SHOWstudio: Fashion Revolution

"A major exhibition staged at London's Somerset House in Autumn 2009, SHOWstudio: Fashion Revolution is a retrospective of nine years of online innovation, invention and creation. Based around the themes of 'Process', 'Performance' and 'Participation', the exhibition showcases over twenty projects from SHOWstudio's archives alongside unique new films, artworks and live fashion shoots and events specifically devised for this groundbreaking exhibition."

This is an exhibition that I don't want to miss. It runs until 20th December, at Somerset House which is at the Embankment Galleries. There's photographic exhibitions, installations, live fashion shows and live projects to participate in too, like this interactive sculpture where you can draw on Naomi online. Quite fun. And this, called 'Taking more Liberty's' which says nothing except '5 — 26 October 2009, Liberty's Window, Carnaby Street'. Which is.... today, in fact! Get down there. It must be some kind of interactive store window. Sounds very exciting.

There's loads of different exhibits, split into Process, Performance, Participation, and Fashion Film. They all sound quite interesting, but the one that has intrigued me the most is 'Fashion Film', which deals with "Film’s capacity to show clothing as it behaves on the body, together with its power to capture the spirit of fashion at a specific point in time, means that it is perfectly in tune with a generation of young fashion consumers who look beyond the printed page to experience their world instantly, live and online. Fashion film is perhaps showstudio.com’s single most important contribution to the changing face of how fashion is experienced."
Something which I agree with actually...


There's also a film from Alexander McQueen, called "Transformer: The Bridegroom Stripped Bare" looks quite intense and destructive:


Also "Past, Present and Couture" by Galliano, which is a series of photographs that "illustrates clearly the relationship between designer and model, and between designer and photographer, to inspire and direct the shot.":

There's also a behind the scenes film of the shoot as well.

It all seems slightly 'the art behind the fashion' to me, not that that's entirely a bad thing, so I need to check it out properly before I make any judgements. Tickets are £5 but Topshop's Inside-Out Blog is giving out a code to get another ticket free when you book online. Nice.

So hopefully I can pop down to London soon and check it out. Although I don't have any friends that care about fashion down here. Could be a problem. Exhibitions with no-one to discuss things with are a bit dull =/

Placement at The Open Consultancy! And other exciting things...

I've been a bit quiet in the blogging front these days... this is because I've been soo busy these past few weeks! Ever since New Blood, I haven't really stopped, due to a number of various things:

I moved into a new house with some friends and there was much room swappage, it took me about 2 weeks to finally unpack and get my room into MY room because I was back and forth to London and such places so much. Anyway I've finally got my posters up and I bought a new clock so that's nice.

I started a new job the week before New Blood, it's a monday to friday admin thing and work really takes the hours out of your day! Amazing, really. Actual employment. So all internet/creativity/posting/stuff takes place after 4pm now.

When I got back from New Blood (literally the day after) I was invited for an interview at The Open Consultancy, in Worcester. I had applied for a 2 month placement there and was soo excited to get an interview! We were set 2 briefs to complete and present at the group interview, which was about 4 days later. Argh. So every day after work I trekked over to Uni (it's dead quiet there in the studios now) and stayed until they kicked me out until I got the work done. That's when real life hits you really, none of this 12 week deadline nonsense with uni work, in the real world you've got 4 day deadlines AND a proper job to go to. Lot of red bull and chocolate was consumed. It was fun though, I love a bit of pressure, me.

One of the briefs was to create a 'thunkstick', which basically are like physical 'what are you thinking' Twitter style mailings. And they're awesome. I like anything like this, they're basically stickers on grey board with awesome shiny bits (mmm shiny) with a really simple, striking ideas that get sent out to people in the creative industries, as a sort of 'bumper sticker for your desk'. This was mine:
It came from the feeling that I keep getting recently that I'm glued to technology... either at work staring at a screen or at uni on Photoshop or at home trawling the internet or facebook or twitter or blogs or anything... or listening to my ipod, or texting my friends, and I just want to unplug! Go for a walk, read a book, draw something random, all things that I love doing and don't do enough. Do you ever feel like that? Technology is immense and helps me in all sorts of places but sometimes I feel like I'm turning into binary.

It went through many incarnations, but one of my favourite things that I didn't use was this:

Loved doing this though, to have a brief which is so open in many ways; 'design a thought' but so constricted in terms of sizing is a real treat. It was so nice to be actually designing something again, I really really need to get some new illustrations done, haven't done anything significant since finishing uni and it's making me restless.

So the interview went great and this monday I was offered the placement!! Which made me do a silly chair bouncy dance lol. I was so happy! I didn't blog about any of this until now because I didn't want to jinx it lol, but now that I actually got offered it I thought it was time to talk about what I've been doing! I can't wait, I've got just over a week left at my current job and then I start at Open on the 27th July. It's going to be so exciting working there. I will definitely update on it all when I start!

The weather is horrible today, I think it's going to be worse tomorrow. Time for a cider and a film I think.

Oh that reminds me, I saw Public Enemies last night, great film! The way it's shot is really interesting, feels almost documentary style, I dunno, the quality was strange. In a good way. And very lacking in music. Also in a good way. And full of Depp and Bale. In a very good way.