Digital Residencies – Page 4 – Jane Phillips Award

Introducing: Claire Jones

July 6, 2022July 6, 2022Posted in Blog Post, Claire Jones

Digital Residency Recipient: Foundation Art & Design, Swansea College of Art (UWTSD)

Digital Residency Dates: 01 – 30 July 2022

Mission Gallery is pleased to announce the 2022 Jane Phillips Award Digital Residency for Art & Design Students at Swansea College of Art, UWTSD. We are proud to be working with our partners at Swansea College of Art, UWTSD and keen to shine a light on the high standard of work being produced by students across all disciplines.

This residency will provide an online space within the Jane Phillips Award website to display and develop work, ideas and research, while offering support and promotion through our networks.

About Claire

Delving into what I want to see as an artist, I embody my ideas wholly. My working process allows the inter disciplinary process to guide the creative end result.

I am filled with emotional responses to my crochet hook, needle, sewing machine and biro like warm nostalgic feelings of an old friend and all the possibilities they create. Drawing on my surroundings, life experiences and a rich family history of crafting.

The autobiographical nature of my work spans many themes. The responsibility of my message and materials (often evident in the fragility of my work) weighs heavily on me. Crafting, refining and capturing this can lead to dark edge responses with pieces that are sometimes awkward and uncomfortable to look at. This is a place of comfort for me, where I can embrace an inner feeling that people don’t always see when they look at me, allowing a bit of truth to escape.

Fight Me

July 2, 2022July 6, 2022Posted in Blog Post, Claire Jones

I would like to thank Mission Gallery for choosing me as the winner of the the Jane Phillips Award.
Digital Residence for Art and Design Foundation at UWTSD Swansea.
It’s a massive honour. I am grateful and really excited for what comes next.

Embracing our worst self in full understanding that we are not only that but our best self too.

The foundation course I have just finished has supported me thru this journey.
Given me the confidence to believe in myself as an artist and renewed a desire within me for education and learning.

The knuckle dusters that won me this opportunity are made from wood and wool (crochet) with crystals.
Exhibited in my end of year show.
…Desire.

This residency is giving me time to develop and progress these designs. Experiment with materials and process.
I have been back to the wood lab in uni and picked up my crochet hook. I already feel a move from the outward powerful statement of the knuckle dusters to a more inward feeling.
I am in a no mans land now. Finished one course and yet to start the next. It is exciting and daunting at the same time. A natural time for self reflection.
The new work I have been making looks inward to Fight ME.
We enter into new stages / relationships / phases in our lives all the time. When it’s something we want, have even sought out and fought for, we are happy and give of ourselves willingly to it. Wholeheartedly blending ourselves with who or what this new situation is.

I have been exploring the part of these situations when I have realised that I am no longer who I was.
Sometimes I have been ok with that. Even more, I have seen that the new me has grown and I am proud of who I have become. Being back in education has brought out the best parts of me. I have fought the lazy, contented Me to bring out the Want More Me.
But other times I have lost so much of myself in situations that I hardly recognise Me and had to fight to get Me back.

It’s the moment that you realise how much you have changed and have to decide how you feel about it that I have been focusing on. Is it good for me? Do I want this? Do I like who I am now? Do I feel trapped? Am I bound to this situation?

“Build up resilience, build up views
But you can’t build for long on a partial truth.”

Digital Residency: Foundation Art & Design, Swansea College of Art (UWTSD)

May 14, 2022May 14, 2022Posted in Blog Post, Digital Residencies, Foundation Art & Design Residency

This residency will provide an online space within the Jane Phillips Award website to display and develop work, ideas and research, while offering support and promotion through our networks.

Residency recipients will be selected by Rhian Wyn Stone, Exhibitions & Retail Coordinator at Mission Gallery, Swansea and Jane Phillips Award committee member.

Digital Residency Dates: 01 – 30 July 2022

About the Jane Phillips Award

Launched at Mission Gallery in 2011, the Jane Phillips Award is a memorial to Jane Phillips (1957-2011) Mission Gallery’s first director. The award is intended as a legacy to Jane’s passion for mentoring and nurturing talent, working with individuals at every level – offering opportunities to students as well as artists at the beginning of their journey. Opportunities that are further strengthened by working with Mission Gallery’s team, Swansea College of Art UWTSD and elysium gallery.

