Harry Potter Tour

Earlier in the year I took my family to the Warner Bros Studio in Leavesdon, London for the Harry Potter Tour.  For anybody who is interested in film-making, set and costume design, animatronics, prop making, CGI, or special effects this is the place to come.

The characters of Harry Potter look down on you in the entrance and The Weasley’s old Ford Anglia hangs precariously above you.

At the allotted time we were ushered into a queue and got our first glimpse of The Cupboard Under the Stairs before being escorted into a small cinema to watch a short film on the Making of Harry Potter.  The next part of the tour was a bit of a surprise so I won’t mention it here but we eventually found ourselves outside the main doors of the Great Hall at Hogwarts.  If I hadn't known better the set looked very realistic such was the attention to detail.  

As the doors slowly opened we found ourselves in the Great Hall.  It was smaller than I had expected but it makes you appreciate the power of film and the extraordinary skills of the cinematographers.

For the rest of the tour we were allowed to wander around freely to explore the behind scenes of the making of Harry Potter.

These are just a few of the many images we took on the day.    

The Weasley's old Ford Anglia

The Cupboard Under The Stairs

Some Muggles outside the doors of the Great Hall

One of the long trellis tables in the Great Hall

Costume design for Harry Potter

The fireplace in the Great Hall

Hagrid's costume worn by Robbie Coltrane

Wig making

The set of no 4, Privet Drive

Hogwarts Night Bus

Headless Nick aka John Cleese

Animatronics Dept

One of the many drawings of the sets on display

One of the set models 

Model of a set.  Notice the intricate modelling of the stairs.

This is a hand sculpted 1:24 scale construction model of Hogwarts castle.

  It sits at nearly 50 feet in diameter.It took 86 artists and crew members to construct the first version
which was then rebuilt and altered many times over the next seven films.
The man hours added together in the constuction and reworking came
to 74 years.    

Essex Industrial Museum Video

Digital presentation of development of the Studio 2b project, Retelling an Industrial Past. The project entails the transformation of the former Courtauld's boiler house in Halstead, Essex, into the Essex Industrial Museum.

The link below shows the animation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIsocu8Eef8&feature=youtu.be 

Exhibition Reflection

Barbican Centre

The Bride and The Bachelors: Marcel Duchamp

The Bride and The Bachelors Exhibition, set up within the art gallery at the Barbican Centre, is a function to celebrate and house some of his most inspirational and famous artwork of one of the most significant characters in the history of contemporary art.  Marcel Duchamp was widely considered the ‘father’ of conceptual art and the most influential artist of the 20^th Century. 

This was one of Duchamp’s first exhibitions to explore the huge impact his work had on four additional great modern artists, including composer John Cage, dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham and visual artists Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.

Duchamp's work, including Bicycle Wheel from 1913 and an autographed upturned urinal entitled Fountain 1917, drastically altered what we think of as art today by distorting the division between art and life. He used objects that are used on a day to day basis to create what he calls ready-mades and titled it art.  This alone made some people find his art pieces provocative and sometimes controversial. 

The exhibition featured an assortment of paintings, sculptures, stage sets and musical notations, composed by leading contemporary artist Philippe Parreno.

My initial interpretation of the space was that it created a very noticeably calming and relaxing atmosphere and on entering I immediately thought that the exhibition was very simplistic and basic.  However when inspecting each of Duchamp’s pieces of art, I spent a long time trying to understand what some of his work actually meant and at times was baffled by some of his creations.  I do believe that Duchamp had purposeful meanings behind why he made some of his creations, but this wasn’t blatantly apparent or easy to interpret.  I believe Marcel Duchamp’s work to be a statement of intent that demonstrated he wanted to provide a different means for people to perceive art.

When walking around the exhibition I was especially drawn to the ‘Bicycle Wheel’ and wondered what use it actually had, I came to the conclusion that it could have just been out of boredom or lack of inspiration, that caused him to put two already useful objects together to create a single un-useful object but this is just my own opinion. I struggle to relate to his work, as I myself, just see them as ordinary everyday objects. However I do find his work inspiring, mainly because it is unlike any art that I have seen before and isn’t the type that usually interests me.  This could in some ways be a good thing as it gave me the chance to take into account different reasons for why artists produce certain work.

Although I do enjoy the combination of music and art together, I found that the random and yet spontaneous music being played in the background within the space, for me, didn’t really interlink with the art work that I could see before me.  Sometimes I felt it worked and sometimes I didn’t, but this depended on the piece I was viewing.

The exhibition also entailed work from two modern artists, who were strongly influenced by Marcel Duchamp’s work; Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. I enjoyed their art much more as I have learnt a lot about their work in the past and also understand and relate to their style of artwork considerably more.

Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin

This is the museum for modern art focusing mainly on 20th contrary art. The gallery was designed by Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe and was opened in 1968. I really enjoyed this museum as the exhibition pieces are displayed in an a very different method. Some things were interactive, media, paintings and unusual lighting and sculptures. Every room was unique: No two rooms are the same. 

The Bride and the Bachelors Exhibition: Duchamp

The Bride and the Bachelors Exhibition: Duchamp with Cage, Cunningham, Rauschenberg and Johns

As part of our Art and Design Theory module we have analysed many influential art and design manifestos, written in the 20^th Century.

The first manifesto which I researched into was “Dada Excites Everything” by Tristan Tzara and others. The manifesto portrays the Dada art movement, which occurred at the end of WWI.

One if the artists that contributed to the Dada art movement was Marcel Duchamp, with his series of ready-mades. 

We attended the exhibition on 27^th February, which showcased some of Duchamp’s work, as well as other like-minded artists. 

As photographs were not allowed to be taken inside of the exhibition, the images below illustrate some of the artwork that was shown:

“Fountain” One of Duchamps chosen objects for his ready-mades.

The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) 1915- 23

Bicycle Wheel, Marcel Duchamp, 1951

Overall, the exhibition was very eye-opening and educational to be able to see the objects in person, and to be able to apply the theory behind them. Although at times understanding the full meaning behind each object was difficult to comprehend, the context of the Dada manifesto, and other previous research allowed me to appreciate what was being shown.

The Bride and The Bachelors: Duchamp with Cage, Cunningham, Johns and Rauschenberg

We had to visit an exhibition as part of our Art and Design Theory module. On the 27th February I visited ‘The Bride and The Bachelors: Duchamp with Cage, Cunningham, Johns and Rauschenberg’ at the Barbican Art Gallery. 

Duchamp was a french artist most associated with the Dada and Surrealist movements, and considered one of the most important artists of the 20th century. This exhibition focused on Duchamps legacy he held within contemporary art and the collaborations and influence he had on composer, John Cage, choreographer, Merce Cunningham, and visual artists Robert Rauschengerg and Jasper Johns. 

I found some of Duchamps work quite humorous, such as Bicycle Wheel and Fountain. I tried to relate with Duchamp and see it as art, but it’s so far from the conventional that I struggled to do this. For him to be such an influential figure is bizarre to me because after looking at his work, couldn’t anyone do what he did? Fountain after all is just a urinal, and Bicycle wheel is just an up-side-down wheel on a stall. But I think it’s this scandalous approach he had towards art that made him so popular. 

Although I do find Duchamps ‘readymades’ some what of a practical joke, they did what they was supposed to do, they go against what people knew as art and create a light hearted and humorous approach instead, and thats what I understand the Dada movement to be about. 

The work that most interested me was the work by Jasper Johns. He experimented with numbers and colour, and I found his work the most enjoyable to look at. 

Overall I thought the exhibition was thought provoking but it didn’t radically change my views on how I saw Duchamp and his work before. It was useful and informative on what the Dada and Surrealist movements stood for and has contributed to my Art and Design Theory module. 

Dancing Around Duchamp @ The Barbican

Photographs taken outside after the exhibition at the Barbican Centre. No camera's inside..

The Bride and the Bachelors exhibition explores the artist Marcel Duchamp, and the way he influenced the artistic world.
Many young artists were inspired my Duchamp at the start of their careers, causing a direction of this type of art in the 50's and 60's. 
The exhibition features over 90 pieces of work that tell the story of Duchamps relationships with the composer, John Cage, choreographer, Merce Cunningham, and visual artists Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.

The exhibition starts with Duchamps most iconic pieces.

Scheduled dance performances reflect on Duchamp's inspiration.

Sketches drawn whilst in the exhibition.

One piece that I particularly liked were the Viels 1-4 by Rauschenberg. 

I also like the work by Jasper Johns, which experimented with the form of numbers, for example, Figure 8.

Overall I found the exhibition interesting, but quite hard work. The pieces from all artists overlapped, and there was no real timeline to the way they were set out. This meant that you needed to connect the dots between pieces elsewhere in the exhibition in order to understand the relationship between them.

Neues Museum - Berlin

Neues Museum, Berlin

One of the places we visited in Berlin was the Neues Museum. The museum was built between 1841 - 1859 by Friedrich August Stüler but was badly damaged during the second world war. David Chippperfield reconstructed the museum repairing and restoring its original design. The building is a fantastic example of a combination of new and old. It has won the prestigious Mies van der Rohe Award in 2011.