiction
is? Is it possible? How does that film operate? And is it successful? Certainly, I have a lot of work to do to really respond to these questions, because I don’t really feel like I’ve done that yet, but by pulling my research outside of the confines of just writing and actually making stuff, these questions become a lot more pertinent. They become almost more urgent – new questions are raised as well.
Theory | Lecture 2 – Research Led Report
- Emphasis on the individuals sense of place within graphic design culture
- My MA thesis is very much picking apart all these aspects of practice that could be subverted to produce better quality work and wellbeing for workers, essentially.
SE: I think this lecture does represent, when we’re talking about the workers’ inquiry, a design report, but there’s so much content in here that will be of value to every student that is going to be watching this in terms of asking questions about their place within the design culture that they choose to be within and how they choose to operate really.
CL: That’s always been, definitely, a thread between all these different organisations or groups that we have been involved in – or as individuals – that in the creative industry, the onus and the focus is always on the finished product, on the form that it takes. Never so much having that inward conversation and really interrogate some of the conditions through which that object or whatever it might be, the end design outcome, has been produced. With the creative community there’s lot of opportunity for creative practitioners, or the industry, or the arts’ community, to externalise all of those conditions and concerns through being able to have a project over here and a project over there and not look at the long term…
SE: I think that there is a lack of understanding generally about what graphic designers actually do and what it entails. Particularly when you are dealing with clients as well;
Theory | Lecture 3 – Professionally / Studio/ Credentials Orientated Report
- Hawraf – google docs link regarding setting up own practice – systems and processes
- Internal vs client facing docs
- Discovery questionnaire – freelance projects – understanding client
- Key questions to help sharpen design focus and create effective brief – mitigate likelihood of work being rejected
- Finances – overheads, project pricing
- Project proposal documents – more formal document, more visually restrained.
- Capabilities deck: it’s hundred and odd slides. They’re not going to be sending a hundred slides to each client. If you don’t already, a little piece of advice, whether it’s for this submission or beyond that, build yourself up a master document that contains any project that you have done, and that you think justifies being in your portfolio at any point. Make sure you document it absolutely beautifully in a way that shows off the key elements of that project. Once that is documented, it should be added to your master document. You should, over time, also end up with something that has a hundred plus slides. It should be easy at this point to start categorising it, and again, it gives you the ability to then, no matter who comes through the door as a client, quickly send them a capabilities deck that is tailored to them, that shows them the kind of skills, projects, specialties and points of interest that are going to entice them to build trust. They can trust that you can deliver them what they’re after, that your work is exciting and that you’re experienced in that realm without having to build form scratch each time. If you’re already doing that, don’t worry about it and sorry for trying to make such a meal out of explaining it to you. Again, this document that we’re looking at now, the project proposal, once you have already sent them the capabilities deck, they’ve decided that they want to move forward
with you and in you’re in the process of formalising things, this is a great document to go you’d send this over in a similar time that you would start getting in touch with the service or terms agreement. This is more of a brief glossary or overview of the projects and what’s going to happen when. It’s not as dense as the services agreement but it hits those key points as well without necessarily delving into the legalities of it. It’s nice and clean in term.
Theory | Lecture 4 – Business Plan
- Opportunity for thorough stress test and tweak and refine business idea
- Secure funding/ loan/ recruit
- Blueprint to guide business development
- Reflect on business plan for imprint
Key themes:
- Transformative power of the arts
- Transcendence
- Eternity/ ephemerality
- Boundaries between art & design – philosophical, sociological and historical methodology
- Portraiture/ figurative representations: identity
Possible Research Questions:
- How can the boundaries between art and design be interrogated to inform a socially relevant contemporary practice?
- How can the history of art inform my relationship with creativity as a contemporary designer?
- What is the role of portraiture in contemporary visual culture?
- How can traditional painterly techniques and concepts, such as chiascuro and sfumato, be interpreted in contemporary design/image making?
- How can an art historical/ fine art approach be applied to political design in order to generate social change.
- How can primitive materials and craft be referenced in contemporary design practice to create profound new meanings
- Saga/ Raku fired Pottery: Primitive elemental process, however the results are highly graphic and reminiscent of abstract expressionism. How can this process be used to inspire my own visual language in the context of graphic design?
- How can contemporary design practice connect audiences with the eternal through primitive media and craft?
- How can design be used to achieve legacy/ what is the role of legacy in the creation of art and design
- Momento Mori: How is the concept of death influential to my creative practice?
- How can design strategy influence consumer behaviour for social good
- What are the boundaries between fine art and design with regard to design activism?
- How can gothic/ romantic themes and imagery inspire contemporary environmental design activism
- How can romanticism be examined in conjunction with contemporary environment issues, and how can new meanings be explored regarding the self within the Anthropocene?
- Symbolism: Could the dragon (inspired by my grandparents’ practice) be explored as a visual reference to the sublime’s evocation of the unknown, fear, terror and the awareness of human fragility and mortality. It could also act as a multidimensional metaphor for nature in a contemporary context, suggesting environmental themes through the visceral threat of fire (environmental/ climate disaster/ language and imagery: “Our House is on Fire” – Greta Thunberg
- Exploration of the self and human identity
Audience:
- Art historians, creative practitioners, painters, sculptors
Purpose:
- Personal endeavour for myself to reflect on my own heritage and relationship with creativity in order to refine and contextualise my personal design practice/ identity
How might you investigate your research question?
- traditional desk based research
- art historical and fine art analytical methodology
Get informed. What connections can you make?
- Fine art and design provide interesting scope for connection theories and concepts. Opportunity to explore cross-disciplinary practice
Ideas wall:
CATHY DAVIES 