jonhigham

[jonhigham]

Marcus Oakley 20/5/20

Marcus’s lecture on zoom came from Scotland which is the plus about this system (and something that could be taken forward, imagine a lecture back at Uni live from New York for example) - and he was immediately engaging and entertaining, opening with him playing his guitar and synth to his opening slide.

I liked too, (maybe he did this  a little more than most), how Marcus really shone a light on his early influences and in particular his 1970′s film and sweet wrapper slides, he explained that the things he grew up  become things he related to in his work. Marcus has also styled himself as a Graphic artist, which is a good idea - something I should consider too as we provide our work in more diverse ways and fields, it’s less limiting that ‘illustrator’ and something I may suggest my students do.

All I need say is that I loved his work and we used to get anorak magazine so a joy to see that cover too, his work for Urban Outfitters and that great map of Edinburgh, liked too that he made a 3D figure for the pointer campaign, a reminder to think differently and wider about solutions to briefs and maybe think about 3D work.

[jonhigham]

William Luz 13 May 2020

Second lecture via Zoom and this time it was the return of William Luz (see earlier post on my tumblr) but this time he is a fellow traveller on an MA and wrestling with the research question and the making- is the making the research? William is not necessarily finding it a huge pleasure right now and he asks questions around the performance of art and the framing of the research question. The pain of an MA was described perfectly by Will, it is the dismantling of practice to put it back together again, and I have felt this pain alongside many of my peers. He also seem to be wrestling with the idea of how not to channel your influences (mid century Moore and Matisse alongside others echo through his work) and if filming himself researching is the research. On a day when we were going through the whole research question thing, his talk was timely.

[jonhigham]

I haven't been posting all the test and set up I have been doing to photograph and curate my Father-in-law’s vast collection of artefacts. Nor all the jotted note taking as I go along. So here I am presenting some of those test I made.

Once the interviews were collated and the design of a 30cmx30cm book  underway I then wanted to keep pushing at the boundaries of quality I could achieve in my home made studio in the cellar. It was important to me that not just for the book, but ijnj the event I make a giant photograph then I wanted the original shots to be of a high enough. quality and well lit.

Above are two tests on an earlier Nikon model D3100, but without a tilting screen (the camera is mounted on a tripod over 5 feet up) I was struggling so I purchased a second hand (though it turned out it ws almost new) D5300 with a. much higher Megapixel count (24) plus the essential tilting screen). In the above tests I was looking at which lens to use, in fact I have plumped for a 35mm prime lens. The optimum manual camera settings were shot at 1/15th of a second, F11 with iso 160 (for smoothness)

Below are some earlier white balance tests too which I carried out - the first was with a Canon EOS M and the next all with the new D5300.

[jonhigham]

Rhonda Drakeford 6 May 2020

Rhonda gave us a great sweeping life story from her time at Central St Martins to ending up on the Darkroom barge via Elle Magazine, Multistory and Darkroom with all the highs, and all the lows. There was Bauhaus inspired jewellery, interior design and geometric kitchens on show and I was drawn most to the ideas around design and curation of when she was running Darkroom the shop using collections inspired by the likes of Ettore Sottsass. The continued Darkroom online shop and instagram account showcase design and  presentation skills with clarity and skill - something to look to for both one’s own presentation and the way we design and brand our MA Instagram account 2020 show.

[jonhigham]

Nick Gant’s talk was an inpiration when it comes to the question as to whether we can we design our way out of using up the planet's finate resourses.

The night before this lecture I saw a disturbing report on the ITN news showing vast piles of our used clothes rotting in the Ghana heat and spilling into the sea. There was time they wanted our second hand garments, which provided a thriving trade in tailor's stalls, repurposing our goods into new clothes. Now they say the clothes aren't of a sufficiant quality to repurpose.

So when Nick showed us his, and his partner's (see photos) shoes made of dog hair, flip flops from flotsam and even tiny shoes from breast milk (and more) it gave some hope that maybe we can invent our way our of this mess. There was some good news too in Nick reporting that big business is looking increasingly inventivly at the repurposeing/recycling market (whilst governments are slow to legislate and do the right thing), some areas of consumer based companies are looking and working hard at this. Of course there's a long way to go, and why oh why are councils rubber stamping vast swathes of new builds without demanding sustainable building made from recyclebles and renewables with tougher environmental demands on developers who really just focus on the profit margins. Here's hoping...

