Exhibition/FMP

Starting point -

For this project, I am planning on making a variety of different zines, which will need individual, as well as collective research to make. This will include research about the topics themselves that are in the zines, the making of zines, artists related and research into displaying work in an exhibition.

My first idea was to make a kind of old fashioned newsstand, displaying modern zines and newspapers. I had the intention of making a large collection of quick zines that could fill in a stand. The stand would also be interactive for those coming to view the exhibition, as they would be able to grab a copy of the zines and have a read through, as well as the potential of selling them as well. The photos below convey the kind of essence I was thinking of at the very beginning of the project -

I also collected more images from online -

Newspaper club.

With the help of my tutor, I made a sample paper using already existing content from a zine I made earlier in the year. I scanned the images on a high resolution and then put them into photoshop. Because this is my first time using the newspaper club, I needed to make a test paper to experiment with the different sharpness of the images and how the pictures will look when they are printed out on the paper. The 100% was definitely the best option, and made the images look best on the paper (I learned from my tutors that when putting images on newsprint the images need to be extremely sharp, even so sharp that sometimes they look to sharp and uncomfortable to look at when they are on the screen of the computer, because it is as though the ink in a way sinks into the paper when printed, giving a blurrier effect, which I don't want.)

Visit / Ymweliad - Grosvenor Museum, Chester

I found the way most of the work was set out in the Grosvenor museum to be quite old fashioned and traditional. I also didn't see much work that is related to my own and the way that I work, so I didn't see anything that truly inspired me in my ideas for our own exhibition. I did find it valuable though to be able to visit this museum as it gives a view into how things are planned out and composed in the rooms that the collections are in. I enjoyed looking at the work itself, especially the watercolour paintings. Drawings of people are usually my main subjects in my work, so to see how this kind of work was displayed was interesting. This work was displayed in frames, but as I am making my work in the format of zines, I don't intend on putting my work in frames.

Comic making

Artist - Art Spiegelman

Artist - Marjane Satrapi

I had originally borrowed the books Maus and Persepolis from the library while doing research into graphic journalism. I didn't expect to enjoy the books as much as I did, as I don't usually read graphic novels, but I ended up loving the books and finding the way the stories were told through drawings to be really powerful. I don't think that the stories would have had as much of an impact if it were written as a different kind of book, as the images are the main source of emotion that carries the whole story. This inspired me to make a comic of my own. In the week I started my own comic, my family and I had just been going through a hard time as my sister Gwen had been in the hospital for two weeks battling sepsis for the second time. I find it difficult to convey the effect these events have had on me, so I thought that maybe creating a comic from the story would convey it well, and allow the reader to maybe step into my shoes while reading to see what this time has been like. The comic is being made using a black fineliner only.

Visit/ Ymweliad - V and A museum, London/ Llundain.

Because of my work in the project about musical theatre, I felt that it would be valuable to look back at a recent visit to the Victoria and Albert museum in London, which contained a collection of theatre and performance artefacts and displays. Some of the work that is most relevant to my project is the display of old and more modern posters and marketing displays for West End and Broadway shows. Although my work does not include marketing related to musicals, the posters, programmes and other marketing displays is usually the most illustrated elements of the shows, and the artwork that stays in the mind the most and becomes most iconic. In the posters, the designers have worked to make art that gives the audience a glimpse into the show they are about to see / have seen, which is what I hope to accomplish in my musical theatre zines through my prints.

Linocutting

The next step I am going to take is scan the prints onto the computer, and upload them onto a newspaper in the newspaper club. I also intend on displaying the original prints on the wall.

The scans of the work -

Graphic Journalism

For one of the zines I am doing, I have been inspired by my research into artists that specialise in graphic journalism. For mine I will be making work about the opioid crisis in the United States, but looking at other artists that use text and drawing (Both of which I will be using in the work) to communicate different topics is helping in thinking about things in a different way, and considering the way that information can be shared. The words and images don't have to be uniform and as formal as I was thinking previously. Looking at the artists below has shown that important information can be shared in a less structured way, and in a more fluid way. I can also relate to the ways that the artist I have been looking at in the way in which they work. Their use of illustrative lines and bold colours is something that I see a lot of myself in. The research into graphic journalism has also been helpful in my comic making (earlier on the page) because it allowed me to see how non fiction events could be conveyed in a comic form.

