LCC began its season of summer shows last week with the opening of Power On, featuring work by Foundation Art & Design (FAD) students. Alex Blanchard, resident art critic and a student on LCC’s BA Creative Advertising Strategy, picks his favourite works from the show.
Photo: Ana Escobar
Shown above is Samuel Mensah-Bonsu’s Never Text Me Again. The piece expounds the correlation between immediacy in communication and a decline in emotional honesty. He explains “…abuse of communication leads to a lack of expressiveness and creativity. Technology has made sharing such a facile operation that it has made people take it for granted making them express the most inane of chat so freely and never saying anything of actual substance.”
Samuel Mensah-Bonsu studied the Graphic Design orientation under tutor Leigh Clarke and will progress to a BA (Hons) in Graphic & Media Design at LCC in September.
Photo: The Transmute Collective
Max Millington’s Portraying the Urban Environment (above) is a personal and subjective photographic study of London. Rather than attempting to be objective in any way, his work is an expression of interaction; his perception of a constructed surrounding, presented through photographic process. Max will begin a BA (Hons) in History in September.
Photo: Ana Escobar
Amber Anderson beautifully demonstrates the absurdity and frail façade of the recent election battle with her piece A Future Fair for All. Traditionally working in 2D, this projected represented a new exploration for her, “…the foundation course has taught me how to push the boundaries and take risks, and finding the best way to visually communicate my ideas rather than settling for what I feel most comfortable producing.” Cardboard and duct tape was used because of its weaknesses and the interior deliberately left exposed. Amber will begin a BA (Hons) in Illustration at Camberwell College of Arts in September.
Photo: Ana Escobar
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN is a video installation by Graphic Design student Ana Garcia Segura. Ana’s work is a profound and ambitious personal investigation into the function and role of design in regard to societal issues. She explains, “The piece consists of 140 photographs depicting intense facial expressions, over two and a half minutes, accompanied by the sound of people telling their life stories. The narrations can be heard simultaneously, while interspersed with changing levels of volume to disconcert and perturb the spectator.” Her work explores viewer interpretation and the interaction between context and empathy. You can find the full project here.
Photo: The Transmute Collective
Joel Colover creates an art form of instruction with his piece How to Surf the Internet. Utilising a variety of mediums and tools, Joel has applied psycho-geographic concepts to internet use and has explored similarities between internet navigation and that of a city. Aware of the personal and subjective approach of the project, Joel (Graphic Design) has been able to rationalise, contextualise and articulate patterns of behaviour most often unseen.
Photo: Alex Blanchard
3D Spatial Design student Manuela Velez’s project, From Dark to Life, is a wonderfully magical, simple and practical solution to a real problem. “I particularly like Abney Park Cemetery, It is a really old place, a little treasure in the middle of Stoke Newington East London, unfortunately the park is closed during the night (like all of them), I wanted to resolve that issue”. Manuela produced a working model of a pressure mat and simple LED connection; “The concept then is the visitors giving life to the park by their own step each tile lights up and the surroundings of the park as well.”
Photo: Ana Escobar
In Tom Ozkavaf’s piece, the viewer interprets three cubes, experienced as sinking. Absent of inherent meaning, Tom’s work is purely within its surrounding, open to engagement and working around spatial context. “I want the individual to simply appreciate the object, and if they seek any reasoning or understanding they can simply make their own opinion/relationship with it.” The three pieces are wood constructions, aesthetically modified to achieve an “object where the properties of its materials were lost”. The implementation of this work is exceptional and must be seen.
