Hamish Ta-mé

When I first arrived in Australia, just under five months ago, probably the first creative I met was Hamish  Ta-mé, a Sydney based photographer. I was visiting the infamous Rocks market and came across Hamish selling photographic prints. Later that week I visited Hamish's studio and helped him with some snapshots for his online store, which can be found here.

My Life At Present

I decided to pin up all the different aspects of my Beat Generation Project, in order to see where I was with it and assess the next step. So far I have created a book, posters and pamphlets, which amalgamatee my visual responses to Naked Lunch (Burroughs), Howl (Ginsberg) and On The Road (Kerouac). Attempting to throw these three, very different, creations together into one proved very difficult, but I am happy with the imagery I created. I have most certainly succeeded in creating a 'personal' response to the poems, however, now I would like to look upon the material objectively and try to give each piece a unique identity. My final outcome will hopefully express a clear identity for each of the three pieces, allowing the three to be grouped together without causing confusion. For my personal response I like the chaotic, confusing and spontaneous aspect to the work, so I would like to now refine what I have to make something interesting, conceptual and also coherent.

Mad To Live

Here is a coverless mock up of the publication I have been creating, based around The Beat Generation. The book contains extracts from Allen Ginsberg's Poem, Howl, William. S. Burroughs novel, Naked Lunch and Jack Kerouac's novel, On The Road. I wanted to create imagery, which provoked my interpretation of the mood and attitude around the Beats, without being obvious or cliched. This may stay as a 9" x 6" landscape book, perfect bound, but i am also going to explore larger formats, edited formats alterntive directions for the material...(to be continued)

Open publication - Free publishing - More burroughs

Björn Soneson

I found this when browsing for inspirational book formats for my current project

Grafik Feature

A while back, I was set the brief to Re-Brand 'God' by TDR, Creative Director, Ian Anderson. Myself and a group of designers from my course were asked to communicate our concept for a poster design, which had the possibility of being featured in the re-launch of Grafik Magazine. Grafik magazine re-launched on 10th February and I was absolutely ecstatic to find out that my poster had been featured along with Sophie Pickup, Danny Grogan, John McPartland, Rebecca Dudgon.

Thanks to Ian Anderson & Grafik Mag.

Link to original iGod Post

OWT Exhibition

Every month OWT creative produce their own zine, based around a single word. Northern creatives are invited to submit work based around the word. Four zines have been created so far; Beginnings, Reflections, Reality and Direction.

The work from zines 1-4 has recently been carefully curated into an exhibition, which is currently showing at Cord Bar, Manchester. The opening was held last Thursday, 10th, February. Each piece of work was beautifully framed and is available to purchase. The night was a huge success and upon arriving I couldn't believe the amazing turn out, clearly an immense amount of planning and organisation had gone into the exhibition and it certainly paid off. There were so many great pieces of work to be seen as well as a projected 'zine,' which combined slides brought by guests at the event. The atmosphere was incredible, I had a really great night, so well done to everyone involved and especially the OWT team, also big thanks for featuring my work, can't wait for the next zine, which is incidentally based around the word 'Atmosphere'

You can submit work for the next zine by sending submissions to submit@owtcreative.com

visit the the OWT website here

OWT Contributors

My submission for OWT 4

Russell Hopkins, Nina McNamara

Projected zine

Amy Minto

my favourite piece, by Ben Kither

Momart Greetings Cards

'Fine art handling' firm, Momart, issue artists to create a greetings card each year. I found some examples on the V&A 'Search Collections' site, and I must say I was amused.

Here are some examples..

Artists include:

Tracy Emin, 1999, a napkin with 'stay faithful to your dreams- Tracy Emin' written on it.

Tim Head, 1987, an abstraction of a common Christmas motif, enhanced with the use of flock. Sir Anthony Caro, 1993 and his bronze belt buckle cast.

Richard Deacon, 1996, Draws amoeba like forms for his festive commission

Damien Hirst, 1997 uses his signature circles, which have been screenprinted onto perspex.

My personal favourite is Langlands and Bell, 1998 and their watched named frozen sky, which displays 25 three-letter international airport abreviations on its face.

Merry Christmas!

