This week, we got to go on a visit to London, to visit some art galleries, and for the amazing opportunity to go to Vogue in London, to have a look round and chat to Robin Derrick, the creative director. It was such a great experience!
First, we went to the Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea, it was a really interesting gallery and the exhibition that was on was called 'Newspeak' which is a term from George Orwell's novel 1984, which is what he predicted would be our language, that our vocabulary would become smaller and smaller and we would only use just a few words and phrases. The exhibition was meant to challenge this theory, and incorporated artists using many different techniques and tools. I especially liked the installation in Gallery 10 by John Wynne (pictured below) which consisted of a vaccum cleaner operating a piano, which then emitted the sound through a great many of speakers placed all over the floors and up the wall. As soon as I was stood in this room, although there were a lot of people, it felt strangely eerie, and made me shiver. I loved the noise that was coming from the piano, as it would play single notes, that would be drawn out and reverberate around the room, which was really interesting. The scale of the piece also made me feel small, it felt to me as if i was encountering a skyscraper that was somehow alive, making these strange noises. I really liked this piece, and I think it represented the exhibition very well, that art can be made even when paint, brushes and a canvas aren't involved.
Whilst in London, we had the opportunity to visit Tate Britain and visit the Turner Prize Exhibition. As the Turner Prize has yet to be awarded, we were able to see all the nominee's work. I especially like Dexter Dalwood's work which he had produced by making collages from pieces of photographs, magazines, newspapers atc which he puts together, which then become a "template" for his own paintings. I really liked these because you could see in the paintings where different parts of the images have been placed. I like how the pieces aren't flawless and you can see the different textures and the different pieces of imagery. I noticed that some of Dalwood's earlier work was a little more chaotic and used many more mixed medias, which I think is much more interesting. Below is a picture of one of his works, Burroughs in Tangiers (2005) which was taken from the Tate Britain website: http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/turnerprize/turnerprize2010/artists/dalwood.shtm
The Turner Prize was very interesting and opened me up to new ways of creating work, like Susan Phillipsz's work, which use three speakers and the artists' voice to sing a song called Lowlands. It was very eerie and mysterious. I didn't like this piece as much as Dalwood's work, but I thought it was a very interesting idea.
For the Graphic Design students, the trip to Vogue was the highlight of the trip. It was very interesting, and I learnt alot about how hectic life is working at a magazine! Slightly less glamorous and more tiring than I first thought...
Whilst we were at Vogue, we were taken round the art direction offices, which were filled with the spreads for the final December issue. It was interesting that they had finished this issue, and were now working on the first week of the January issue! They were so far ahead! It was interesting that we were told relationships are absolutely vital in the business, and things need to be turned round very quickly.
We were also told that Vogue doesn't make it's money from sales, it needs the revenue from advertisement space in the magazine to keep it going, we were also told that French vogue seems to be a little edgier, and can be a little more surprising, whereas British vogue needs to be much "safer" in terms of making sure the designers keep buyinng ad space in the magazine.
We were also given the opportunity to go to the basements, to have a look around the archives, lots of the layouts, even from Vogue in the 1950s were very much similar to how things are laid out now, which just re-inforces what Robin's assistant was telling us that Vogue has to be "safe" for the advertisements. We were also told that all the old prints, when Photoshop didn't exist (can you imagine it?!), were touched up with paint! It seems that 'airbrushing' is a relatively new thing, with all the negative media coverage about airbrushing, however, this technique of having "perfect" models in magazines has been around since, the very beginning of Vogue! It was also very interesting that during the war, Vogue was kept in circulation to keep morale up, however alot of Cecil Beaton's images were destroyed as part of the war effort, and so for that reason, around the era of the war, there are less prints and images.
Finally, we got the opportunity to speak to the Creative Director, Robin Derrick, who explained that his job is how vogue looks, and he will agree to shoots and photographers and models, and make sure everything looks as 'Vogue' as it possibly can! It was also interesting that he said that in about 2 or 3 years, magazines will be pretty much all digital. This move is very exciting, as it opens new possibilities for magazines being able to put in videos that readers can watch on the internet, on an App for an iPhone, or on an iPad. However, I think I'll still buy the published version, I prefer to flick through a magazine than buy an App on an iPad!
Finally, we visited the Haunch of Venison gallery, which was called Loud Flash, British punk on paper, from the era of 1977. I absolutely loved all the works in this exhibition, as they were very anarchic, very D.I.Y looking, with posters made with marker pens, scraps of paper, neon colours, very loud, very in your face. I really enjoyed this exhibition and it was also very political, through the posters of the music. Below are some images from the exhibition.
The trip was amazing, and I really enjoyed looking at all the exhibitions in the galleries, but Vogue was my absolute highlight, and I am definitely looking to apploying for the work experience opportunity there.
