Thursday 31 October 2013

This is happening today




This is the exhibition/event from the Art, Space and Nature students today. Conveniently enough the theme DYSTOPIA, falls on the same day as Halloween! 

Come along and enter our world of DYSTOPIA...



Tuesday 29 October 2013

Urban Exploring

Design School Talks monday 28th of October.
Edinburgh College of Art

Explore Everything: Place-Hacking the City

Breathtaking and brilliantly illustrated—reclaiming the city with extreme urban explorations
It is assumed that every inch of the world has been explored and charted; that there is nowhere new to go. But perhaps it is the everyday places around us—the cities we live in—that need to be rediscovered. What does it feel like to find the city’s edge, to explore its forgotten tunnels and scale unfinished skyscrapers high above the metropolis? Explore Everything reclaims the city, recasting it as a place for endless adventure.

Plotting expeditions from London, Paris, Berlin, Detroit, Chicago, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, Bradley L. Garrett has evaded urban security in order to experience the city in ways beyond the boundaries of conventional life. He calls it ‘place hacking’: the recoding of closed, secret, hidden and forgotten urban space to make them realms of opportunity.

Explore Everything is an account of the author’s escapades with the London Consolidation Crew, an urban exploration collective.

The book is also a manifesto, combining philosophy, politics and adventure, on our rights to the city and how to understand the twenty-first century metropolis.


Source: http://www.versobooks.com/books/1473-explore-everything

Yesterday I went to this talk by Bradley L. Garrett who is doing his Phd on Urban Exploring and he was talking us through his book called "Exploring Everything: Place Hacking the City". This is about exploring places that are hidden from the public, places that aren't really legal to enter, but they are accessible for those who manage to climb into them and maybe they could be used for something rather than being "hidden".
This was a very interesting talk and the pictures from the book were amazing, the idea of exploring these spaces that are forgotten is quite intriguing.

Here are a couple of pictures from the lecture theatre:


A few more pictures from the book:




If you find this idea interesting, google "urban exploring" and you will see a lot of interesting images. 
You can also read a bit more about "Explore everything: Place-Hacking the City" here: 

http://www.placehacking.co.uk/book/

Enjoy and be amazed!






Wednesday 23 October 2013

How I live

Thought I could show you a few details from my little flat. I live in student accommodation where furniture are included and you're not allowed to do a lot to anything (like putting pins and needles in the walls), but I have done my best to add a bit of personality to it so here are some shots from my studio flat B14:) 










Guess what my favourite colour is?:) And yes...I LOVE shoes so couldn't just let them all hide in the wardrobe. 

I better get back to work and prepare for my tutorials tomorrow, busy times ahead, but I think it will lead to something really nice! Stay tuned✌️








Monday 21 October 2013

National Museum of Scotland

This weekend I figured I was gonna do some more exploring, so I paid a visit to the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. From the outside it does seem like a decent sized building, but what greets you when you enter is this huge absolutely stunning hall. There are 5 floors in the museum and you can see all of them from the main hall. Arches going  from the 1st floor up to the roof windows creates a beautiful piece of interiors and are definitely worth a visit. 

There are all sorts of things to look at in the museum, from animals, to space, to arts and design, to clothes and technology. This is a great place to visit for their collection, but also to vitness a great piece of architecture. Being an artist/architecture student I really appreciated both the collection and the museum itself. It's a huge place and a little confusing so getting lost is not difficult, but that's just a way to discover more about this place.





If you are heading to Edinburgh in the near future,it is worth adding a little visit to the National Museum of Scotland on the time schedule. 

Saturday 19 October 2013

"So close...yet so far"

Here are a few more pictures of my work from the opening show




Big thank you to Javier for taking these :) 

Friday 18 October 2013

"Topography" exhibition opening

Yesterday was the opening of our first show for this years Art, Space and Nature students. We had it all done and ready by 16.00 and that was when the first guests arrived. This weeks theme was "Topography",  everyone had responded to the theme in different ways and it was really interesting to see all the finished pieces. We did not have too much time on this project since we just came back from our field trip to Orkney last thursday, but everyone did their best and put an effort into making a  successful exhibition.