Artist - Wendy MacNaughton

Olivier Kugler

Below are drawings from my zine about the US opioid crisis, and musical theatre news. The first one was done in a more spontaneous and rough way with a sharpie than the other, which is drawn with fineliners and gouache paint, as at this point one of the main goals was to create a large collection, this goal has changed over time and become less of a priority.

After reconsidering the project (more details below) I decided to cut this portion of the work (above). Although I had spent a lot of time on the drawings, I didn't feel they were relevant, but I don't think they were a waste of time, as they were a part of the process of coming to the conclusion of what the project is ending up being for the exhibition. I also think they are important, as they represent where the project was when I started it, compared to what it is now.

Making some changes

In the past few weeks, taking a look at all the work I have done so far, I reconsidered some elements of what I am going to be including in the final exhibition. I discussed with my tutors and my fellow students about what is relevant to the exhibition and if all the work I have done is truly cohesive and makes sense together as one display. I began questioning if I would be able to explain the meaning and purpose behind the work if some of the pieces of work are about subjects so different from one another. Although my initial idea was to make a large collection of zines and newspapers about all kinds of different subjects, I decided to cut the amount of newspapers down to 3, so that I could put my time into those ones, and make a smaller but more personal display. I was already working on the comic zine about my life, as well as the linocut prints about musicals that I have seen. I feel that both of those in a way are more personal than the other subjects that I was doing in the other zines. Going to the theatre is a big part of my life, I usually go with my Mum, so these are experiences that we have always shared, which makes them personal and part of our family history. I did a zine early on in the project about the opioid crisis in the United States, after recently watching a tv show that made me interested in the subject, but after taking a step back to look at that piece's place with the rest of the project, I didn't think it would make much sense for me to include it, as it wasn't personal to me at all. I also cut out another zine about musical theatre news, as I already had one zine about musical theatre anyway, and again, this one was less personal, so I decided to exclude this one from the exhibition as well. While approaching the final weeks of this module, my Dad and I took part in a local tractor run for charity, in which we, and other members of the community took over a 100 tractors across Pen Llyn. I decided to make a zine about this ( Below), because I wanted to draw the vintage and more modern tractors, but I also felt that this would add another element of my family into the project.

Tractor zine

In May, My Dad and I took part in a local 'tractor run' to raise money for charity. A 110 tractors took part, driving along the small backroads of Pen Llyn, as well as the high street in Pwllheli. It was an amazing experience, and really inspiring to see so many people in the community coming together to support a good cause. Half of the tractors included in the event were vintage tractors. These went in the front of the line, and the newer ones in the back. After the day was over I looked back at all the photos I had taken of the different tractors and other small elements of the day, and decided to draw them. There were also photographers taking photos of us all passing by along the way. I decided to include these in a zine for the exhibition. This was a very important day for me and a zine representing the amount of people coming together was something that I felt would go well with the other zines. As both of the other zines represent other personal elements of my life, I felt that adding this would make a small but well rounded collection of zines that represents who I am as a person and what my life is like. I used fineliners and alcohol markers to create the images of the tractors and all the other little images.

Below are the final images included in the zine.

Displaying the work

As we get closer to the exhibition, I am working on the way that the final work will be displayed. I decided that I will be displaying my work on plinths that the visitors of the exhibition will be able to look through the newspapers. The images I looked at earlier in the project did inspire the final idea, as some of the work included in those images gave visitors the opportunity to flip through the work itself. I was inspired by some of the photos I looked at to be inspired for the exhibition, and then drew the ideas in my sketchbook. After figuring out the measurements for my space in the studio / exhibition space, I worked on a few sketches.

I made a small maquette of what I wanted my space to look like. At first, it was just a the small white box with the paper plinths, and as the project went on, I added more details that I was figuring out as I went on, such as when I decided to paste copies of the work on the wall in a collage (This is discussed lower down on this page).

I gave the measurements that I decided on after measuring my space in the studio to Gwyn in the workshop, who built three of them, one for the comic zine, musical zine, and the tractor zine, after the wood I had ordered arrived. I realised when discussing with Gwyn that I had left the building of these plinths quite last minute for him to build them. After the plinths were built, luckily everything was the way I wanted (Except for one of the plinths which is slightly narrower than the others, but works well in the space regardless), but I know now that when doing something like this again next year or at any point in the future, I need to plan this a bit earlier to avoid any problems that could potentially arise from wrong measurements, lack of wood, or change of plans in my ideas etc.

