Massive Blog Neglecting...

I realize I've been seriously neglecting this here blog. It's not because I've spent all this time doing nothing, but quite the opposite really. I've been working with the lovely Nomad RDC since November doing some pretty interesting (and incredibly challenging) graphic design projects. You can see a few things I've been working on over on their blog here

I do have several things bubbling away in the back of my mind that I want to get working on as soon as I find some spare time so do watch this space :)

Gig Poster

Just finished a wee A4 poster for Shooting Stansfield, Birdhead and The Red Show. They're playing Pivo Pivo in Glasgow at the end of the month...

Behance...

I'm currently in the process of adding my portfolio to the Behance Network. You can access it by clicking the button on the right hand-side of my blog page. Not all my projects are up yet but there's a few things to look at.
I'm also busying away with my website, which is taking longer than I thought it would. I expect it will be up in the next week or so.

Playing with Illustrator...

Recently I've been trying to come up with a kick ass portfolio website and C.V. that somehow is going to get me noticed ahead of the 300 or so other folk applying for the same very scarce design jobs as I am. Not exactly an easy task and something I think I should probably invest a huge amount of time and effort in. Today I decided to approach the task from a completely different angle that I think might prove to be quite interesting... so I've been having a bit of a play with Illustrator and churned out this little graphic :)

Venus Envy

The Venus Envy website has now been live since Monday and has attracted a bit of attention, which is so awesome! It's so good to know that others appreciate what the project is all about.

The link to the project is here http://www.venus-envy.co.uk where you can see images and video of the project as well as the conversation map research that resulted in the creation of the statues.

Also, the project has been featured on Creative Boom Edinburgh here -http://www.creativeboom.co.uk/edinburgh/2010/08/20/combining-craft-with-activism-–-venus-envy/


Stay tuned for much more activity in the near future as there's a few things in the works, just need to finish my dissertation first! :)


*EDIT*

The project has now also been featured by The Guardian as well as by Betsy Greer on craftivism.com

http://www.guardian.co.uk/edinburgh/2010/sep/08/edinburgh-art-venus-envy-statues

http://craftivism.com/blog.html/2010/09/venus-envy/

Venus Envy

Sooo... major project looks very different since I last posted anything about it. Hopefully next week I'll actually have something tangible which is pretty exciting. Only 2 weeks left of this project. It's been a very long haul! Anyhoo, here's some info on what I'm actually doing.


What makes craft a possible site of feminist intervention is not only that its origins are closely tied to the feminine i.e. the domestic and the decorative, but also that it interacts with the hegemony of the capitalist patriarchy in a subversive way. Craftivism, the combination of craft and activism, takes place in public space in order to give visibility to a particular issue.
This project aims to marry traditional techniques in craft with feminist activism to question and disrupt the prevailing codes of mass consumerism. The conclusions gathered from Conversation Mapping research suggested that much of the prefabricated ideas of gender are created through mass consumer culture and advertising. In other words, they are capitalist techniques to make money on the insecurities among women that they have created.

The production of ‘false images’ is a requirement of capitalism.
- Kalle Lasn, Design Anarchy

There is a resurgent interest in craft as it relates to ‘socially engaged’ art and design practice. This project attempts to collapse the distinction between ‘making’ and ‘doing’ – the former associated with craft, the latter with human action...
In an attempt to undermine classical notions of idealized feminine beauty, Venus Envy is a series of manipulated Venus statues intended to subvert the male-defined notion of the feminine, which is beautiful, passive and silent. Each statue is based on a statement from the conversation map. The name Venus Envy is derived from invasive advertising and consumer culture that invites us to compare ourselves to others...

Flights of Fancy Teaser Clips...

There's a couple of teaser clips of Sara Forbes' short film Flights of Fancy now up on Facebook where you can see the plane and some of the set design I did, just copy and paste the link below :)


http://www.facebook.com/pages/Flights-of-Fancy/103778276329780?ref=ts