Here is the program for the exhibition including titles, names and a little description of everyones work.

I did part of the designing and curating for the show, so I was involved with everyones work and did my best to put it all together, which was something I found very interesting and fun. Being a pretty organised person, I enjoy doing things like this. 

Here are some more photos from the opening











I will try to get a picture of all the works on monday, but did not have time for it yesterday, too busy getting the show ready and welcoming our guests.


My own project




Short description of my work:
"So close...yet so far"
Window and wall of the building separating “two worlds”. 
Illustrated by the bank on one side and the poor man 
sitting on the outside. 

When I presented my work for the rest of my course and tutors I got a pretty good feedback on how I had responded to the theme and I got some useful tips on what I could do to improve it. The pictures are showing how the same place can be the host for different "worlds". The beggar represents the "poor" world and the bank is the "rich". This could develop into a bigger collection of photos showing different "everyday" situations where the border between rich and poor is shown. If the pictures are good and clear enough, I wouldn't need the writings in the piece. 

The show is on until Wednesday the 23rd so hopefully some more people with pop in to Tent Gallery and have a little look at our work. In the meantime I will start thinking about and preparing for the next exhibition, which is "DYSTOPIA".




Monday 14 October 2013

First exhibition- it's getting real


It is official, the students of Art, Space and Nature are showing their first exhibition of the year. We are opening this thursday 17th @ 16.00 and you are all welcome to come along and enjoy the works of this weeks theme which is: TOPOGRAPHY

There will be a nice display of different works including sound installation, slideshow, pictures, drawings etc. Come in to our gallery and see for yourself.

Hopefully it will be a successful and inspiring evening!



Saturday 12 October 2013

Orkney Islands- field trip

Thursday evening I came back to Edinburgh after a 5 day field trip to the Orkney Islands. 

A little information about Orkney from Wikipedia:
"Orkney (Scottish GaelicArcaibh) also known as the Orkney Islands, is an archipelago in northern Sctoland, 16 kilometres (10 mi) north of the coast of Caithness. Orkney comprises approximately 70 islands, of which 20 are inhabited. The largest island, known as the "Mainland" has an area of 523.25 square kilometres (202 sq mi) making it the sixth largest Scottish Island and the tenth-largest island in the British isles. The largest settlement and administrative centre is Kirkwall."

The students of Art, Space and Nature headed north towards the Orkney Islands on the 5th of October. We left Edinburgh at 09.35 and started our train journey towards Thurso. An 8 hour train journey did not sound like a great way to spend the day, but the scenery across the Scottish Higlands definitely made the journey better. The weather was great and the beautiful landscape of Scotland was just stunning. Beaches, miles of green fields, autumn colours on the trees, cows, sheep, deers, munros (Scottish mountains), sea and a few entertaining souls on the train made it a great start to our trip.

Here are a few pics from the train journey:







The last part of our journey was the ferry from Scrabster- Stromness where we were staying. We all survived the 1,5 hour over the sea, but beeing a person who is very sensitive to the waves, it wasn't a great experience.


After surviving the journey up to Stromness, we had 4 days ahead of us with a lot of adventures planned. We went the Pier Art Centre where we might be having an exhibition in February, we went on a bus journey to all the archeological sites across the mainland of Orkney, we drove around the Islands where we saw buildings from WW2, the Italian Chapel, a lot of beautiful landscapes, some more old ruins, the cliffs of Yesnaby and Kirkwall, we walked around Stromness which is a very very small seaside town, and we all went on different adventures looking for inspiration around the islands. Stromness is a small place which is a little creepy at times, but the scenery around on the "Mainland" is absolutely stunning. The pictures speak for themselves. Enjoy:















































The weather on Orkney is very unstable and at times extreme, it changed every 5-10 minutes so you have to be prepared for everything when walking around there. It went from clear blue skies and sunshine to almost pitch black, rain and storm. I don't think this is a place I would choose to live myself, but we had a great trip and went home with some great memories and a huge amount of photos!

And now the fun will start by editing photos and research collected at the trip before we begin developing our projects. To be continued!