The book is ready!

We are looking forward to show it to our MA Publishing collegues and tutors next week, and to everyone coming to the exhibition in May.

Early this morning we went through the last stages: glueing, folding and cutting. Here you are some pics...

These lovely girls are HJ (left) and Leena (right). They are members of the Marketing Dept of the project, but came in to give their help during the final processes. HJ is placing glue on the spine of the books, while Leena is adding the cover. Thanks girls for your precious help!

And here they are, ready to be trimmed and distributed to our tutors and contributors.

Stay tuned for more news about MA Publishing projects!

A Room with a Hue... Coming to life!

We are getting closer to the publishing day... And the book is going through the printing, binding and finishing processes. 

The last few weeks have been busy and stressful, but seeing the cover being printed today has been a wonderful moment! We decided to take some pictures of this process, which we found really fascinating. Check it out!

This is Tony, one of LCC Technicians. He's just finished producing the plate from a film and is cleaning it to make it ready for the machine.

Here you are the bright shiny plate just placed on the Heidelberg one colour printing machine we have at LCC.

This is our paper - 50 sheets of silk weave 350gsm turquoise paper. 

The printing process.

Our Production Dept (Becky and Karla) checking all details.

The texture and the ink create the effect we were looking for - it's nice to touch and to look at! 

We'll have an exhibition at LCC later in May. We'll keep you updated with more details, so that you can save the date and come to touch, look, and feel inspired by our book!!!

A team with an opinion...

Emma

This project has exemplified the distinctive and curious nature, not only of an artist's work, but also of their mind, demonstrating that creative work begins with unique ideas something which we all aspire to have.

Hwa Jung

Every artist in our book evokes the saying 'From small beginnings came great things'. According to the artists, everything around life can be a source of inspirations. Each idea makes a reality.

 

Isabella

Inspiration can be found anywhere, in any object, in any person, in a colour. We all have dreams and objectives in life, we try to achieve them strongly and all these artists made me understand that they can come true. It doesn't matter how long it will take.

John

Just as our book brings together a dozen artists from widely differing disciplines, so our group has taken eight people from six different countries and combined a wide array of talents and interests, resulting in a project which has been both well managed and fun: an ideal combination. Thanks to everyone in the group for working together, you've all made huge contributions to a very fulfilling term.

Karla

This book embodies art for me; it's tactile, affecting and nostalgic.  The artists enclosed herein have shared their extraordinary perspectives on art, creation and inspiration with us and their passion and energy beams off this little book's pages.

Leena

Our book unravels how people from different walks of life ventured into the world of art. How true it is that a journey of thousand miles begins with a small step.

Sihem

I believe inspiration is the main reason which give us the willpower to realize major achievements in our life. To be able to work with such artists,to protect such work pieces and to share it with people, was my inspiration for this book. Now one question remains: What is your inspiration?

‘All art is representative of the artist that creates it. Their labour, their unique mistakes.’

Michael Burrell

Sculptor and Performance Artist

Michael Burrell always wanted to be an artist although he had never envisaged that he would be a sculptor or performance artist. When he was younger he wanted to be a cartoonist...

Performance art trend

It is leaning towards relational aesthetics, which deals with social spheres and people's relationships towards one another and their surroundings...

Anecdotes

Burrell's favourite piece of work is an anecdote in itself. It is an installation based around ritualism that saw him lay on a symbolic funeral pyre with wax over his eyes and mouth.  He starved himself for three days to get himself into a controlled trance like state...

Studio

A small part of a large hall constitutes his work space. The studio is filled with junk, materials and loads of paper. The wall is an 8 ft by 4 ft blackboard...


Role model
Joseph Beuys


Inspiration
Burrell mocks when asked what inspires him,

‘Let the record show that I hate this question.’

 However, he then goes on to say,

‘Seeing art makes me want to make more art.’ 

Exhibitions
He has exhibited in venues around Leeds, one of his fondest forums is abandoned shop fronts...