[jonhigham]

MOOP 4/2/20 Lucy Malone

I was made aware of MOOP (Museum of Ordinary People) by Suzie @studiojohanson and fired off an email explaining my MA project. Lucy was keen to meet and so I hooked up with her in the Joker Pub, Preston Park where they have offices above. 

MOOP background:  It was on a walking tour that Jolie met Lucy Malone, a curator who had been creating an archive, text and exhibition about her late mother’s artwork. After her mother passed away Lucy became the guardian of all her belongings: letters, sketchbooks and more, and Lucy had been working through them, both as a personal journey and as a practice-based research project. There began the makings of the pop-up Museum of Ordinary People (MOOP), which debuted last year and won the Brighton Fringe Visual Arts award.

Empathy fuels what MOOP does, and Jolie believes that first person narratives are a challenge to the existing historical constructions of the traditional museum world.

“Museums are quite immovable beasts, and they can’t respond to what’s happening culturally in real time – it takes a long time for them to change anything.

“We are coming from a completely different perspective – we’re acknowledging the power of seemingly mundane objects and valuing the emotive stories and memories they hold, to communicate and represent more ‘real’ lives.”

http://brightontheinside.co.uk/btners/lucy-malone-the-museum-of-ordinary-people/

It was great to meet Lucy who was so engaging, knowledgeable, informed and interesting on the whole MOOP topic. We had no shortage of conversation on our meeting as it was a meeting of interest and common angles on a subject. After swapping book titles (and finding we’d read the same things too) Lucy invited me to take an aspect of John’s life such as his Chrysanthemum Diaries and make a separate curation for the next pop up show at the Brighton Fringe. This would involve me also attending  7 workshops.

Two days later and my heart still wants this but my head says with both ‘mock’ show presentation in May, and the Brighton Fringe in May it would risk that one or the other  of the projects would suffer from lack of full on focus, be that my MA or the MOOP side project which would be rushed or compromised by simply taking on too much. A three hour round trip to Brighton means there’s effective 21 hours just of travel time to do the work shops, and I only want to do something if I can do it to the best of my ability.

But I have expressed an interest to be in touch with MOOP and take something forward at some stage. Hats off to them, I have the impression they work tirelessly for this and devote much of their free time to this project which deserves a proper home, much like Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence... More power to them.

https://www.museumofordinarypeople.com

[jonhigham]

Oliver Ahmed, House of illustration 8/1/20

Olivia Ahmad is the curator of The House of Illustration & Editor of Varoom Magazine.

The engaging Oliver Ahmed’s excellent talk entered on the curatorial aspects of the House of Illustration exhibitions (and ZOOM) and much too on the Cuban show, which coincidently clashed with the Paris one further down in my blog (she hadn’t seen the show) but formed an interesting comparison for me. There is a curatorial aspect to my project now which makes me prick up my ears when I see what goes on behind the scenes. It certainly makes you appreciate the efforts involved.  House of Illustration even sent  a small crew to go out to Cuba to research for the show, it’s a huge task to put on these exhibitions and you can only admire the effort that goes into it. It’s also a reminder to get my teeth into the nitty gritty of JS’s stories, and to use his words to faithfully represent his stories to help with my curation of objects which, since Olivia’s talk, and partly influenced by, I have made a list of rules for.

Annebella Pollen 22/1/20

Annebella Pollen is a social and cultural historian who researches art, craft, design, dress and photography across a range of periods and case studies. She is Principal Lecturer in Art and Design History at the University of Brighton, UK and the author of The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift: Intellectual Barbarians (Donlon Books).