Below are images of one of the plinths before they were painted white. The zine used as an example is the US opioid crisis i had printed before deciding to cut it out of the display.

For the walls of my space, I had kept an open mind about how I was going to display my work. Knowing that I was going to be showing the newspapers on the plinths, I didn't want to put the same exact work up on the wall as I felt that this would defeat the purpose of placing them in the plinths in the first place. I was discussing with my tutors and we talked about the idea of pasting my work on the wall as more of a collage, rather than maybe framing the pieces of doing it in a more organised way. Initially we discussed the idea of pasting the whole wall with images, but I felt that I didn't want this. I felt that covering the entire wall would be too chaotic compared to the other 'clean' work that I was doing with the drawings and prints themselves, but also with the way they are being displayed on the white plinths. We then thought of the way to still include the idea of pasting the work, but give it a cleaner and more organised way, which is to make a strip above each of the plinths and paste the work within those lines.

My tutors Callum and Jane helped me make some examples of what it could look like by making some of the collages on paper, and also just setting down some of the paper on the ground. We made hundreds of photocopies from the pages of the zines and experimented with the way they could be put onto the wall.

Below are photos from the first day that we did this, with the examples of how the wall could look with the collages we did on paper.

The next morning I came into college a bit confused and conflicted as how I was going to go about pasting the work on the wall. Some of my tutors had conflicting ideas at how I should approach it, as the way they would be put up would have different effects. Some tutors suggested that I paste the papers directly onto the wall with pva glue. This would achieve a more spontaneous and rugged feel to the work, which is something other tutors felt would contrast too much from the way the newspapers would look on the plinths. Another idea on how to do this in a different way was to put the work together beforehand and then put that onto the wall. This would help avoid the air bubbles and bumps that inevitably always come with using pva glue with the regular paper we were using for this. I really didn't know which way to go, as both methods contained valid reasoning and a certain look to them. I didn't know which way I wanted. Eventually after a small break and coming back with a more fresh mind, I decided to just paste the work directly onto the wall. I felt that the spontaneity and the 'diy' look of it was part of the appeal, and was also a small nod to the original idea that I had was to create a traditional city news stand. When doing the work, I did try do keep the bumps and air bubbles to a minimum, but there were some, but I'm still really happy with the results. I did the strip, and then put the plinth in front of it for each zine that I did. The pictures below are for this process.

This is what my space in the studio looked like at the end of the second day of pasting my images on the wall. I touched up some of the plinths with white paint in the areas that I had missed, and was then happy with my work for the time being.

I compared my maquette to the way the space looks and I was really pleased to see the way the work has turned out so far.

Two weeks before the exhibition, the only things I had left to do for my display was to wait for my copies of the comic zine to arrive to put on the plinth, and also complete a few more drawings before ordering copies of my tractors zine. I also needed to make and artist's statement to put up on the wall.

I made business cards that I can have next to my display at the exhibition. I took inspiration from images of artists' business cards online where one side of the card is kept simple with one image, and then the other side containing contact information.

My artist's statement -

Reflection

At the end of this project, I am quite proud of the work I have achieved. At the beginning of the project, I really didn't know where I was going with the work, but as I kept creating and developing new ideas, it began to take shape and become something that I'm really excited about. Working on each part of this exhibition has been rewarding in its own way, from the painting of the walls and floor, to the creation of the work itself. It has taught me much about working as a team, as we all prepared the exhibition space together, but also about making my own decisions for my own work and not relying too much on others. Being able to cut work out of the project, and change direction so a smaller but more intimate collection of zines allowed me to make a bold decision which I feel has payed off, the work I have included has all been created with care and detail, and I am proud of it. The guidance of my tutors and fellow students has also helped shape the project, as we were able to bounce ideas off each other when considering the way the work is displayed, such as the pasting of the work on the wall, as well as putting the work on newsprint in the first place. The skills we have collected over this year, especially the digital skills we learned through lessons on photoshop, illustrator and indesign has allowed me to be really independent in the way that I have designed my work, and has brought a certain 'clean' look to the hand drawn art. Looking back at the project, there are some things that I would change when doing it next time. I would do some more planning earlier when it comes to the actual exhibition space and display, as to not leave the building of things such as plinths into the last minute. Overall, I am satisfied with the work I have done, and am looking forward to the public coming to the space from the 10th of June onwards. I look forward to seeing people's response to the work, as well as being able to finally sit back and look at all our work from an exhibition standpoint, rather than a 'studio' point of view.