Zandra Rhodes goes digital

You can access VADS From our Electronic Library   by selecting the Database A-Z section and clicking ‘V’ for VADS

Researchers and students from the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) have worked alongside Zandra Rhodes to prepare, photograph, and catalogue 500 dresses and garments selected from the designer’s private archive at her studio in London, including pieces worn by icons such as Princess Diana, Jackie Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor, and Diana Ross.

The project has also created contextual learning materials which explore Zandra Rhodes' creative processes and production techniques, through video interviews, video tutorials, and drawings available at: zandrarhodes.ucreative.ac.uk. Here also you can see video interviews with Zandra Rhodes about the inspiration behind key, favourite garments selected by the designer. There are also  video tutorials in which the designer and her specialist studio team demonstrate some of the techniques involved in creating a handmade Zandra Rhodes couture piece. In addition, there is a unique, comprehensive, and previously unseen series of fashion drawings from the 'Zandra Rhodes Style Bibles.'

Zandra Rhodes trained at one of UCA's founder colleges, the Medway College of Design, and is among the most famous names in British fashion over the last fifty years . Her er work includes the design of haute couture for clients such as Elizabeth Taylor, Freddie Mercury, and Diana, Princess of Wales.

See the press release on the UCA website at:

http://www.ucreative.ac.uk/news/2013/march/joanna-lumley

See the project in action in the ITV news report at:

http://www.itv.com/news/meridian/update/2012-07-09/zandras-iconic-outfits-out-of-the-closet/

To find out more about how the digital collection was created, see the project blog at:

http://zandrarhodesarchive.wordpress.com

Myths Magic Mayhem

Want to go on a zombie walk? Learn about illustrating children’s books? Hear tales from around the world? Go to a comic book workshop? All this and more is on offer from Wednesday through to Sunday.

This week is the start of the first Cardiff Children's LiteratureFestival.

Information about the programme and how and where to buy tickets are available from the Festival website.

You can keep up with their activities by following @CDFKidsLitFest on Twitter. 

Sessions from experts encouraging adults to both read and write children's books run alongside appearances from famous authors & illustrators for children of all ages.There will also be plenty of FREE activities to get involved in including a Roald Dahl themed Treasure Hunt, craft sessions in the Cardiff Story and a hunt for Wally and Wenda.

Cardiff University is hosting some of the events, and in Cardiff UniversityLibrary Special Collections (SCOLAR) they are putting on an exhibition celebrating the history of children's literature, from the 17th century up to the 20th century.  They are looking at the chronological development of children's literature by highlighting several themes such as books for education and fantasy literature.

The Library has gathered items from SCOLAR's collections, including the Children's Literature Collection which can be seen in part in the glass cases at the entrance to SCOLAR, and from the modern children's literature collection held in the main part of the library.  Items from the modern collection are also being utilised in a display on level 1 of the library (ASSL), where readers can vote for their favourite children's novel.The exhibition is available online and at the Arts and Social Sciences Library, Colum Road  from March-May 2013

Cardiff Metropolitan University undergraduate students may access Cardiff University Collections through a reciprocal scheme. Postgraduates through SCONUL Access. See details here

 

 

 

 

A cheery start

Here at Cardiff Met we offer an MA in Death and Visual Culture and for staff and students of that course and all others interested in the subject here is a link to the wonderful Wellcome Institute Collection covering  their current exhibition 'Death: A self-portrait' which runs until 24 February 2013. Events associated with the exhibition including discussion days and a day of films about death are listed here

'(The) exhibition showcases some 300 works from a unique collection devoted to the iconography of death and our complex and contradictory attitudes towards it...  including art works, historical artefacts, scientific specimens and ephemera from across the world. '

On show are rare prints by Rembrandt, Dürer and Goya , anatomical drawings, war art and antique metamorphic postcards; human remains , Renaissance vanitas paintings and twentieth century installations celebrating Mexico’s Day of the Dead, ancient Incan skulls and a chandelier made of 3000 plaster-cast bones by British artist Jodie Carey.

The website also offers links including one to  'Stories from the Day hospice' a blog by Chrissie Giles who throughout the summer of 2012, spent time at the day hospice at Princess Alice Hospice, Esher, running a creative writing group. In a series of posts she reflects on her experiences there and showcases some of the writing produced by group members.