Formed by John Hargrave in 1920, the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift were an extraordinary mixture of the archaic and the hypermodern. A back-to-the-land movement that used the techniques of contemporary advertising, it offered a holistic, dazzling vision. As Hargrave wrote in 1924: “The method of the Kibbo Kift is based upon a direct appeal to the senses by means of colour, shape, sound and movement, that is, by every form of symbolism.” Guardian 2/11/15

Annebella’s amazing (really is) forensic journey into the Kindred of the Kibboutz Kift left me personally uncomfortable, nothing to do with Annebella’s research or presentation, just the whole KKK thing, the steady drift into a cult, the Orwellian whiff of  “all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others” namely Hargrave was boss (period)  - and no matter how good or honest the initial intentions were, it didn't go well in the end when the uniforms, militaristic marching etc etc came out. Finally, easy for me to say with subsequent upheavals in social cultural  history adding weight and perspective etc, but with the knowledge of what the US KKK stood for, there would be no way I would ever want to share those same initials - and then don some pointy hats just to muddy the waters. Couldn’t they have just come up with something else

...from the Guardian

‘Taken in 1929, there is something disquieting about these black and white photographs. You feel as though you have intruded on the rites of a secret society that may or may not be benign, that indeed intends to be ambiguous and unsettling. ‘

And then there was the  final shot of Hargrave himself, the (incontestable) leader looking every bit like  Oswald Mosley himself. Deeply fascinating, many issues to discuss, the rise of cults and their demise  - but not necessarily food for thought for my MA. It did make me watch ‘Wild Country’ about  Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho) especially as I knew  two friends who became sannyassins, which was every bit as unsettling as I thought it would be.

[jonhigham]

Hoarding

Whilst my father-in-law may not be classed as a hoarder alongside the legendary Collyer brothers ,who perished by their own hoarding in New York in the late 1940’s, I felt I needed to read about it to try and understand why someone would place so much importance on bits of paper and forms that came their way through the passing years. In E.L. Doctorow’s excellent novel Homer and Langley and Franz Lidz’s Ghosty Men (which also deals with his hoarding Uncle Arthur) several things did chime with my father-in-law’s collecting – but, collecting and curating are different to the hoarders portrayed in these books. E.L.Doctorow discribes in Homer and Langley, that “when Langley brings something into the house that has caught his fancy - a piano, a toaster, a Chinese bronze horse, a set of encyclopaedias - that is just the beginning. Whatever it is, it will be acquired in several versions because until he loses his interest and goes on to something else he’ll be looking for it’s ultimate expression.” But my father-in-law’s collection is far more specific in that it relates to the self, as if he was curating his life as he went along so that he could feast on memories at a later date. They are also documents of proof about his stories, I have know the man for 22 years and he has repeated the same stories hundreds of times, and they mostly check out too.

Whilst collecting the cardboard inserts from Men’s shirts and stuffing them in the loft (and receipts on a spike since 1960) is perfect hoarding material, when I read of the lives of the men in the above books I realised that there were major differences, not least in the sheer volume of ephemera these men collected in comparison of my father-in-law. Also Interestingly too, the personal appearance, and even hygiene of obsessive hoarders sees to rapidly deteriorate, where as my father-in-law is always neat and careful about his appearance ‘A bit too fussy for a boy’ as his school teacher wrote when he was about 7 years old. So what is the trait that the Collyer Brothers, and Franz Lidz’s Uncle Arthur share with my father-in-law? 

In a recent interview with my father-in-law he said ‘truth be told, I was a mummy’s boy’ – it was such a striking admission out of the blue that I was taken aback, I also saw that being so attached to your mother was trait shared with all the three hoaders mentioned in these books. In Franz Lidz Ghosty Men, he states “The Freudian theory reached it’s zenith in Leon Edel’s speculations in PM Psychiatrists, he said (sic), describe Langley as ‘a classic textbook case of infantile regression. His life was a journey back to the security of the womb instead of the normal adult journey away from it. The principle factor was an attachment, intense and deep, to his mother’. The Journal-American found psychiatrists who explained that, like children, the two grown men could not discriminate between articles of real value and those that they thought important”. 

My father-in-law has many items of real value, some kept in a safe. But when we moved into our new home  for months and months he pestered to know where his clock oil was, when I eventually found it I asked him what did he intend to use it for, he said nothing, he just need to know where it was.

Occasional I see my father-in-law shuffling through boxes of items, some random, containing past mementos from a bicycle light box from the 1940’s (empty), to a Doodle Bug that he carved some years later. In the end, our attachment to stuff, and the boxes of it we all leave behind are like a shorthand to where we went and what we experienced and what we felt was important to our lives, but ultimately they are not just stuff but a signature we leave behind.

[jonhigham]

Book Binding with Helen 27 November

Missed this last year, so glad I did it this year. I do recollect making a stitched book at Norwich in the 80′s but here we did that and made a small cloth bound concertina book. I am now making a book for my final piece, and it will be cloth bound. That said being a photo book it requires that high end production and print values that someone like BLURB can bring to the project. Blurb can produce cloth bound photo books so when Helen showed us the hefty embossing machine for cloth bound books I did think this could perhaps come into play the project. 

Repeat Pattern with @studiojohanson​

On the same day as above ,Suzie @studiojohanson​ gave an impromptu workshop with a PP intro on repeat pattern - There was a palpable wonder amongst the group as the results of the step by step process revealed the repeat -  which suggested none of us had come across this method before. It also invites, which I think is often an important part of the creative process, chance and surprise, as it’s quite tricky to picture how it’s all going to pan out as you are doing it. To begin a repeat process this way before bringing in digital tools has much to commend it and something I may well find myself using either for myself or to bring to students in future classes. Thanks Suzie!

[jonhigham]

A Life In Memory Objects

Test Shoots 13/14 November

For this home studio set up I ran test on lighting, exposure/ev values etc (1st image) until happy. I didn't use the white photo backdrop cloth, finding that some off white card from the bakery (used for cakes!) was duller and flatter (in a good way) - though may yet try out some more backings. Although the stitching in photoshop went well some pictures were rejected as they threw the whole lot out of kilter. What to do?

I think I need to keep the camera utterly static as per lighting (occasionally I brought it up or down)

Much like a printer’s crop marks I need the same, and then leave an inner border so that photoshop has more to go on to stitch seamlessly the backdrop, some of my objects were too close to thew photo edge.

Post tutorial Graham has suggested looking at a key/numbering the items/pages - maybe I should visit the Natural History museum to check out ideas. Also a little duller/more shadow would be good.

The resolution (This Canon EOS M is 18DPI) is great as seen by the close up above), also printed at A0 just fine.

[jonhigham]

4 Talks, One summary -  October/November 2019

The excellent series of lectures we have on the MA are always fascinating and informing, even when the featured guest may not practice in my particular field. I thought for tmy Critical Dairy I could summerise this term’s talks to date.

Mathew Clayton, the A-Z of publishing.

Having been in children’s book publishing during the 80’s and early 90’s and latterly CUP/Immediate Media much of this lecture was very familiar territory but that said I’m always on the lookout for tips and advice, I still plan to do a book for my MA show after all. My hastily scribbled notes are thus:

Thematically arranging a book is the hardest way to organise content.

Collaboration always enhances and can enrich, leading into things in your work you would never have thought of. I think much of the tutorials and peer to peer review does cover this to a degree.

Fit in the heroic journey

Twitter v Instagram - @postcardsfromthepast – I have posted about this book already, interesting that it didn’t work so well on Instagram – a thought about promotion here.

One line description, reductive, can you apply this to your MA project?

Poorly drawn cats – simple ideas can go a long way

Paul Burgess 

As my course leader over at Edward Street where I tutor I was familiar with Paul’s work, though some years since I last saw this so was pleasantly surprising at just how different it was.

Some of the way Paul collects, be that vinyl, fan art, outsider art, photographing unusual street finds, echoes much of what I do but only more so. His speciality Sex Pistols fan art covers were intriguing.

Subversion, Paul covered this well with some great examples (see pics above), more apt for my teaching so pinched some of these examples for my Hastings students!

Dom & Ink

The most mainstream illustration talk of the term from a very talented Dominic Evans included all the tips I give my students and was ebullient, fresh and funny. A successful commercial illustrator, his take on LGBT issues timely and popular, he his found his niche in the market. I’d be intrigued where he will take his work, which will have to evolve (the hand/brush font thing going in illustration is beginning to look overused in the market - just visit thortful cards to see thousands of examples).  Dominic seems just the kind of illustrator who knows how to survive the ups and downs of freelance­.

