futurology final exhibition n what I've learnt

FINAL OUTCOMES:

1. Vintage postcard collages - handmade book. 

made some more collages using vintage postcards and then created a handmade little book of them. Really pleased with this outcome, collages were simple but worked. 

Showing the sort of 'in progress' stage of the human-less utopia. Buildings in the process of being engulfed and taken over. 

2. House plant thread wire sculpture

At the start of my project I was interested in creating a 3D outcome but ran out of time in the experimenting stage to explore this. During the lull in creativity and ideas I had in this project I decided to make this little sculpture, if anything just as something therapeutic to get the juices flowing again. So I stuck on Fantastic Mr Fox and started weaving thread around a wire frame to create this little house. It was really relaxing and did actually help me to start getting into work again? The house, like the postcard zine was to show the 'in progress' stage of the natural world regaining control. I made this with the mindset of if it doesn't work at least I'll have a plant to spice up my wee exhibition, but I am actually kinda pleased with it.

3. Natural forms monoprints

Made this series of monoprints to show the post-human disappearance state of the world. Everything would be natural forms, complete lack of man-made structures. I was interested in simplifying nature into into its simple shapes and colours at the start of this project and I'm glad I continued it through to the final outcomes. I was planning on stitching these together into a book but once I laid them out on the floor like this I thought it would be a shame to lose the relationship they have with each other by sticking them into a book, they work best when displayed as a set.

4. Monoprint collages hand-bound book

I thought it would be a shame to lose the lovely textures and scraps leftover on the stencils I made when making the monoprints. Decided to collage them together with photocopies of my original monoprints. Made some interesting juxtpositions between the natural forms and shapes and straight solid areas and lines. Man-made vs nature??

Hand-bound this book together using Japanese stitch binding - makes it more precious as a collection when collated like this I think.

FINAL EXHIBITION

A HUMAN-LESS UTOPIA

NATURAL FORMS FLOURISHING

MAN-MADE CONSTRUCTIONS DIMINISHING

NATURE ENGLUFING

WHAT I'VE LEARNT

- Stop putting so much pressure on yourself, cut yourself some slack

- Blogging really helps clear your mind / worries, keep on top of it

- Ask for help when you need it

- I was too reliant on research in this project, it bogged me down almost? More focus on image making without a research reasoning behind it needed.

- Creative ruts happen at the most frustrating times, nothing you can do about that, keep trying to power through, do something therapeutic it'll help. eg thread a tiny house in a plant ??

- Avoid cliche, overdone imagery

- |Don't try and tackle a subject matter which is too big, try and narrow it down at an earlier stage of the project so as not to cause stress / overwhelm yourself further down the line.

Annoyingly I only got into this project with a week to go. Not ideal, but many lessons learnt, very beneficial! I was pleased n proud of myself at my final exhibition, everything turned out okay in the end!! Would have tackled this project very differently if I was to do it again. Read through what you've learnt when starting next project.

:~) phew