collaborations.
I encourage students and friends to join forces.
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I'm always interested in reworking, reinventing and rethinking other people's outcomes. I try to develop these ideas into collaborative project based learning experiences, in the hope that everyone understands the importance of leaning with other people, and allowing others to impact your own enjoyment, engagement and interpretation of how we can develop together.
The Environment We Live in
How Humanity Interacts with Light and Objects.
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A Whole School Art Exhibition.
550 Students contributed to this show. It involved individually creating and curating a series of projects that were all, in some way, collaborative.
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The overarching theme discussed was light, and how it interplayed with the choices we make in daily life. The streets of Yangon are often twinkling with LED lights that surround anything of importance. The connection I wanted to make by making light the theme of this exhibition started from a positive place, however when exploring the idea with students during lessons, it seemed highly important to then also highlight environmental issues that plague the city that we currently reside in, and more widely the world we all live in.
Collaboration 1.
Year 7 Martian surfaces made together.
Expandable foam, reused packaging, gloves, masks and working at speed.
Drawings made in response by me, simultaneously exploring the martian landscape discovered on the Faroe Islands, as well as by the shape, form and space devised by these students.
sculptures in the studio.
Developing still life compositions that became more sculptural focal points. I put these together at the start of a each new year, in the hope that the rusting, disused textures would test students abilities to really look, see, observe and react. This creative output also allowed me to express viewpoints I housed regarding working rights, child labour and the cost of living. These became talking points of the lessons I taught and allowed students an opportunity to ask questions and make observations based on the allegory surrounding the idea behind the piece.
Collaboration 2.
Found objects collected thoughtfully.
Used, broken, discarded left overs, a symbol of waste and inequality. Questions encouraged.
Collaboration 3.
Na Somin - Black felt tip pen.
Digitally reworked, printed on translucent flexible acrylic.
Set design and theatre collaborations.
When arriving in Yangon, I was tasked with making things happen. One of the first things that scared me was the creation of a massive character within the Secondary production; Audrey 2. A grotesque, murderous, blood thirsty, half alien 'plant.'
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The direction I wanted to take the entirety of the production towards, visually, was one of localised contextualisation.
I designed the set to mimic the eccentricities of our surrounding city, Yangon. By using classic blue PVC piping to symbolise the 'run down, broken' florist described in the screenplay, I found elements of this task really interesting.
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I decided to change the way this integral character was presented, wanting to avoid the cliche of the blockbuster movie, and wanting the personality of the student cast to play her to be truly seen, in the most fascinating way possible.
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I created a fully mobile, moving Audrey 2. She was animated through a simple pulley system and was fashioned from materials easily found in Myanmar. Indeed, I took much of my inspiration from the Burmese hand made Nats' that local people create to symbolise elements of Buddhist culture.
Collaboration 4.
Set design and character creation.
"Little Shop of Horrors"
Focus: Audrey 2.
