Gogo Graham Research and Event Planning

After researching for my up and coming designer I decided on Gogo Graham, a transgender designer who's target market is transgender women. A large part of this project is to design a politically driven event for the designer. Graham uses trans models for his work and so this is the political viewpoint that I am going with for my event. 

For my event I need to think about location. I was looking at water and how when light is reflected onto it, it creates a rainbow projection. The flag of the LGBTQA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Asexual) community is a rainbow and so I thought that this would be a really interesting location idea to look into. I started looking at hotel swimming pools with interesting lighting and aesthetics however I then had to think about budget and how going down this route could become very expensive. So I looked into outdoor lidos. I found one called the Hampton Pool in London which looked perfect. Once the sun beds, children's slides and lifeguard tower were moved it provided the perfect canvas for my event. Next to the pool was a small field, usually used in the day for an extra lounging area, however for my event it would be used for food and drink and socialising throughout the event. A DJ would be set up here providing guests with an atmosphere that they wouldn't want to leave. 

My event will be held in the evening with lights shining into the pool creating the desired rainbow colours. Glow sticks of the rainbow spectrum will be gifted to the guests as well as placed in transparent balloons in and out of the pools. 

Casting will not be an expensive issue as we would use Graham's usual models which are friends of his. The models will surround the pool, sitting on the edge with dangling feet into the pool, with a few in the pool on inflatable sun loungers.  

Tate - Strongest and Strangest Room

The strangest room in the Tate Modern Gallery of which I have visited for my ongoing contextual project was definitely created by Sheela Gowda. Walking in and being surrounded in real human hair that was hand woven by Gowda was nothing short of strange. It was powerful however it wasn't the strongest room that I walked into. This was created by Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, who put together several tv screens. The actual piece of work however wasn't the thing that made it the strongest though. It was how the room was set up for the display. The room was incredibly dark with the main light source coming from the televisions themselves. It meant that viewers of the public were drawn in and consumed by the work of Chetwynd. 

There are many ways in which the rooms exhibiting the work of Sheela Gowda and Marvin Gaye Chetwynd can be compared. They have some similarities, such as the themes they were influenced by, and some differences such as the way they chose to display their work. It is interesting to see that despite the sixteen year age gap, an amount of time in which a lot of social norms can change, they are both interesting in representing the same themes and ideas. The different styles that each have used has taught me what is effective and what isn’t. For example Gowda’s work was of a large scale and covered an entire room, however Chetwynd’s physical piece of work is in one corner of his designated room, but the room is dark and so the light illuminating from the screens draws you in and when seated on the beanbags in front makes you feel as if the scale is bigger than it truly is. Gowda worked in sculpture and upon walking in the room and discovering the media that she used was human hair, despite being impressed I was left feeling strange and slightly disgusted due to the thought of who's it was and how old it was. I love sculpture however I also love video and I feel as though Chetwynd has combined the two in perfect harmony. The images displayed on the screen seamed together provide the interesting video, along with the way in which the screens are arranged makes it more of an installation piece. Therefore I would argue that Chetwynd’s work is stronger. The power in which it had over it’s audience was amazing to see. I saw first hand that captured faces of the viewers who were onlooking what Chetwynd

had produced. It wasn’t just the piece of work but the way that it was displayed that made it stronger than the work of Sheela Gowda. 

Designing

I knew I didn’t want to create a garment for this project  as I would be taking a promotional route. Therefore I decided to make a simple but interesting headpiece for my model to ware for a focused photoshoot and a film. My designs were simple as I’m not great at illustrations, I played around with the placement of my accessory to understand where I wanted it. I decided on the head as I wanted to also focus on makeup for the shoot and so having the accessory on the head would make things a lot easier when it came to having both in the same shots. 

Moodboards for Shooting

I created several mood boards in preparation for my shoot. Location for me was the most important. This would set the desired mood for my photoshoot and my film especially.

Space and Galaxy

After researching into sunsets I became fascinated in the sun, and therefore space. I love the idea of the universe and galaxy. Galaxy matches my purple colour way and therefore I decided to look deeper into it. The idea of space and gravity relates to structure and attachment for me because I don’t like to take an obvious route. You may look at space and the universe and see little structure, however to me that’s all I see. I see variations of perfect and no gravity, I see stars not randomly spread but alined perfectly, and I also see perfect combinations of colour in a space where there is none. The way that us as a species have describe space through illustration is beautiful. Galaxy print has become such a trend recently and I am very much a fan of it. The idea of aliens and what we perceive them to look and be like also interests me. My idea of what aliens would look like is a combination of galaxy print and unusual features. I would like to find a way of producing this combination in my work. One idea of doing this would be with galaxy makeup and an unusually shaped head accessory. 

Picking colour for Mono Project

At first I thought it would be really interesting to work in one colour for this project. Normally I find it quite difficult to insert colour into my work and find myself trying to inject colour for the sake of it. I started off by looking at what I am attracted to when I flick through magazines and look books. I found that I was more drawn to neutral colours like tans and browns. I felt as though this gave a classy feel to work and photography, but at the same time it was also quite boring to look at as everything blurred together. Another colour I was drawn to was blue, I found that it gave things a crisp clear look, and depending on the shades and tones used can set some interesting moods. 

After this I decided to look at a wide range of colours to decide for definite what I wanted to take forward. I created a mood board of colours and found that I was also drawn to purples. I took it down to blue and purple as I could combine the two quite easily until I had decided on just one.

Blue Skies and Sunsets

After researching at the earths structure I decided that the route I was going down was far to broad and I needed to limit it down into something that I could focus on. After just simply looking out the window I stared to look at the clouds, how they moved, how they split and combined. I looked at the sky as my mood, and would use the colour blue to explore it. 

After completing some photography I found that the blue that I was exploring didn't vary in shade, and I became quite bored in the work that I was producing, this was until I began to look at sunsets and then my colour quickly evolved into purple, a colour that I was interested in the beginning.

Natural History Museum [add images]

I didn't know how to go from the brief, structure and attachment and it wasn't until visiting the Natural History Museum when my direction became a bit more clear. I walked into the earth lifetime room where I found out some pretty interesting facts. I found out that if the lifetime of the earth was put into 12 hours, absolutely nothing was there until three o'clock, this is when bacteria was evident, at six o'clock every living thing was found in the water, nine o'clock and life out of the water was evident, dinosaurs came at ten and mammals at eleven, then at just twenty seconds to midnight, humans. This fact blew my mind and made me think about the structures and attachments that were made along the journey that made the earth how it is today.