Test Site Slides

An exhibition in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern 2007, Designed by Carsten Holler.  Many people think art galleries are a little stuffy, but these huge slides transformed the massive gallery space into a playground!  The tallest slide started on the 5^th floor and was more than 56 metres long.  Holler said his work was “a playground for the body and the brain” and he said that slides can help combat mental health problems.  His work explores themes of freedom and release experienced whilst sliding.  Adults lose control for a few seconds as they hurtle down the stainless steel and plastic tubes.  Watching other people slide was almost as thrilling as taking part.  He called his exhibition ‘Test Site’ as he saw it as a model for something much bigger!  Miuccia Prada has commissioned one of Holler’s slides to transport her from her office Window in Milan down to the street below where her chauffeur will be waiting! 

COLOUR IN YOUR CITY

Took place on Friday 27^th April from 1 – 4pm

This was a chance to add some colour to the Mancunian Way, a chance to get creative and just draw what you like. I just painted in squares with different colours, just for fun.

Wasteland

On my journey through Manchester, I crawled through a tiny hole underneath this tall fence and stood up to see this huge wasteland, filled with random objects and rubbish. Down by this ditch which led to underneath a bridge, I saw that two homeless people had fashioned their own hut out of the rubble and was just sitting out in the sun, fishing, looking content. Climbing again through the hole and brought back into the city I see students walk passed carrying Selfridges bags. This was such a massive contrast which I found incredibly interesting.

James Chadderton

I found some pictures on the BBC news website from an exhibition in Manchester’s Northern Quarter 2011.  The artist James Chadderton had digitally manipulated photos of well known places in Manchester such as the Urbis, Town Hall, Printworks and Palace Theatre.  They are his visions of what the city would look like at the end of the world, after an apocalypse.  A review called it “A series of images that depicted Manchester evacuated, eroded and derelict as if left to degrade for years” and “A human devoid wasteland where the buildings have been left to decay.” I love the rusty, earthy colours.  It’s interesting to imagine the end of the world; the pictures remind me of films like ‘The Road’ and ‘War of The Worlds’.

THE TRANSFINITE

stumbled into a great video, graphic, sound installation.

Sculpture Islington Mill

Yesterday i went to opening for 2nd year sculpture @ islington mill.

it was a creative contempary sculpture. I have taken some pictures that caught my attention

the exhibition was intresting to see what other art students were doing.

flying birthday clebration hats

video installation with found object assembled into a shed

fruit basket outside the yard

this mop is made out of cooked noodles

ham & chesse

make me sandwhich

560  light bulbs

i spoke to this person and i asked her what was her subject matter? she explained how light bulb are always inside the lamp shed and she wanted to do it exvert the bulb inside out with 560 bulbs brand new.

it was great bring work of art in the corner.

CAINE'S ARCADE

He is a very creative boy and he is having fun.

Patterned Concrete Column

One of the concrete columns on the new school building site decorated with a pattern based on a design by L. F. Day, who was a visiting lecturer at the School of Art in the 1890s. Taken during a site visit on 25th November 2011.  I found the picture on MMU’s visual resources collection on flickr.   It is interesting to see something so beautiful among the rubble.  There are so many dull, plain buildings around; it would be fantastic if there were a lot more decorated in this way.  I really hope the beautiful column is still visible when the new building is complete!

Song Dong: Waste Not

I visited a really interesting exhibition at the Barbican in London by Chinese artist Song Dong. It was an installation of over 10,000 possessions collected by his mother over five decades. After his father died his mother became very depressed, she had always hoarded and collected and this only became worse, she used the daily life objects to fill the emptiness after his father’s death.  The rest of the family had to store what she couldn’t fit in her house; Song Dong had the idea to include her in his work as an artist, so her possessions became his art. The family gets together for every exhibition to lay out the items and rekindle memories. Organising her possessions made her happy and when all laid out they told the story of her life.  She kept everything from empty toothpaste tubes, old toothbrushes, bottle caps, every hand bag she ever owned; hundreds of plastic bags all folded neatly in triangles, just like my Chinese flatmates do.  None of the items were particularly worth anything apart from sentimental value.  I like the Chinese value of ‘waste not, want not’ but I don’t think I could take it as far as this.

Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI)

I didn’t think the museum would interest me and the engines and machinery would be quite dull, but I tried to keep an open mind.  I saw the impressive tour of the textile machines, we were shown all the steps involved in transforming the cotton plant into cloth, they were incredibly dangerous machines and there were lots of injuries and deaths because of them.

I was drawn to the coat made of thistledown made by Adrian Bannon on display in the textile gallery.  Hundreds of dandelion seeds held together almost magically, the delicate coat is suspended with fine string like its floating in mid air.  I thought the coat was such a contrast to all the industrial machinery as it was made from an entirely natural, unprocessed material.

The exhibition I was inspired by the most was the air and space gallery, and the large aircraft engines. For my project I had been looking at playground structures and I realised there was a similarity to the intricate engines with their twisting pipes and tubes.  I had been working with bright primary colours and felt inspired by the similar shapes in chrome and metal.  The engines looked like they had been put together by an artist rather than an engineer.

Corridor Manchester

Last week we had a talk from Corridor Manchester. The Corridor is a foundation that aims to bring in more economic growth for Manchester by linking together the universities, city council and NHS university hospitals. The Corridor is also starting a regeneration program that should be completed in 2020, this regeneration is also part of the aim to increase the economic growth of the city.

• Today the Corridor generates £3.2 billion, 25% of the city’s GVA.
• 55 000 people work on the Corridor, 12 % of the city’s workforce.
• 43% of the activity is in knowledge intensive sectors, significantly higher than the national (22%) and regional (21%) averages.

I feel very involved within the city from all of these talk that we are having, its a great way for us to learn about Manchester and its future plans for development. Most of us came to the city at the start of the year knowing very little about what Manchester is about and where it is going and this project so far has been a great way to find out about it.

Within one of my talks I was told that Manchester was the type of city that when faced with a problem it went out and did something about it. For example when Manchester was losing trade because it had no port it went and created a whole canal network. I think this is a very admirable quality that is very inspiring for a project like this.

http://www.corridormanchester.com/welcome