Andrew Foster

A powerful and sometimes dark, challenging and bravely honest talk from Andrew (particularly with regard to mental health)  reminded me that passion and research should by the keys to my final work. His OCD attention to massive artworks that takes months transfixed me. I chose some quotes below from his talk that chimed with me.

‘sometimes things just grow and grow and you just have to trust that something will happen’

‘the subject is owned by everyone and the picture had it’s own life’

‘How can you use your time to the best of your ability to produce work that’s important’

‘We are carrying the history of what has gone on before, things seep through, some vanish, they’re gone’

‘I communicate through your knowledge’

[jonhigham]

Photographing Memory Objects 
So it begins, what I had in mind some time ago, to photo my father-in-law’s ephemera and memory objects from above to make a large collage of his life. I had equipped myself with studio lights and began trialing shots. Chatting at college with @studiojohanson yesterday (who has great experience of these things) I was daunted by the technicalities of taking one large photo from above. There would be lighting issues as well as the definition, no large plate camera to hand here. So how can I emulate this? I began the day thinking perhaps I will have to stitch all the photos together within a consistently lit studio situation, with smaller frame shots. I initially chose a black background and began to test the lighting, firstly on my partner Katie who walked in as I had just put up a black backdrop (above), then on objects. A first pass yielded poor definition on zooming in so I changed the lens from a zoom to a pancake, less glass I thought, less distortion. and increased the depth of field as well as moving the camera in a little. The result is the top image which is in fact two images stitched together. It has worked pretty well though possible on the dark side. But what of the black, I like that it has the same feel as the film but it won’t necessarily help all objects. The white background did prove trickier and whilst this may look ok at this resolution it needs more work with the clone tool to hide the edges and variations of shade on the white cloth which cause mismatch in the tiling.

[jonhigham]

Making

Spontaneous, happenstance, temporal

Above are two recent collages made with only half an image in my mind’s eye, the rest was left to spontaneity and things that come to hand at the time. The right one wasn’t stuck down - with the idea that I would disassemble immediately after the artwork was created, I liked the idea that it exisisted for only a few minutes. It is informed by emphemera I have been collating of my Father-in-law’s life. I did also try printing one of his old photos onto a magazine page from the 1950’s, with mixed results.

The Paris one I had half a mind to do but some images came to hand by accident, such as the 1960/70 shot of the Eiffel Tower, it must have been taken by my father and I found it in a draw, the stamp, in my father-in-law’s collection is of the very place (a view of the Eiffel Tower from Trocadéro) we moved to when I was 11. A shop of Angels we visited is featured as well as Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birken, the first music I associated with France. A leaf plucked from the pavement outside my sister’s appartement and a postcard I found in the loft from my mother of the Sacré Cœur (which I visited on my lastest trip) from the early 1980s also found its way into my collage and a key ring bought on the last night from a hustler at the Palais de Chaillot. Nothing of the collage is sourced from the internet save the 10 franc note, it’s how I remember my pocket money of the time.

I am enjoying working like this, as I have no idea, until I have that feeling to stop working , how the art will turn out. I wish to now move on to photographing the memory objects of my project but with this developing curation as I work process playing a part, and allowing for random events.

[jonhigham]

Musée des Arts Décoratifs

60 ans après la Révolution à Cuba, le Musée des Arts Décoratifs, l’âge d’or de l’affiche cubaine des années 1960 et 1970 dans un contexte culturel et politique dont les artistes se sont emparés.

Affiches Cubains, Revoltion et Cinema

This was one I went on my own too as I’d clocked it before the trip, especially as it chimed with student projects at both Brighton and Hastings. I was amazed at the graphic design qualities on show here (mostly the golden age from the 1960’s to the 1970’s). From Felix Baltran’s iconographic posters for oil to revolutionary slogans created with panache but within the constraints of isolation, austerity and with what was to hand. Now emerging into the lime light, much of this work looks fresh and even contemporary. It was a lot to take in. Fantastique!