The award became international under Amanda Roderick, Mission Gallery’s previous director, and with further assistance by following directors Matthew Otten and Ceri Jones, plus an enthusiastic board, the award is constantly developing and changing.

Z I N E

August 25, 2021Posted in Digital Residencies, Gower College Swansea, Ramona WhiteTagged zine

The past week I continued to work towards a few graphic design projects to include in my zine. In full, the zine is now 12 pages which I am planning to get printed and distributed very soon. This is my first time creating a full product and I am extremely grateful for the use of this blog to promote my work.

The zine lends itself to a scrapbook aesthetic, with the taped down pressed flowers and somewhat diary entries. I believe this adds to the childlike innocence I am trying to convey. I wanted to make an analogous theme throughout the zine, with each page incorporating organically smooth shapes and twisting lines. The idea was to create a fluid motion which brings the viewers’ eyes to all corners of the spread, and seamlessly transports them overleaf.

Have a flick through the E-zine here.

Z I N E

August 12, 2021Posted in Digital Residencies, Gower College Swansea, Ramona WhiteTagged graphic design, zine

This week I began to develop a series of mock pages for a zine. I pulled influences from 2000s styled advertising and retro computer games because that was my first experience of graphic design growing up. My initial thoughts on colour palettes was pastel pinks and vibrant blues. I wanted to create an iridescent title and I experimented with a myriad of different coloured gradients until I found an effect I was pleased with.

The main concept and story behind the zine is how I have become addicted to romanticising the past. For me, it’s easy to paint my childhood in such a glowing brush that I find it difficult to appreciate current life in the same light. With each major life change, I am forever believing that those were the good old days, without giving value to the present. With these graphics and words in my zine, I am attempting to fall back in love with my current life, rather than only enjoying the moments when they become memories. Forever looking back is no way to live life.

Have a flick through the digital copy of first pages in the zine.

More to come soon.

R A M O N A W H I T E

August 4, 2021August 4, 2021Posted in Digital Residencies, Gower College Swansea, Ramona WhiteTagged photography

My name is Ramona White, and I have just finished my Art and Design foundation diploma at Gower College Swansea. I am extremely grateful for the use of the Jane Phillips Award blog, and I’m delighted to be the first from GCS to do so.

N O S T A L G I A

I have always been fascinated by the feeling of nostalgia. A thought of the past floats through your head, instantly filling your heart with warmth while it simultaneously begins to feel suffocated. It’s as though the rose-tinted glasses allow you to fall in love with the past but the bittersweet tinge of reality could burn a hole straight through you. To me, it’s a beautiful and confusing concoction of heart retching aching and carefree love, two emotions which are painfully strong, pulling your heart in two completely different directions. When feeling nostalgic, I never know whether I want to live in the bliss of the memories or to cry forever at the thought of them never repeating themselves.

This photoshoot revolved around the idea of nature and childhood nostalgia.

While growing up, I had a relatively small garden, but it was gracefully packed with overgrown nature. Long grass and wildflowers sprouting between concrete slabs, making a plethora of miniature ecosystems. As a child I would leap face first into this personal landscape. I have always been drawn to nature, compelled by something within me to reach out and adventure into interesting landscapes hidden within the cities I have lived. My inner child yearns to be fully surrounded by wildlife, which is where the inspiration for this series’ look stemmed from.

The makeup, modelling and photography was all done by me, allowing me to have complete creative control over the outcomes. The dried flowers I have displayed on my face were picked from my garden and pressed by myself. The flowers are still aesthetically beautiful and delicate but will eventually become completely stale and lifeless. The knowledge that something will never fully return to its earlier qualities once removed from its original home; that is where the pain originates from in nostalgia.

