Royal College of Art

So finally I organise myself to post the art work I saw last Thursday. The RCA has traditionally been cramped into a very small space the shows were often a hotch potch with different departments scoring the best spaces.

The very worst year was when they shoved the design faculty into a wooden shack across the road in Hyde Park. Now the entire fine art department has decamped to Battersea, it was a mission to get to but what an awesome space they have, it is right up there with the kind of gallery spaces you see including Victoria Miro and the White Cube. The photograph below should give you an idea of the scale of the sculpture department, the painting is across the road and has a lovely mezzanine allowing for more intimate spaces too. Yelena Popova

here

I loved her application of paint and use of colour, but especially effective was how the paintings were displayed, I wish I could get my students to think about this more.

Shi Kai Tseng

here

The above ceramics were not in fact in the ceramics department, but in product design, I really like the blurring of boundaries as far as materials are concerned and these vessels are doubly beautiful for combing two mediums as they also use photography to create the images via a pinhole camera. I can tell you having done both photo emulsion and pin hole that neither process is easy so to combine the two equates to an act of patience combined with dogged determination. The vessels were very ethereal but sadly not for sale.

Lauren Barfoot
Here

Lauren Barfoot's work which you can see in the background was brilliant too, I am really loving how computers and digital printing are blowing wide open the way textiles are printed, I have some images I would love to see on silk, but the best printing factories are in Milan!

Marina Dragomirova

Here

I love the fifties feel to her furniture and would love to weave one of these chairs, great fun.

Laura Amstein

Here

I failed to get any photographs of her work, she seemed stuck in a corridor but she had already won an award and I think she will be very successful, her bags are beautifully crafted and the colours are divine.

Jonna Saarinen

Here

Not everything here is original, but I like the shapes and colours of these fabrics anyway.

Catherine Aitken
Here

I thought this display was very original and something I would love to own

Back to the fine art studios

Ashley Rich

Here

and my favourite artist

Helen Pritchard

I would have bought each and every piece

Tate Modern

Back to the Tate Modern, this time with 38 teenagers, which went surprisingly well.
I remembered to take the Lumix, which is the most forgiving camera in low light and I managed to grab a few sartorial favourites.
The next few were taken in the Taryn Simon exhibition, really excellent and thought provoking as these images illustrate.

Sartorial Tate

Loved the length of her trousers and the raw edge of the hem, in fact I am often drawn to neutrals probably because I can't wear them myself very often.

Love the bags in these two images

Beautiful stripes

plus a few spots..

The best for last

I love that yellow, but best of all check out the uber trendy cloth bag bearing the exclusive Daunt Books logo.

Muted creaminess from men's fashion week

Why do men get all the wonderful tones and textures? I love all of these, I want some of this NOW!

Agnes B

Paul Smith

Yohji Yamamoto

Plus they get way more interesting models, SO not fair.

images from style.com

Vanity

I met my sister briefly on Saturday to help with her house hunting. She referred to one of her friends children as being excessively vain. I wondered if she meant self absorbed rather than vain. How do you quantify vanity? Especially in a child.

The definition of vanity is to have an 'excessive pride in one's appearance achievements and capabilities'. Ouch, Define excessive. One mans' excessive maybe another mans' modesty. Vanity is as subjective a notion as what makes a good painting but whatever it is, however quantifiable, it is safe to say that my vanity has taken a few hits recently, not least at work where I confess my opinion of myself and my achievements could in some corners be construed as vain, wholly justified in my opinion, but sadly not in the opinion of those who matter in my so called profession. That bucket of melancholy is so full I am trying hard not to let it spill over into this blog at present for fear of unleashing a torrent of vitriol and ire against those better paid than I in this establishment, but I am keen to keep my job for a while.

No my vanity such as it is, (and trust me with a mother like mine I have a very, very grounded sense of self worth in the looks department) is at best modest I in the genre of all things English am hangdog and weak chinned. I have tried to dress it up occasionally as a romanticised Modigliani but lets be brutal I am no beauty.

This has been rammed home to me by two of my closets ...what? Not friends or family...Cohabitee's, I guess that's who they are.

First up

Emin recently bounded over to me like a Labrador puppy clutching an old photograph album. "Look, look" he cried "Look how amazing you used to look" "God you've really aged" He thrust under my nose a photograph taken 10 years ago just after Leyla was born my hair lush with hormones and my skin still plump and dewy with baby fat. At the time the photograph was taken I was dog tired and failed to see that really this was the last chance I would have to even contemplate vanity, but the damage was done on that score years ago, so that I never bothered to look in the mirror and so failed to appreciate what I had before gravity and depleting hormones shook me and spat me out a dried up husk of a woman.
As a teenager I reeked of eau de desperation seeking love at any price, I soon learned it was pointless to try and strike pose, too laughable. In fact laugh is what I learnt to do, Sod it, I don't need to see myself so why should I care what I look like? But remarks like that sting, really they do. I am nearly 50 and yes I am looking my age, I never did, but somehow life caught me up.