[jonhigham]

Louvre Visit 31 October

On our trip to Paris to see family, my daughter was keen to revisit the Louvre. I hadn’t been since my youth so was curious as to how I would feel. Whilst admiring the classic and daunting talents of the fine artists of yesteryear I couldn’t help but feel that the visit confirmed my taste lies with the world of post impressionist, having loved my visit to the Stedelijk museum in Amsterdam. Meanwhile my mind was in memory overdrive as my family moved to Paris when I was 11 and I spent many a school holiday walking these streets. But unlike my father in law, my ‘memory objects’ are mostly gone now save some old photographs. Even whilst looking at the artworks on show my mind was searching for ways I could represent this collection of ephemera and objects from my father in law’s past that would engage the viewer. As for the crowds around the Mona Lisa, I couldn’t help thinking that Leonardo may have been flattered but thought that it was riduiclous and that he had other artworks he had executed that he would have far preferred to be on show, often our favourite personal pieces of work are not the ones our peers rate as highly as others.

[jonhigham]

St Peters Library visit continued

Objects Martin Parr

I have seen a lot of Parr’s work over the last two years, both in London and Hastings where he gave a lecture (and I briefly met him). So I have come across his curated ‘political’ objects and these work by type, such as a page on Saddam Hussain watches, and is very much where I am at now. I still like this straightforward approach Due to its no nonsense focus on the objects without distraction.

[jonhigham]

St Peter’s House Library Visit 23 October

“All artworks, as all things, are made in the same way. A person will collect ideas, objects, and people and bring those pieces together to start making an uncharted mess. Play and imagination , the unusual, and doubt sink into the slits of crafting anything. We don’t stop pushing around that mess until it’s a pile of parts and bits, thoughtful shavings of what we hope to reveal. Then we step back, we look at that mess, and we engineer our playfulness. We refine and focus our play and pull together the disarray and uncontrollable so that it can find its potential, and so we can see it for what it’s becoming. We begin to understand the things we wish to express. A narrative is exposed.” Efrem Zelony-Mindel pages 58 FOAM issue 54

With time to spare it seemed the best things to do would be to research something at St Peter’s. I also wanted to look at the BJP Magazine but instead found FOAM Magazine, a huge tome of a journal and one that took me right back to Amsterdam when we went with students from Brighton University in February and visit the photography gallery at FOAM.

FOAM

‘PLAY” Edition number 54

Rosana Paulino - Red Atlantic

I forgot to photo the blurb in this instance but reference to Black heritage and history including the slave trade came to the fore in Rosana’s work. I liked the way photographs here are woven with material artefacts, the shapes and arrangements on the page to the fore, and it is clear, without text, that deep narratives are interwoven in amongst the choices and arrangements, a page from a book (an Orchid), tiles and material all carefully placed together with photos. What I can take from this is the need to focus on selecting artefacts with care to the inter-relation and look to the stories they create just by selecting and curating them together. Then for each image I wish to try photographing them in one take, changing my photoshop method to a more organic and free approach, moving the artefacts around the area, combining, adding or deleting whatever feels the right thing to do. This can also add spontaneity and happenstance.

Alice Quaresma

Looking at her vast archive of mundane images, Quaresma started intervening with the surfaces of her photos injecting them with impulsiveness interferences, strokes of paint, scraps of paper, paper cut-outs and other ephemera. A reminder to me how that there are no rules here, unusual ideas and experimentation should be tried.

I then moved on in the library by typing ‘Objects’ into the search and came up with these three books.

OBJECTS (book) John Gruen

One paragraph on the inner sleeve of the book wrap is all you get here, instead, with a simple written title, the photos are allowed to be without textural analysis. Dark moody photos of arranged objects provoke curiousity and the hint of a narrative. It’s a reminder to self of the powerful images arranged objects in a space can make. But in this instance it is not the studio glare so much as the half light and darkness through which we visit Gruen’s work.

OBJECTS OF BEAUTY Joy Gregory

Gregory photographically explores issues of femininity and her ethnic roots by arranging items and also photographing them using differing techniques such photograms, cyanotype, negative exposure as well as more conventional, and yet distressed looking photos. There is texture here and it all helps to add atmosphere.