Gallery Visits 03

(once apologies for any blurry photographs)

Gallery: The Garden Museum

Exhibition: From Garden City to Green City

Content: A series of paintings, photographs, models & design work exploring historic and futuristic gardening in the city.

Tudor Knot Gardens

Temple I, II, and III

Thoughts: I liked the section that dealt with Nature taking over the city; in particular the watercolours by Wieland Payer, Temple I, II and, III. It was nice to view the design work to get a sense of what you could be doing in the years to come.

Gallery: The Garden Museum

Exhibition: Permanent collection

Content: A series of artefacts, paintings and diary entries from a historic point of view

Thoughts: I found the display quite interesting; particularly the display of tools. It’s interesting to see the difference between the ones they used then and the ones we use now. 

Tools

The garden related toy section was really nostalgic for me as The Garden Miniature set is something that I would play with on rainy days at my grandmas.

Miniature Garden Set

Gallery: Guildhall Art Gallery

Ghyll Beck, Barden, Early Spring 1867

Exhibition: Atkinson Grimshaw: Painter of Moonlight

Content: Atkinson Grimshaw’s body of work including items from his work and home life.

Thoughts: I felt his oil painting were a lot stronger than his watercolours; as were his landscapes stronger than his portraits.

What really struck me about his oil paintings were the way he painted plants. In particular his leafless trees were incredible. Also the way he painted moss and ferns was unbelievably lifelike. He also had a fantastic technique of capturing light whether the cool light of winter and moonlight or the orange glow of fire and 19^th Century street lamps. There was a real sense of time and movement captured in his paintings. It’s amazing considering he was a self-taught pre-Raphaelite painter.

In Peril 1879

Knostrop Hall, Early Morning 1870

Wintry Garden 1877-1971

Gallery Visits 02

(Apologies in advance for some fantastically blurry photography)

Gallery: Somerset House

Exhibition: RIBA forgotten Spaces

Content: An exhibition displaying 28 shortlisted schemes for RIBA’s Forgotten Spaces London competition. Entrants included professionals from a design background as well as people from neighbourhood communities.

The work displayed included two A1 sheets: one containing site analysis of the forgotten space and, one outlining the design principles. Some design work also contained models either working or to scale.

Bee Project

Close up of Bee Project

Thoughts: It was interesting just walking round the lower level of Somerset House; seeing something you normally wouldn’t be given access to. There was some nice model work in the latter stages of the exhibition.

Gallery: Courtauld Gallery

Exhibition: Permanent Collection & Wyndham Lewis

Content: The gallery housed a collection of paintings & artefacts ranging from the renaissance period to impressionism & post-impressionism.

Thoughts: I was impressed by the sort of art on display. I wasn’t really expecting well known paintings.

The room showcasing Wyndham Lewis’ work was fantastic to look at. I liked his use of colour and the way he captured light.

Gallery: Courtauld Gallery

Exhibition: The Spanish Line: Drawings from Ribera to Picasso

Content: A collection of sketches, preparatory and complete from Spain during the 16^th-20^th Century

Thoughts: I thought the simple framing style helped to focus attention on the detailing in the sketches and drawings. It was amazing just how beautifully detailed some of them were. I was definitely getting a case of sketch envy.

Halloween Goodies

Just because...
                      Graveyard Cupcakes....

Day of the Dead skull....

                                                                    carved from a polystyrene egg then painted with acrylic...

               

Gallery Visit 01

There will be many of these so I'll apologise in advance...sorry

Gallery: Tate Modern

Exhibition: The Unilever Series: Tacita Dean Film

Content: Silent analogue film containing a splicing of mixed images with transparent and solid colour.

Thoughts: I visited during half term so there was a great deal of children about, who seemed to enjoy the exhibition most out of anyone. I think this something to do with the vast difference in size between the shadows they were casting and the screen but also just the shadow play itself.

I’m normally not very fond of video installations but this one felt quite interactive. I liked the sense of grandeur and importance about it.

Gallery: Tate Modern

Exhibition: Permanent Collection

Content: The Diane Arbus collection is a series of black & white photographs depicting people going about their everyday lives whether normal or not. The Poetry & Dreams collection was a variety of different media and artists painting in the surrealist style.  

Thoughts:

Diane Arbus – I found her work fascinating to look at. Some photos were bizarre verging on creepy whereas others were charming moments captured on film. All were very intimate. It was a bit like flicking through a very strange family photo album.
Poetry & Dreams – My favourites were the cubist and abstract paintings.

Gallery: Tate Modern

Exhibition: Taryn Simon: A living man declared Dead

Content: A collection of intimate photographic portraits showing a diverse range of family units with references to cultural genealogy. Also photographs with scientific and cultural references.  

Thought: I found her work really interesting. I’m not sure I understood it correctly but as a collection of photographs I enjoyed them. She seemed to be looking at bloodlines of different cultures; almost trying to define some sort of pattern. The background stories ranged from quite sorrowful to plain bizarre. They added a great deal of interest to the photographic collection.

More of the Macro

An emerging stone with brain like qualities

A rusty nail with creeping sort of attitude

Talon like thorns

Questionable bitumen oozings

Rusty rock fragments

Driftwood

Rusty Spray Can

Rusted Lighter

Macro Photography

I have this thing about macro photography...it's just ever so slightly addictive.

Panoramic Views

Another sunnyish day at Hadlow. Mocked up some panoramic views of the planting design site:

View from the East of the site

View from the North of the site

View from the South East of the site

View from the South West of the site

View from the West of the site

Someone asked me how I did these so I thought I'd add a brief description. Its basically several photos taken from the same point combined in Photoshop. Firstly, you piece the photos together. Its always better to have an overlap. If you make the upper layer transparent it makes it a lot easier to see where they go. It doesn't have to be exact. Once you've got your overlapping string of photos (making sure you've put the transparency back up) you have to fiddle around to get the colouring even. I find that Hue & Saturation are the best tools to use. I would also recommend fiddling with the brightness and contrast tools as well as levels. Where the photos overlap (unless you've used a tripod) they might not quite match up. My method is to use the soft brush eraser to take away some of the overlap until it looks right. This makes the join a bit blurry but if you run over it with the sharpen tool, it normally sorts it out. Finish by cropping into a neat rectangle.

First Week

Lets begin with saying Hi, I'm Michaela. This blog is all about my experiences of pursuing a post-grad in Landscape Architecture but I suppose a little sidetracking may occur.

Thursday - Yes, a day where Greenwich University flexes its organisational muscles and spectacularly fails. We were told to arrive for 10 when we actually needed to be there for 12. The list telling us what group we were in was locked in a car boot of a car not actually on campus. Then, 12 o'clock arrives and so does our teacher. Accept, she's not our teacher. An hour passes before our actual teacher arrives. So finally, Photoshop workshops: interventions on everyday items into actual pictures -

Paper Clip leashes