DesignManchester Trip

Today we had a trip to DesignManchester in which we got to visit the Whitworth art gallery and a projection exhibition at Manchester met uni. I felt that the projection at the uni wasn't the most interesting graphic exhibition I had seen, as it was only a few projections on some pillars, which were also quite hard to see because of the lighting and how far up they were. Each projection only lasted about 30 seconds or so, so I didn't think it was really worth going all the way to see.

This project was featured on itsnicethat, which had a lot more information about the concept of it. I found the article a lot more interesting and the projection videos/designs looked a lot more effective on my laptop screen that they actually did in person on the pillars.

Image from itsnicethat website

Additionally, I found the trip to the Whitworth gallery a lot more fun; it was nice to look around the building freely and find work that actually interested me. I was mainly interested in two of the exhibitions at the gallery: Bodies of colour (Breaking with stereotypes in the wallpaper collection) and the Alice Kettle Thread Bearing Witness exhibition.

For the Kettle Thread Bearing Witness exhibition, Alice Kettle simultaneously worked on a local level to connect personally with individual women and children refugees and asylum seekers, she asked them to work with her to contribute to the stitched artworks. The pieces in the exhibition were inspired by concepts such as strength, resilience, and hospitality of refugees and asylum seekers which she and her family have worked with.

The wallpapers in the Bodies of colour exhibition were designed in Western Europe, with some from America, but the inspiration for the patterns comes from all over the world. The exhibition dealt with difficult issues such as racism. Multiple unique and complex histories are show cased in this exhibition.

Also, I found that some of the patterns in the wallpapers were extremely relevant and similar to the Arabic/asian patterns that inspired my embossed experiments for my during my studio work last week.

More work that I found interesting at the gallery: