Eko Nugroho at NGV

Eko Nugroho is a contemporary Indonesian artist from Yogyakarta. He recently became one of three people to paint a mural on the NGV water wall. The mural is painted in black against the rippling and constantly changing backdrop of the water wall. There is a cartoon or comic (book) like quality to the image that is almost childlike, but there is a deeper sense of despair or angst portrayed in the imagery of the eyes.

There is a sense of traditional Indonesian shadow puppets in the style of the painting, which indicates a story of some kind. I personally see in this mural a sense of change, in the robot like figure, and also a sense of war or violence, in the ripped flag, sword and other potentially weapon like objects floating around. There is also a sense of hiding or anticipation as the face like images all appear masked or covered.

Eko Nugroho NGV Water wall mural (2012)

I get the sense that Nugroho, is possibly making a statement about social change, that is not easy nor accepted by all, and he is considering the effect it is having on different people.

Eko Nugroho NGV Water wall mural (2012) (detail)

 

Eko Nugroho NGV Water wall mural (2012) (detail)

Japonism (NGV)

Japonism refers to the huge influence of Japanese art on European artists and designers in the later part of the nineteenth century. The European designers embraced the way Japanese art works conveyed an abstract approach to line and colour and the regard they had for the simple beauty of nature.

This pair of fireplace slabs was manufactured my Minton, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, made in 1879. They are a part of the NGV's ceramic and glass collection. They use motifs that would have been drawn from nature or Japanese textiles. Such as the depiction of the cranes flying and the cherry blossom tree, both in the distinct centre 'panel' of the slab. The Japanese textile motifs are evident in the top and bottom sections of the slabs in the dark blue hexagons outline in gold, with a small flower in the centre of each. The slabs create a very peaceful composition, using a limited blue and gold colour palette. The eye is drawn to the centre image of the birds which is emphasised by the 'fold' which is patterned in blue stripes and gold swirls. The whole composition has a very graceful feel.

Minton Fireplace Slabs (1879)

Personal Statement

In my work I am motivated by a desire to be the best I can be and to continually push myself to be better. I enjoy problem solving and coming up with unique responses to situations; however I am sometimes held back by my hesitation to try things that I feel I can’t control or that are outside of my comfort zone. I am trying to continually push past this so that I do not limit myself to creating work that I feel safe with, when I could be pushing the boundaries and creating more interesting work.

I love design, in particular typography. I have a strong interest in learning how things work, not in an industrial design sense, but in the sense that I am always intrigued by how different people work and how they create the things they create. My strengths lie in design especially when it requires precision and patience. I enjoy creating using paper, both two dimensionally and three dimensionally. I also enjoy digital design.

Before coming to Brighton Bay I knew very little about the design world, and so far my best ‘introduction’ to contemporary designers was the AgIdeas Conference.  The designers, who inspired me most from AgIdeas, were MadeThought (Paul Austin and Ben Parker) and Dale Herigstad. I found MadeThought inspiring because I can see myself pursing a style of work similar to what they do in design (especially their branding and exhibition work). I like the way they focus on simplicity and the idea. Dale Herigstad’s presentation opened my mind up to the vast possibilities that working in design in the future can offer. I was fascinated by the possibilities that new interfaces offer and the way that new technology is changing the way design works.

I can see myself being a very varied designer. There are many areas that I would like to consider working in and that I would like to experience such as animation, graphic design, visual effects, wayfinding design, typography design, book cover design, and branding. I definitely want to further my education in design, and find a bit more direction as to where I want to go. I know that whatever path I decide to follow within design, I want to be able to incorporate travel. I have a fascination with other cultures and I would really love to be able to see more of the world.

Artist Book

My Artist Book is about my trip to China in January 2012 with my high school. 14 students and 3 teachers went on the trip. Our primary focus whilst in China was to volunteer at China Little Flower orphanage in Beijing, where they look after particularly sick babies and children from other orphanages in Beijing.  My specific point of interaction is the meals that we had in China, as this was when we would discuss what had happened throughout our day and how we were feeling especially after visiting the baby home (orphanage).

My book format is an album. The album format helps to communicate the passing of days, as it is similar to a photo album, or diary that is used to record a period of time. Within the book each set of three pages represents 2 days of the trip. The first page has the 2 Chinese characters for the number of these days. The second page has quotes and thoughts from the days, things that we found interesting or strange, the general discussion of the day. The third page is a collage of food that we ate or implements that we used. On this page surrounding the illustration are the more serious thoughts about the day, cut into the page, in particular thoughts about the baby home and how it effected us.

I chose collage as my illustration technique because it is an illustration technique that I am fairly confident in (now) and I wanted the book to have a tactile and hand-made quality about it, to connect with the content and the reader. Also because the content is very personal, I wanted the illustrations to be accessible to the reader and not alienate them, and I thought that collage would be an effective way of getting that across.

I chose to include text and so much of it because; when we were in China there was a constant discussion and conversation. The content of this varied from how freezing cold it was, to the strange things that we saw, to deeper discussions that we would have sometimes late into the night about how working in the baby home was effecting us and how we were feeling about the whole trip. In my book I wanted to convey this constant conversation and the different levels of conversation. On the second pages with text printed on acetate, the idea is to convey the crazy and strange things that we saw and the general surface discussion of the day, the weather, and the sights we saw. It is printed in an almost haphazard way, because that was how our conversations would go, and it was a crazy time with a lot to take in, and I am trying to illustrate that through the placement of the text. The more important text cut into the same page as the illustration because these are the more important thoughts that were always with us, no matter where we were, these are the things that have really stuck with me since the trip. I chose to the Chinese characters for the numbers of the days, because whilst in China we all learnt to count in Chinese, and when we were out at the tourist destinations we would count off as a group to make sure we were all together, and we decided early on that we should count in Chinese. It is a combination of that memory and the want to include the culture and language into my book.

Silk Printing

At the end of last term I participated in the silk printing workshop. Before this workshop I had never worked with printing on fabrics, or polychromatic monoprints (many coloured, single print). With this process we painted our designs onto the back of screens used for screen printing, using specific inks for silk printing. In a way this process in similar to water colour as there are many different techniques to put the ink on the screen. You can begin with a base colour and then proceed with your design immediately over the top, but then the design will bleed out and you will not get clear crisp lines. If you do want clear, crisp lines you must wait for each layer of ink to dry before adding another. This requires a lot of patience, and is easier on a warmer day, as you cannot use artificial heat to dry the inks (they react and discolour). The actual process of printing is very similar to that of screen printing. Once the screen is completely dry place the screen face down on the silk, (which has been attached to the backing sheet prior to printing), pour the release fluid at the top of the screen and pull it down with a squeegee. It is best to only do this once so that the ink pigments don't contaminate other parts of the design.

At the end of the workshop we ended up with one full size silk scarf and a smaller practice piece. I found this workshop really fun and it was nice to do something completely different that I wouldn't normally do.



Final design on the screen

Final printed scarf on backing sheet (the apples are on the backing sheet)

Kinetic Typography

I have recently been introduced to the concept of kinetic typography. Kinetic typography refers to the art and technique of expression with animated text. It essentially involves taking a passage of text or a recording (from a song or movie) and using the text to create an interesting video that (most often) illustrate (in some way) what is being said.

This clip is one of my favourite kinetic typography videos. It is illustrating a scene from V for Vendetta in which V introduces himself to Eevy, in a long rambling string of alliteration. It is very cleverly animated to keep up with the recording, but it also illustrates the feeling and the weight of what is being said. It also get across the madness of the alliteration and the 'craziness' of the whole scene.

Chess the Musical

Recently I saw the musical Chess at the State Theatre, performed by The Production Company. I found the way the whole musical was staged very interesting. The stage was very simple, a huge chess board set on an angle (the corner pointing towards the audience), took up most of the stage; from the far point of the board, was a runway leading backstage. Beside the runway were two large banners one on each side, these most often had projections of the USA and USSR flags, but changed at various points in the show to help with the story. The orchestra was on stage, split on either side of the chess board. The only major set changes throughout the whole show was a small chess table which was bought on and off for the different chess tournaments. The costumes were very dramatic; for most of the time the chorus and dancers wore dramatic costumes of black and white. The ladies wore a variety of skirts and dresses with differently patterned black and white tights (checked, striped, plain with one black leg and one white) and the men wore a variety of suits and jackets. At some points the chorus played the press and they simply added cream and grey trench coats and black hats to cover their other outfits. There were only two scenes with colourful costumes, firstly Merano (Italy) which involved red, white and green costumes and flags. The other was the one night in Bangkok scene, which had the cast in gold, pink and purple traditional dress and gold chain dancer outfits, with a variety of extravagant gold head pieces. It was a fantastic show with well thought out and clever design.