More Christmas musings here

Tissues & Bones

“You cannot experience your own interior by closing your eyes and concentrating on it. In order to discover your own contents you have to investigate the inside of someone elses” -Jonathan Miller

[210mm x 148mm, pp. 18, card cover with tissue wrapper]. Edition of 50

I recently purchased a beautiful item from 'Bracketpress' – and edition of 50 by Alice Smith, which contains a series of visceral explorations, named, Tissues & Bones. The booklet contains full bleed illustrations, with a card cover, aptly encased in tissue and secured with a silver/grey ribbon. I also got sent a compliments card 'from the desk of Christian Brett', which I thought was a great touch.

Inspiring!

Here is issue 9.

STATIC

Static;

inert, motionless, stagnant, stationary, immobile, fixed, constant, changeless were a few words to trigger the ideas process. When I considered further I thought about ideas of interference and interruption, at first in a conventional sense, but what if interference and interruption were applied to something else.

Four key words describe my interpretation of static.

Interference

Routine

Possession (s)

Influence.

How could I interfere with a step by step process, perhaps removing a step or interrupting a step. Shaking the printer whilst it was printing, moving an image whilst it was scanning, drawing something, perhaps rubbing it out DeKooning-style. I began taking photographic slides and interfering with the developing process. Scratching the slides, obstructing with shapes, covering faces with fish net, drawing pins and electrical tape. Even removing the film altogether and creating photo-grams from my belongings.

From interference I began to look at influence. How an influence can be an interference within someone’s life. Everyone is exposed to millions of different influences. Another type of interruption of process, the process being our lives. I wanted to map my own influences, painstakingly attempting to collate everyone who's ever influenced me. I decided to hone in on artistic influences and then eventually feminine influences, mapping each woman who has inspired me and trying to smash and collide these images together to create an amalgamated female form

I thought about what it is that makes up a person, routine being one aspect, influences being another and I felt that personal possessions were important also, I explored my purse containing ephemeral things that make up a person day to day, ever changing collections of receipts, scrap of paper, stamps, copy cards etc. Things that were material yes, but also individual and bespoke to a person. No two purses would ever be the same.

I thought about how routine can be something static, people develop a living pattern, have rituals, obsessions, these can be quite mundane things, I thought about how I could map my own routine, instead of it being mundane, it would have a new context and perspective, allowing me to re-think and analyse.

I needed a way to bring all of these these themes together in one coherent way, I decided on the idea of a book-box format. The box resembles an expander file, hinting at the archival nature of the contents, and inside each word is represented by a separate entity of beak book, each book has a definition of the word and my response.

Marian Bantjes

I Wonder

by Marian Bantjes

Book

I want this and this womans work is beautiful.

See It.

Arthouse

Werner Herzog, 1974.

A man is locked away for his whole life, when he is mysteriously set free he must face the outside world but finds himself trapped in his own sheltered mind. Can his quest for knowledge can grant his freedom? or is he better off without the influences of fellow mankind. F.W. Murnau, 1922.

When Count Orlok follows, estate agent, Thomas Hutter to the ficticious German city of Wisborg, it is not just property he is interested in. Orlok unleashes a plague on the city and a series of mysterious deaths occur. All that can stop the 'phantom der nacht' is if a pure-hearted woman (Ellen, Hutter's wife) distracts him from the rooster's call. Once he is dead, however, are her troubles over? 1987

The city of Berlin is overlooked by guardian angels, these live in a world of black and white and try to ease the pain and suffering of those living. When one angel falls in love with a living woman, he seeks to become mortal and finds he is not alone. 1920, Robert Weine

You must become Caligari.Dr. Caligari's somnambulist, Cesare, and his deadly predictions.

Flux Placement

In May of this year, I was lucky enough to be offered a four week placement with John Walsh, Creative Director of Flux Magazine. After being absolutely thrilled by this news I found the experience a huge learning curve and really felt like I got a sense of how a magazine works and how much work goes on beyond the actual page layout. Gemma Snelling and I got one of our illustrations published in the magazine and it is such a great feeling to your work in print and know that thousands of people may see it. It was very interesting researching the history of the magazine, and seeing how far it had come.I found it very inspirational to work with John and acquired a lot of contextual references, which I will use in my future work. For now though here are a few examples of pages I contributed to within the magazine. Enjoy!

Artwork: Nina McNamara & Gemma Snelling

Artwork: Mack Manning

Work originally submitted for placement

Flux Website