Processed Exhibition

processed exhibition

On Thursday I went to the opening of exhibition called Processed, final degree show of BA design students from Goldsmiths, University of London, graduating this year. Excellent exhibit, not that I am slightly biased (at all). The theme of the show was ‘Processed’ - students processed by an educational institution, ideas processed by reasearch and putting into practice etc. Great stuff and good beer which is always a plus.

it got bussy at the exhibition

The photo on the right show’s Shola Yissau’s work about african fabrics and patterns and introducing them into everyday objects to make repetitive tasks a bit more enjoyable and colourful. He put patterns on a lot of things, including toast and foil that fish and chips comes in. Very multicultural. I liked his space beause it was a nice hang out - pillows, tv, my kind of thing.

$Jonathan\'s work$

Jonathan Attenborough made a list of virtually everything he owns. The list hangs from the celling and there was still a big roll on the buttom. The aim - to examine meaning of private ownership and perhaps showing that sometimes shared ownership brings out the full potential of objects.

Function New Object : Object New Function

To be honest my photos don’t do justice to this space. It was really very good and that’s not only because I’m a computer geek. Tom Pande worked on re-making discarded objects to give them new functions. He removed text from books and wrote his work into them (following Dickens’ notion that ‘there are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts). The designers are a very ecologically aware bunch and this is very much in spirit of urban regeneration, which I’m a big fan of.

This is by far my favourite piece both visually and when it comes to it’s meaning. Design at Goldsmiths is very conceptual (though not overally concerned with aesthetics). This diamond line of presumably class A drug is part of work by Agnieszka Milkowska-Senn entitled ‘iSee iWant iAm’. It’s exploring issues around desire and brands and how much we are prepared to suffer for our brand. Funnily enough she uses the metaphore of ‘poisoned apple‘ quite a bit - you could see in my brand time line that it has quite a literal meaning in my case.

This picture reminds me - I was thinking afterwards how watching exhibition through taking photos changes the whole experience. I had a Canon digital SLR on me with two lenses: zoom and 50 mm. 50 mm is my new best friend recently, because it’s very bright (1.8, i.e. allows a lot of light in) and so the time of taking a shot can be really short. This in turn gives a very short depth of the field (space in which objects are in focus). But to compose a photo like that I needed to look at the objects very closely and examin them for a while to know what to have in focus and what not. But I didn’t have the time to read the desription on each space a lot of times - I only read them in post in the Exhibition catalogue. In other words this objects had to - mostly - capture me visually first and only after that with their meaning.

Another one of my favourites: Lena Elhassan’s ‘Veiling: Unveiled’ deals with the issues of secular and non-secular (West and East) coexisting within one state. The piece consists of several versions of a veil that can be turned into a piece of high street fashion if needed be. The transitions were very well photographed, which brings it closer to my heart. Also the gorgeous model is Anum, my friend from uni.

Human Power Stations

These below are chocolate business cards of Emma Gordon - 121 Watts worth of energy in chocolates for men and 97 Watts in chocolates for women, which reflects the average per hour usage of both. Emma’s project takes up the issue of quantifying energy and translating it: eating an apple creates 100 Watts worth which can power 3 days 11 hours 20 minutes of iPod listening time. Fun? Wait till you see the film that is the centerpiece of her space. I’ll be partially responsible for promoting it over the internet, so you’ll sure hear from me when all its versions are available online. Producing for internet is quite a task when it comes to films.

I Heart You

I always wondered why symbol of the heart is quite so far removed from what heart actually looks like. Especially a heart swimming in the jar (these are animal hearts by the way). Ema Jones used the shape and look of actual heart where usually the symbol is used - in jewelery. I couldn’t decide whther the hearts in jars were actually revolting or not…

It is a very good show, you can see it in the Boiler House, 152 Brick Lane till tomorow 5 p.m. The rest of my photos is over at my flickr and you can read more descriptions over at Processed website, which also contains the designers’ contact details.