5 Things I'll Miss About Manchester

Come this September, I will be upping sticks to London in pursuit of my new student life. Behind me I am leaving the city I grew up in and have lived in all of my life, Manchester. Although I am (incredibly!) bias, I truly believe that Manchester is the best city in the UK. I love this town to bits and not being here will be very strange for a while. Although I'm very excited to be moving to the Big Smoke and discovering all that it has to offer, there are certainly things that I will miss about my home city. Here are 5 things that I'll be sad to leave behind in a couple of months time...

Manchester School of Art Degree Show: The Private View

The Manchester School of Art Degree Show is now officially open to the public (13th-24th June 2015), showcasing the talent and achievements of final year degree and foundation students. But before the exhibition opened its doors at the weekend, there was the annual private viewing on Friday 12th June. It was such a lovely evening and felt like a real celebration of all the hard work of everyone from across the art school. It was a wonderful opportunity to finally relax and see the fruits of all the blood, sweat and tears over the past year!

Cornelia Parker Artist Lecture @ The Whitworth

For the next three years, sculptor and installation artist Cornelia Parker will be an Honorary Professor within the University of Manchester. To mark this occasion, she spoke, amongst other things, about her acclaimed exhibition at the Whitworth, forthcoming projects and how she collaborates with scientists, engineers, pyrotechnicians and others to make art. I was lucky enough to attend this lecture on Thursday 23rd April within the surroundings of the newly refurbished Whitworth gallery. 

As many of you may already know, The Whitworth Gallery reopened in February after a £15million redevelopment, launching with ten new exhibitions including a major solo show by Cornelia Parker. I visited about a week after the gallery's high profile relaunch and it was soon obvious to me why this exhibiton has received such high praise from across the art world. The show combines career-defining works such as 'Cold Dark Matter (An Exploded View)' and 'The Distance (A Kiss With String Attached)' along with new works including 'War Room', a vast and immersive installation made from punched out paper negatives taken from the Richmond poppy factory, which is unique to the Whitworth. 

The critically exclaimed exhibition is both impressive and thought provoking and so I was incredibly excited to hear Cornelia herself talk about the show from her own perspective. I'll be honest, I wasn't sure exactly what to expect. Often we think of artists as these highly strung, inaccessible folk who almost seem to speak a different language to the rest of us. But Cornelia was a joy to listen to, incredibly intelligent but also humorous in her manner. At times she had the audience in fits of laughter as she spoke of how she inadvertently blew up an (empty) pram which was needed by it's owners as they were expecting twins any day, and other times she held all eyes as she explained her compelling work marking the 100 year anniversary of World War One. By the way, the owners of said pram were at the gallery opening in February to see if they could spot the misplaced item from 1991 in the midst of 'Cold Dark Matter'! 

Subtitling the lecture 'Truth to Materials', Parker amazed us time and time again with her quests to get her hands on materials that most of us will never even touch in our lifetime, from sawn off shotguns and bullets to snake venom and cocaine. But there was a strong sense that she is far from content with simple police confiscated weapons and a jar of poison. Cornelia wants to take this even further, confessing that she is still working on getting NASA to help her out! 

I'm finding it difficult to condense all of Parker's wonderful anecdotes and explanations that she shared into just one blog post, and in honesty I could never retell them in a way that does her any justice. I will however say that for the next three years, The University of Manchester will be lucky to call Cornelia Parker one of their Honorary Professors, her exhibition and her talent is truly world class.  

Cornelia Parker's exhibition runs until 31st May 2015 @ The Whitworth Art Gallery

Mini Review: Home Sweet Home, Manchester

This will be my first ever food review post so please excuse me if I don't know exactly how this type of blogging goes! This week I visited Home Sweet Home in Manchester's northern quarter with my friends to celebrate the end of our second term at art school. If you live in Manchester, you'll already know that the northern quarter is known for it's distinctive style, alternative culture and quirky cafes. I'd heard good things about Home Sweet Home before and even walked past it a few times, however it always seems to be packed at the weekend so I had never tried it. We visited on a Thursday afternoon and while still reasonably busy, we didn't have to wait to sit down. 

Since we didn't have any I can't comment on the hot food, but what can I say to even begin to describe their incredible cake offerings? The photo here hardly does these masterpieces justice. They were all so creative and unique, and not only do they look spectacular but they also taste amazing. One thing I am always wary about when it comes to over-the-top wacky cake decorations is that the cake itself is often dry and tasteless. I needn't worry though, the sponge was perfectly baked, soft and very very tasty. I had a gorgeous white chocolate sponge cake with mint flavoured buttercream topped with just about everything sweet and bad for you; it tasted exactly like mint choc-chip ice-cream! At £4.50 a slice it certainly isn't cheap, however if you're looking for the wow factor and a good old sit down in a cosy environment, it's so worth it. 

In terms of the service, unfortunately I can't say I was overly impressed. It was quite slow and our drinks order and bill both came wrong. However, both situations were rectified quickly so it didn't impact our lovely afternoon really. To sum up I think the clue is in the name here, such a homely little place to stop, relax and natter. After all, what more does one need to celebrate if not a cup of tea and a slice of glittery cake?