Second up

So imagine my surprise when walking the dog with Leyla yesterday when she said " Were you ever beautiful?" Did I need that? No, I realise that to a child I am a mother not a face but even so.... brutal and cruel, so any notion that I held that my children could at least see the beauty within packed it's bags and left the building. I explained that it was her misfortune to have a fuckugly mother so she should deal with it. Conversation over.

Clearly I am vainer than I think!

The view from here Hard Rock Calling

It was only a week ago but already it seems longer, such is the complexity of my daily grind.

It was of course AMAZING, despite the very worst weather possible I enjoyed every minute. It was surprisingly well organised, my memories of queuing finally put to bed here as the longest we queues was 5 min.

James, Kaiser Chiefs then the Killers.

The Killers were really brilliant, the crowd was boisterous and we were all soaked to the skin!

Footwear veered from ludicrously optimistic to the pragmatic

Above sensible Hunters

Below espadrille's!!

I ask you what would you choose for a cold rainy night of dancing in a muddy field?

Portrait painting masterclass

So, having spent most of the day gazing at the work of others I was lucky enough to have booked a place on a painting master class organised by the NPG, which was run in conjunction with the BP Portrait award, always interesting, if a little lacking in emotional interpretation it rewards skill rather than expressiveness, but that aside it's free and a must see.

Below is the artist who painted the above portrait of Maxi Jazz, his name is Joe Simpson and he was a real star, a lovely tutor very kind and generous. Thank you Joe, my nerves were frayed and torn but I came away with a better sense of self worth and my confidence was knitted back together a treat.

image above from here

Having learnt to paint at the Slade which follows the more contemporary route of painting on white, Joe taught us the more traditional way of under painting, he made it look effortless, clearly he is talented, and has worked very hard to become this good but I really enjoyed working this way too

This was his painting after just a few minutes, the difference between us is he has the patience of a saint, and he is able to build up thin layers of paint, slowly creating shape and form layer by layer. I on the other hand.......

tend to work wet on wet and so focus on textures as opposed to shape

But after and hour I began to create a very loose likeness, and although the placing of features needed more time (yes I KNOW the mouth is in the wrong place!!) the end result left me high with happiness. And the bad memories were back in their box.

The view from here

THE WEEK I'VE HAD

Seriously, highs and lows like you would not believe, and one thing is absolutely certain, if I did my job properly this blog would not exist. Which is sad really because it's this blog that feeds so much of what I teach, via the random surfing I do, it also clarifies my thoughts and I would say that it very much improves students learning too.

Teachers on the whole are a very self assured bunch, we work in isolated spurts and rarely get the chance to see not only the work of others, but how others teach. What a ridiculous system, and more so when someone is able to come in and judge you on the most mercurially subjective set of criteria yet seen. Inspections are never nice, they rarely focus on the good, they just nit pick at the minutiae of your lesson until you are convinced you are complete and utter shite. I do not lie when I say that OFSTED inspections have caused some to take their own life and many others to breakdown and leave the profession, when in fact they were perfectly good teachers. OFSTED judge you on minutes of a lesson, sweeping aside the evidence of years of good teaching. My contradictory debrief which was issued in a corridor outside the lesson I was teaching was breath takingly contradictory. Praised for the contemporary nature of the course, the ambition of research and experimental use of media I was then told that progress during the fraction of a lesson that was observed was patchy! You see, that is what we are up against.
I have always believed, especially as a parent that progress should be uneven, that we all need to take stock, and that creativity can never be applied in nice even doses, some students will make 'steady progress' other have bursts of energy, highs and lows. Why should we always work at the same pace? The ignorance of that assumption and many other notions inspectors believe in, that each child should be bashed through the same shaped whole is depressing, and for a while I wanted to give up. I ranted for 2 whole days, and then I had a little bit of luck.

I had wanted to visit the RCA degree show, and guess what? My school closed for a strike, and so I got to go to it. I came away so completely uplifted, the memory of the last 2 days is just that. It is distant, like a bad taste that repeats, it also recedes and now I'm fired with enthusiasm. Not least because after the show I went to a painting master class of which more later. First a few stolen moments from the show. I saw some gorgeous people and some amazing work it is a brilliantly innovative place and whilst outcomes are patchy it never disappoints.
Is this woman not amazing? Total style, those bangles, that dress, that lovely top knot. The whole package was brilliantly executed. I recognised her straight away as Wendy Dagworthy, Head of Textiles and Fashion at RCA, she is living proof that you can age with grace and style without resorting to fakery, she is beautiful.

It is a great place to see the young and how they dress, I loved the shoes below.

she was part of this divine couple.

It is closed for today but if you read this and love art please go and trust me it is worth the effort to cross the bridge into Battersea to see the new fine art building, they are monumental and as exciting as any gallery.