Jane Phillips Award Residency

June 29, 2021July 13, 2021Posted in Nathan Cartwright

Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (1971) by Reyner Banham

Drawing influence from the horizontal landscape of Los Angeles and Reyner Banham’s observations of the city, in his book Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (1971), my time in this residency begins to explore the horizontal potential of Swansea and any resulting associated feelings.

Following ‘mobility outweighs monumentality’ (Banham, 1971, p. 5) in Los Angeles, my response will focus on the mobility and modularity of architectural forms within the city.

Drawings

Visiting the Civic Centre, Swansea

Opened in 1982, the Swansea Civic Centre is a Brutalist landmark of the city and has been an influential piece of post-war 20th century architecture on my practice. However, the building faces demolition and is listed by the 20th Century Society as one of the top 10 buildings at risk.

Aside from being a symbolic piece of Brutalist architecture, the Civic Centre has only been standing for 39 years, questioning the length of time the building has been in use, highlighting a possible sustainability concern.

My time in this residency will look towards a future Swansea, and explore a method of repurposing the Civic Centre, utilising the building’s architectural forms, in order to draw attention to this particular example of endangered post-war architecture and consider whether the structure’s monumentality can be altered for modularity and mobility, if demolition becomes inevitable.

Working Drawings

Working drawings exploring methods of modularity and mobility in existing and endangered post-war architecture.

Possible civic routes for the Civic Centre.

Concept animation

Concept animation exploring a possible method of modularity and mobility for the Civic Centre, creating airborne environments, repurposing the existing architectural forms.

Modular Civic Centre platforms.

Concept collage exploring a method of modularity for the Civic Centre, altering the building’s monumentality for mobility.

Civic platforms become airborne and operate within the above civic level, offering vistas of the landscape and cityscape and explore the horizontal potential of Swansea.

Digital Residency 2021

June 21, 2021June 21, 2021Posted in Digital Residencies, Nathan Cartwright

Mission Gallery and the Jane Phillips Award are pleased to announce the 2021 Jane Phillips Award Residency for an Art & Design Student at Swansea College of Art, UWTSD. We are proud to be working with our partners at Swansea College of Art, UWTSD and keen to shine a light on the high standard of work being produced by students across all disciplines.

Following shortlisting, we are please to announce that the successful recipient as:

Digital Residencies:

23 June – 13 July 2021: Nathan Cartwright

The residency will provide an online space within the Jane Phillips Award website to display and develop work, ideas and research, while offering support and promotion through our networks.

Image: Elevating Spaces by Nathan Cartwright

Merged into Nature by Laurentina Miksiene

May 15, 2020May 20, 2020Posted in Blog Post, Laurentina Miksiene

The day when all days felt like Sundays, we felt emptiness. All the connections with the world we lost in just in one day. At first we enjoyed the ‘’freedom’’… Finally, we had time for our families, we had time for a cup of coffee in the morning, we had time to talk or watch movies together, we had time for kids… 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10…. first you’re counting the days after the 20th day, it just doesn’t matter what day it is, what time it is. You don’t need to go sleep early because you don’t need to wake up early, to shower and rush somewhere…

Nature started to heal herself but how about humans. Sometimes I feel I’ve lost myself and I believe we all have a feeling that we have lost something we can not touch but can feel. All the connections with nature with other humans.

Only nature helped man endure the misfortunes of life and became support in daily life. The connection between man and nature can be found in literature, poetry, artworks, and photography. In my work, I sought the connection between man and nature. I was looking for a compromise between man and nature. That compromise is more uncomfortable than perfect. Through nature, we can see not only ourselves but also a reflection of our soul. Without this connection with nature, man mutates not only physically, psychologically, but also spiritually. In my series of photographs, I was looking for a spiritual connection between man and nature. A man comes from the earth and returns to it. The earth is the basic premise of our existence and its end. This vibrant, pulsating matter is open to both birth and death. A place where a clump can turn into life at any time, and life into a clump. Man is only a temporary particle of the earth cycle.

The photographs I printed on silk fabric to make them more flexible and weightless. I wanted to see the movement of fabric and structure of silk threads. The photographs look as though they are merged into the fabric like we are trying to merge into nature. It is like the fugitive testimony about man’s and nature’s compromise.