5 Truths Louise Gardiner Taught Me

For anybody who doesn't already know, Louise Gardiner is a textile artist who uses machine embroidery alongside painting, drawing and applique to create her beautiful work. She draws freehand with her sewing machine to create wonderfully vibrant textile pieces. She also happens to be an alumnus of the exact same foundation course I am currently studying at Manchester School of Art. This week therefore, I was lucky enough to meet her in person, listen to her talk about her own work but also pick her brains about how we creatives get by the world. I found her to be such an incredibly inspiring lady and I took a lot from the experience. She seemed to be one of those people who just beams inspiration and I left feeling very motivated to get out there and achieve exactly what it is I want from life. So, with about six full pages of notes and a voice memo recording in front of me, I thought I'd share five of the things I learnt from meeting the wonderful Louise Gardiner.

1. "Rejections shaped my career"

Of course we all like to be told that our work is wonderful and lovely and brilliant, however, at some point along the way, somebody is going to turn around and say they think our portfolio is a load of crap. It's hard to imagine that anyone could ever have a bad word to say about Louise's beautiful embroidery, but she admitted that though difficult, it was the negative comments that truly pushed her to reflect on her work and move forward in her creative career. She now embraces her critics, even when negative comments are hard to hear.

2. "Gallery owners all drive 4X4s for some reason"

Far from trying to scare us off from the big bad world of gallery owners, Louise took us on the journey of her career. Starting as a new graduate where she organised all of her own exhibitions, through to moving onto having her exhibitions organised by an agent and subsequently sacrificing 50% of her earnings, and eventually realising that there is a reason why gallery owners all drove fancy cars and she didn't, finally deciding to revert back to organising the exhibitions for herself. With this lighthearted quip, what Louise Gardiner was trying to explain was the way in which the art world worked, and the fact that at least for her, going it alone made more sense.

3. "Start archiving your work now"

During her lecture, Louise showed us an array of beautiful images of her work both past and present. However, she was forced to apologise for the fact that she wasn't able to show us any work from when she herself was doing the art foundation course. She explained that this was because she never organised her work and archived it properly, therefore it had been lost. Several times she mentioned the importance of taking good quality photographs of all of our work, and that in hindsight she wished she would have begun organising her work from the very beginning. 

4. "Self promotion is everything"

Opportunity is everywhere if you have your eyes and ears peeled at all times. My experience meeting Louise made me truly realise the fact that nobody is going to like your work unless you love it yourself. Getting noticed is a full time job that requires a whole lot of grit and determination. So get out there, talk to people in the industry, carry a business card wherever you go and seek opportunities to promote yourself in any given situation.

5. "Most people never get a 'lucky break'"

This was a very interesting and important point and one which I think I will remember for a long time to come. The truth is, most people never get that one lucky break that sets off their career like a skyrocket. In her 40s, Louise Gardiner says she is still waiting for hers to arrive. But this does not mean that you have no chance of being successful, it simply means that a career is built on lots of little breaks rather than one groundbreaking moment. You just have to work hard, immerse yourself in creativity and do things that set you apart from the crowd, and little by little you will see your opportunities snowball. 

A Look Inside My Sketchbook: Remixing LOVE

Last month I created a post sharing some pages from inside my art foundation sketchbook, and I got some really lovely feedback from people saying it was something they were interested in seeing more of. It was really flattering to get such positive comments because anyone that knows me well will know that my sketchbooks are kind of my babies! So for this post I thought it might be nice to share a page from my current sketchbook in the context of the project it was produced for. 

Last weekend I was set a one day valentines project to complete. In short, the brief was remix 'LOVE' by Robert Indiana in any way we wanted to. It could be a flat artwork, a 3D model, we could change the colour, word or font, stack our own letters, create a photograph, alter the sentiment, literally anything! I chose to stick close to the original image, but I tuned it into an ice block! I photographed my giant ice cube in different locations around Manchester as it went through the melting process. It was a really fun little project and I enjoyed playing with the juxtaposition between the coldness of ice and the passionate connotations of love and the colour red. I certainly got some strange interesting looks from people while carrying that thing through the city! 

So, here is the sketchbook page I created to document my valentines day project along with a few of the finished photographs...

A Look Inside My Art Foundation Sketchbook

It is a very stressful time of the year for me at the moment, UCAS, digital portfolios, portfolio mounting and interviews seem to be taking up a huge chunk of my time and are obviously rather important. This week I have been busy running around trying to get all my work photographed and ready to be sent off to various universities. 

In the process of this however I have managed to get some images of pages from inside my foundation sketchbook which I thought would be nice to share here. I personally adore looking through other peoples sketchbooks and I find it incredibly inspiring to see different creative processes. So I thought it was about time I brought something to the party!

My sketchbook throughout the foundation course has become something of a visual diary. I try to add to it every day to show the entire process of all of my projects from start to finish. Photographs, samples and little explanations all tell the story of how I get from A to B. Hope you enjoy!

(P.S. I'm thinking about doing more posts about my experience doing an foundation course. Please let me know if you would be interested in this!)