  You can also view three extraordinary skulls (two Mexican, one Japanese) from every angle as they revolve on screen.

A book 'Death a Picture Album' accompanies the exhibition.

The House of Illustration

Eric Carle 'What are you like?'

 

TheHouse of Illustration is the world’s first dedicated home for the art of illustration;  adverts, animation, picture books, political cartoons, scientific drawings, fashion design; they are a creative hub for emerging and established artists working in every aspect of illustration.

The House of Illustration put on exhibitions like their most recent UK-touring exhibition, What Are YouLike? on at Bath’s Holburne Museum until October 17^th.

Based on a Victorian parlour game, the exhibition invited 45 people in the public eye to create a self-revealing artwork by illustrating 8 of their favourite things from a list of 12: their favourite animal, book, item of clothing, comfort, food, pastime, place, possession, music, shoes, weather or pet aversion (the thing they love to hate!).

Past exhibitions are here

The House of Illustration  also run competitions and organise events with some of the country’s leading illustrators. They work in schools across London through the  PICTURE IT education programme.

They aim to eventuallycreate a permanent home to celebrate the past, present and future of illustration. Items in the shop go towards funding the dream....

 

 

Places as people, maps by Adam Dant

 

The image above is taken from the Spitalfields Life blog which today describes the amazing work of Adam Dant. Follow this link to see more images. Adam Dant’s map describes a journey through London as if through the human digestive tract from the mouth in Whitehall to the rectum in Whitechapel. You will notice that he has placed the brain in Westminster, the liver in Fleet St, the heart at St Paul’s, the stomach in the City and the genitals in the East End.

This is just one of series of maps of big cities that Adam has depicted in such a way as to portray their essential qualities, rendered as huge ink drawings of double-page plates from volumes in the mythical Library of Dr London  and executed while touring around European capitals this summer . Other volumes in this collection of giant books hold engravings and charts which display Paris constructed from the bones of Liberty,  several alternative versions of Manhattan, and Tokyo's subway system as a tangled knot of 'Shunga print' style figures.

The drawings  will be exhibited in a show which opens tonight at Hales Gallery.

Adam Dant
From the Library of Dr London

7 Sep - 6 Oct 2012

Private view: Thursday 6 September 6-9pm

Hales Gallery

Tea Building
7 Bethnal Green Road
London E1 6LA
T 44 (0)20 7033 1938
F 44 (0)20 7033 1939

Conserving an Icon: Traces of Time in The Beanery by Kienholz

After in-depth examination, one of the most popular works in the Stedelijk Museum collection, The Beanery (1965) by Edward Kienholz, will be fully restored for the first time by the museum staff working in its new facilities.

As the installation comprises a variety of materials – for instance, the artist coated the entire installation in a synthetic liquid resin – this will be a complex operation. In anticipation of the grand reopening on September 23, the Stedelijk is preparing and restoring a number of its best-loved artworks.

A short video about this project is available on ARTUBE videos about Art and Design the online video channel for art and design contributed to by the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, M HKA in Antwerp, Gemeentemuseum The Hague, De Pont in Tilburg and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. The videos will generally be produced by these museums themselves,  and include  interviews with  artists , designers, and makers. Fiction and experimentation are also included, for example in the Boijmans TV series and in a number of unusual animation and remix films.

This Exquisite Forest at Tate Modern

This Exquisite Forest is an online collaborative art project that lets users create short animations that build off one another as they explore a specific theme. The result is a collection of branching narratives resembling trees.

To provide inspiration, eight artists whose work already hangs in the Tate Modern, including Olafur Elliason and Julian Opie, have created digital, animated saplings for others to grow, along with instructions (Elliason's instructions: "Be energy (not about energy); Use yellow often, but not always; Show that light is life; Exercise empathetic attention; Share this with friends.") These artist trees will be curated, with submissions vetted by Koblin and co, but "the rest of it's open: people can submit whatever they want and it will instantly go up," Koblin says.

The best animations will show on large video screens in the Tate Modern over the next six months in the collection galleries on Level 3 at Tate Modern, beginning on July 23, 2012. There is a digital drawing station in the Gallery or connect from your own computer (but.....do you have Google Chrome?!)

The project was conceived by Chris Milk and Aaron Koblin, and produced by Google and Tate. It makes extensive use of Google Chrome’s HTML5 and JavaScript support, as well as Google App Engine and Google Cloud Storage.