Baltic Expo

Nice batch of posters from HNC student Renee Simonini for 'Art Blocked' - a proposed expo on 20th century Design-in-Context at the Baltic in Newcastle.


De Stijl  and Surrealism


Pop Art and Constructivism


You can look through a selection  from the rest of the class on the pinterest board for this project.

Bauhaus @ The Barbican

The Barbican Gallery in London is currently hosting 'Art As Life' - the biggest Bauhaus exhibition in the UK in over 40 years, and as part of our continuous professional development, the department has sanctioned a number of tutor visits to see it.

'Art As Life' is a visual narrative of the most influential art school of the last century, and features art, architecture, print design, textiles, film, interior & industrial design, and of course typography.

The exhibition documents the amazing experimentation that the school pioneered, and shows how the political landscape of Germany in the Weimar years influenced the movement and its teachings. The work on display also explains how the eventual breakup of the Bauhaus (at the hands of the National Socialists), ensured that its founders dispersed to other parts of Europe and the USA to spread the teachings of the school and set the blueprint for modern architecture and visual communication.

As well as brilliant art by Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Theo Van Doesburg, there is the avante garde photography of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, the textiles of Gunta Stulzl, the graphics of Joost Schmidt and the fantastic typography of Herbert Bayer.

This is more than just an exhibition - there is a public programme of workshops, talks, films and performances as well as the 'Art School Lab', a two-week summer school led by leading practitioners from all artistic backgrounds. The Barbican will also soon be announcing a date for typographer Erik Spiekermann to present a talk at the exhibition.

Well worth going to, but note that photography isn't allowed, and when I was there on Monday the shop had already sold out of Joost Schmidt's famous lithograph poster Plakat zur Bauhaus-Ausstellung (1923), which I was hoping to put up in the studio.

Hamburger Bahnhof

Whilst HND 2 Graphics are out on work placement, their Visual Communications cousins, HND New Media, are currently on a trip to Berlin to the Transmediale Festival of Art & Digital Culture.

Today they stopped off at the Hamburger Bahnhof contemporary art gallery, ostensibly to see the db exhibition by Ryoji Ikeda, but also to catch some great work by Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and Cy Twoombly. Tutor Richard Bisset, who took these pics, records his daily photography at blipfoto, and today's entry describes their visit.
Check out the enormous scale of Warhol's Chairman Mao portrait...

Another World Visit

The Design Team has booked a visit to Edinburgh's Dean Gallery to see 'Another World' - a major exhibition of Dada and Surrealist work by the likes of Dali, Magritte, Miro, Ernst, Man Ray and Duchamp. Both HND 1 and HND 2 groups are booked in at 2pm on Thursday 9th Sept.

As well as a number of world-famous pieces, 'Another World' includes a series of display cases full of correspondance, brochures and manuscripts accompanying the exhibits.

This visit will be tied in with HND 1's first official project brief 'Emotional Resoponse' which Helena will be handing out at the start of next week. So bring your notebooks!

More:
Another World - Dali, Magritte, Miro and the Surrealists@ The Dean Gallery, Edinburgh.