Dual dreams 
Burrell's ambitions for the future are split, like the duality he perceives in art itself. On one hand he'd like to make a living from what he does and on the other he would also love to be recognised by his peers, and may be even the general public. However, awards mean very little to him.

‘One of the skills of being a freelance musician is that you have to adapt to whatever style and arena you’re playing.’

Nicholas Ireson

Musician

In the case of French Horn player Nicholas Ireson this includes opera, classical and contemporary music, played in myriad venues ranging from freezing church halls to opera pits and even packed football stadia…

Background

Having taken up the horn aged twelve, switching after six formative years on the trumpet, Ireson established himself at both his school orchestra and the local music service in his home county of Hertfordshire. Aged eighteen he was accepted to read music at Christ Church College, Oxford University. After graduating from Oxford, he moved to London in order to take up a two year scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music, which provided the training required for the professional work which he began to receive during his time there.

The most picturesque venue

• St George’s in Hanover Square
• Wigmore Hall,

Those two are ‘in no way exhaustive. You have a positive experience of a venue if your performance goes well. If you go to a pub and have a bad date, that doesn’t mean it’s a bad pub’

Performances

• John Williams’ film music, at Barbican and at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall
• Stadion Miejski in Poznan, accompanied Sting as part of the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra

The ‘French Horn’ and working environment

The French Horn is an instrument with a large potential for mistakes so nerves are never entirely absent from Ireson’s live performances, but studio recordings can be even more pressurised. Film score sessions are hard to come by, lucrative but with limited time frames, so it’s crucial not to be the musician whose errors slow everyone else down.

‘You can make work anywhere is my philosophy’

Bettina von Zwehl

Photographer

Zwehl began her career with an apprenticeship in Italy then came to London and studied at LCP; she has come full circle as she now teaches in BA photography at LCC. After LCP, she completed an MA at RCA.


Sources of inspiration
Zwehl states that every project has different sources of inspiration, but highlights the origins of the profile images.

• Italian Renaissance paintings
• Different tones of neutral colours

Role models
Zwehl cites the photographer Irvin Penn and Hans Holbein, the Renaissance artist who was originally from Germany, like Zwehl is, as a role model. Just like he was, Zwehl feels adopted into the British art culture and see herself as a British photographer now, since she is mainly established here as a photographer. 

• Irvin Penn
• Hans Holbein

Studio
V&A Museum in South Kensington
Zwehl is there until June 2011, and she is currently five weeks into her residency. It is a place for displaying, editing and thinking.


Events & Exhibitions

• The Photographers’ Gallery
• The National Portrait Gallery
• Guggenheim New York Collection
• V&A Museum

'I’m interested in depth and surface, and how the viewer might interpret or fall into an image’

Victoria Ahrens

Fine Artist

Victoria Ahrens’s works are distinguished by their protean nature, in form as well as content. Her forms of artistic expression are suitably varied and fluid, and involve a wide assortment of different disciplines...

Background

Ahrens started with photography and then she went away from that and started doing a lot of drawings and then got into print making. She is now beginning to come back to almost pure photography, although changed to other mediums.

Studio

Ahrens splits her time between her London studio in Camberwell and an annual winter migration to South America; sometimes to Brazil but more often to her father’s homeland of Argentina, where she spent much of her adolescence.
Studio in Camberwell...

‘The space you work in does change or influence the way you work… I’m much more comfortable in the smaller space so I think the way I work will be much freer in here. I find I work best if I’ve got everything to hand and I’m able to just sit here for hours and hours and explore and think.’

Sources of inspiration

Buenos Aires - architecture, history and politics
The idea of the ruin and the architectural palimpsest
‘Buenos Aires is an open book for that – it’s a mixture of eighteenth and nineteenth century neo-classical buildings, but also has this really modernist, almost fascist architecture of the dictatorship.’

Exhibitions

• Butterfly Walk- empty spaces, Camberwell, London
• London Group Open, Menier Gallery, London Bridge
• Crypt Gallery, St Pancras, Euston