Chesterfield College - Arts Festival Essay

On Tuesday 21^st June, we visited the Arts Festival at Chesterfield College. This show was displaying the work of the second years in Art and Design, Fashion, Graphic Design and Interactive Media. Much like the previous show, this featured accompanying sketchbooks and development work, but there were no artists accompanying their work.

Within the Art and Design course especially, there were a variety of specialisms shown. Some pieces were made with textiles, some painted. Some were more photographic or otherwise digitally created. In addition to this, some pieces were very transparent and sought to illustrate or advertise, where others had more emotional significance. In the Graphic Design and Interactive Media area, there were also a variety of specialisms – some work was heavily digital, some using more lens based media, and others taking a more traditional approach. All of these things further demonstrate how broad a creative course can be.

This show was split into rooms like the Manchester show, with an upstairs and downstairs and adjoining rooms for different courses. Work was displayed in the dome area, and on the walls surrounding it on both floors. My main problem with the Art and Design display on the bottom floor was the lack of flow it had. The layout seemed more like a maze, with a small corner shape allocated to each piece of work. It was sometimes very easy to miss work out because of this. This was not the case with the outer walls and the work in the upstairs rooms, which was laid out much more easily. However, in the Graphics/Interactive room, a lot of work was grouped together on the wall to save space, with sketchbooks in the middle, and a lot of the name labels were placed together, which made it hard to see who owned which work and book. For this reason, I have mostly featured work from the Art and Design area, as it was frustrating to have a limited choice for the Graphics area.

Interestingly, a lot of pieces outside of my usual comfort zone of photography and illustration caught my eye this time. I found some of the photographs to be not very well thought out and candid. While some of the pieces I am looking at have illustrative qualities, I was not so impressed by a lot of the illustrations I saw at the Arts Festival.

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I am reviewing three pieces by Emma Scott, who is studying a Foundation Diploma in Art and Design. She created four pieces about body image, which I found really captivating when they caught my eye. All of these pieces, when hung on the wall like they were, were equally striking, and each one conveys the same message, but with a uniquely different delivery.
All three of these pieces are executed in very cold blues, whites and greys, which all give off a feeling of sadness and loneliness, which is often associated with body image issues. 

(own photograph)

This is the first piece in the series, and is easily the subtlest. No type is used in this piece. In terms of materials, this piece looks like it was made with inks and collage on some kind of board. The scratchy effect around the figure and in the collage that was made by the wood grain gives a strong message of desperation, like the artist is scratching desperately, trying to get out of this feeling of worthlessness that comes with low self-esteem. The way the scratches seem to frame the figure is reminiscent of a halo, which could symbolise how society glorifies the slim, beautiful people. The face that the model’s face is cut off could symbolise this further – that the artist has been forced to believe that nothing else matters beyond being beautiful and slim.

I could easily see how this piece could’ve stemmed from a life drawing class, with the focus on the body, as well as the skull that’s been drawn over the figure.

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(own photograph)

 This is the second piece I have chosen from Emma’s work. This piece is much more type based, and follows the colour scheme of the previous piece very well. This piece looks almost entirely painted, based on the hurried brush stroke feel of the background. Over the top is the deeply emotional monologue of someone struck by terribly low self-esteem. What I like most of all about this is that the monologue isn’t solely focused on the feelings of one person, but it also focuses on the general opinions people have on body image – “The world would be a lot easier if people accepted people who look different”.

Behind the text, the portraits of people seem distorted in the strokes of paint and obscured by the text. This could be on purpose, to illustrate the idea of looking into the mirror and seeing a distorted image of yourself because of how you feel inside. 

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(own photograph)

This is the last piece I have chosen to review. When I was walking through the Arts Festival, this piece was the one that caught my attention before the others. At first I wasn’t too sold on the inverted effect on the photograph, but I grew to like it more, as I noticed how much easier it was to read the type, and how it fits the cool colour scheme really well.

The eyes of the model easily emphasize how cold and desperate these emotions are, and their pure white colour makes them hard to avoid, forcing the audience to face up to the reality of this problem. Her hair also helps draw the eye into the face, as it’s a basic white colour almost all over. As for the writing on her face, I think this is especially interesting, and could easily be influential to anyone who has felt this way before, or is still dealing with these issues.

I also like the ‘focus’ shots around the photo, which highlight phrases from the face. The bottom one – “What Makes You Different Makes You Beautiful” – is my favourite. The shot is put together very well, and the eye is drawn to the text first. The choice to crop this down to just the nose and mouth gives the impression that the model could be anyone, which makes the message even more accessible to the audience.

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Overall, I found the Arts Festival to be very interesting and inspirational. Some work wasn’t as exciting as it could be, but other pieces were immediately eye catching and stayed with me long after I left the festival. I really look forward to creating work at this standard or higher myself in my second year, and I know that the Arts Festival has given me the motivation and insight to competently compete with students like these when it comes to applications for jobs and universities.