Sustainable Suitcases

Come on down to Hillbrook Anglican School on Saturday the 4th of June for Sustainability Day! There will be all sorts of Sustainable activities and stalls including the SUSTAINABLE SUITCASES! Here is the facebook event for those who are interested.

Also if you are interested in selling anything at the suitcase rummage just chuck me an email at ryanfraser@live.com :)

Schoolies

As a run on from the last post I thought it appropriate to post more disposables, this time from schoolies. Amen to the ten disposables I took, they mean we will never forget those good times (some of which would most definitely been forgotten)

Disposables

I think I'll arrange some disposables for the next part of my friendship project. I love the instant nature of the cameras that capture the movement and the fun of the moment. They don't interfere with the mood and atmosphere of the party either. Here are just a couple from the past.

I Am Your Grandma

Jillian Mayer's I Am Your Grandma is a bizarre and actually quite catchy film documentation of a message to her unborn grandchild. Although her grandchild will almost certainly develop post-traumatic stress syndrome from watching such a film I really like the idea. I guess part of my work at the moment about my friends is about leaving documentation of the times we've had together so they won't be forgotten which is what Mayer has done here.

The piece is simply a creative explosion. The costumes worn in the film do not necessarily connote anything other than the creative side of herself. I guess this is how she wants to be remembered. Meanwhile when documenting my friends I think showing our fun side is the best way to go. It's what connects us.

Now I'm going to go to bed and enjoy my night terrors.

References

Jillian Mayer. (2011, May 8). I Am Your Grandma [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/user/JillianMayer#p/a/u/0/YfY1lfFu8j8

Weird

This is Caitlin's video she made recently. She works in the studio spaces at QUT. I love it. Especially her use of sound and focus.

H Block Gallery

Last Friday my studio tutorial group set up some of our current pieces in the H Block Gallery at QUT. I found it to be a really interesting experience. Still working in my theme of friendship my tutor had suggested that I experiment with an earlier collage technique on a larger scale without any boundaries. I found this quite difficult to do. I have never worked straight onto a wall, which is quite strange when I think about it. I mean I have arranged photos on my wall at home but even then I have worked to a framed grid or something. No boundaries was a new thing. The tutor gave me a huge wall space and told me to experiment. What started as something that was going to be about 50cm x 50cm turned into a trail of photographs a few metres long. I found that the way I had cut the images meant that I still needed a base so this was the way in which I could spread them out the most. In the end I think it ended up being quite an effective piece. A lot of people said that everyone looked like they were having fun. It was the best compliment they could have given me.

Sophie Richards

When I'm doing a project about documenting the people and places around me I cannot ignore the photographs of Sophie Richards. She is a Brisbane based photographer who creates beautiful images mostly from her everyday life. I can't help but browse her blog and find myself thinking 'my god that looks like fun'. Her photographs just portray her love for her friends so well and document the feeling of the moment. However she is uncompromising with the aesthetics of the image. It is obvious that she has a true talent in instantaneous composition.

The softness of her images also appeals to me immensely. Her work is without a commercial sharpness that some photographers have. It seems to me to make the images more natural, more raw. I guess considering the subject matter of relationships and the people she knows this is highly appropriate.

I guess at some point I want to be able to capture the moments in my life in the same way.

You can find her blog here.




References

Richards, Sophie (2011). Sensing Owls. Retrieved from http://www.sensing-owls.blogspot.com

SPG and LePigeon

SPG and LePigeon are two Montreal based photographers. They believe that there is beauty in everything. Their love for the everyday can be seen all throughout their work which includes commercial work as well as cinematography and art portraits. However the thing that attracted me to their work was the little tab on the side of their website which is labelled 'personal'.

I find it thoroughly refreshing that a site which is fundamentally about showing an artist's work and advertising can have such a personal side to it. All of the photos, even those which are considered to be commercial have a candid and personal feel to them. I really like the friendly quality of these photos. The personal photos all give such a sense of fun. You feel as if you are there in the middle of all the action. I think this comes from the movement within the photos, most are mid movement giving them this candid feel.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Through experimenting I've found it is easiest to capture these kind of images with disposables simply because of the instantaneous shutter speed and raw quality of the photographs. If photography really is about composition then I don't see anything wrong with a point an shoot kind of camera. I think I may use my disposable shots in some future art. We'll see.

Embrace social media and like them on facebook here.






References

SPG and LePigeon. "SPG Studio" Accessed May 18, 2011. http://www.studiospg.com/index.php.

Oculus: A Reflection

Last Friday some of my art was included in a show called Oculus at Jugglers Art Space in the Valley. I exhibited 3 photos which I had digitally manipulated to resemble dolls. They're representative of the way technology is taking over our lives in the 21st century. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. It gave me a little bit of a taste of what it is to be an exhibiting artist. My lovely friends Katie, Jamie, Bejay, Tom, Anna, Maddie, Cam, Kate and Ellen from high school came along to see it too. They remind me exactly why I'm basing my art around friendship at the moment.

A New Direction

The other day I was talking to my tutor in my studio space at uni. My latest work has been based around friendship and we started talking about a collage I had done more as a brainstorming exercise than anything.

But then she had a look at the photos which were situated on the wall behind the collage. She said

"there's no reason why these are any less art than that".

It's given me a whole new direction to head in for this project. Why should I be making pretentious art pieces about my friends? That seems like such a hypocritical thing to do considering the nature of the relationship with my friends. I have deep relationships with all of them, all on different levels but reading into them and analyzing such relationships seems silly. I was trying to find some deeper meaning behind my relationships when it was sitting on the surface staring me in the face. We have fun together. And now I want to document that.

Oculus

I happen to be exhibiting in a show over the weekend! Brisbanites you can find the facebook event here! It's called Oculus and it is running from Friday May 13th until Sunday May 15 at Juggler's Art Space in the Valley! Come along on Friday for the opening (and free drinks). It'd be great if you could pop along and have a sticky beak.



Meanwhile I'm drowning in a pile of uni work. I'm sure my blogging shall continue to suffer. However I will soon be forced to return due to artist research for my Studio classes. Hoorah...

Catching Up

It is the end of the holidays, a day I have been dreading since they began. I have been effectively running away from my uni work and now there is a small panic attack which happens in my head whenever I think about it. However now I must face it.