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Sunday, 31 October 2010

Group Tutorial

Scan in the negatives and print them out larger, in the university or externally?
Digital Lab
Superchrome

Encourporate artists work with children, ideas, interpretations, likes/dislikes

Select areas of the photograph-abstract?

Darkroom photography, make my own prints. Can create different contrasts in exposures

Thursday, 28 October 2010

PGCE Application

Helpful advice for applying for a PGCE in primary school teaching from prospects.ac.uk.

Applying for a PGCE

Entry requirements

Trainee teachers must meet a set of professional standards determined by the
government, before they can be awarded qualified teacher status (QTS). They do this by completing a period of initial teacher training (ITT) followed by an induction year in employment as a teacher. For an overview of the different routes into teaching, see teacher training. Universities offering the PGCE (Postgraduate Certificate in Education) or PGDE(Professional Graduate Diploma in Education) use nationally agreed professional standards to determine their minimum entry requirements and may also employ additional criteria. The standards and requirements listed below apply to England. For variations in the other countries of the UK, see teaching in Scotland, teaching in Wales, and teaching in Northern Ireland. Full details are available from the Training and Development Agency for
Schools (TDA) (http://www.tda.gov.uk)

Minimum requirements are:

UK degree or equivalent qualification
Secondary courses:

Your degree subject should be directly relevant to the subject you hope to teach. If it is not, you should contact the institution you want to apply to and ask if they will consider you on the basis of your current qualifications. You might consider studying some higher education modules in the subject you hope to teach. This can be done on a part-time or distance learning basis.

Primary courses:
Some ITT providers prefer that you have a degree in a national curriculum subject. If you don’t, it is very important to stress in your personal statement the relevance of your education to the curriculum you will be teaching. You may want to highlight specific modules that relate to English, mathematics or science, or mention your A-levels if they are in national curriculum subjects.

Degree equivalency:

The final decision on whether your qualification is equivalent to a required degree rests with the ITT provider. The UK National Recognition Information Centre (NARIC)
(http://www.naric.org.uk) can provide advice on comparability of overseas and UK
qualifications. There is a charge for this.

Grade C or above in GCSE English and Mathematics, and for Primary,
also GCSE Science

If you don't have the GCSEs required, check whether the ITT provider will view your
qualifications as equivalent. Some may offer equivalency tests. Alternatively, study and take the GCSE examination. Further education (FE) colleges/adult education centres and distance learning institutions usually run one-year GCSE evening or day classes.

Fitness to teach

All candidates must, by law, satisfy fitness to teach requirements before acceptance onto a course. The ultimate decision about a person's fitness rests with admissions tutors, but they will be influenced by recommendations from the college medical adviser (often a local GP). Medical fitness is assessed initially via a lengthy questionnaire completed by all students but, in exceptional cases or if doubts are raised about their ability to teach, students may subsequently be required to have a formal medical examination. Many disabled people are medically fit to teach, and employers make reasonable adjustments to allow disabled people to carry out their duties effectively. SKILL (National Bureau for Students with Disabilities) (http://www.skill.org.uk) produces a useful booklet called Into Teaching. Advice from a relevant medical specialist or non-medical specialist (e.g. the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) (http://www.rnib.org.uk/)) could
help you to prepare a case for admission.

Work experience

Relevant work experience can greatly enhance your chances of making a successful
application. Most ITT providers expect you to have substantial work experience, and many require it. You should aim to build up experience working with children of a relevant age, including some time spent in school. Find information about how to get relevant work experience under teacher training.

Sunday, 24 October 2010

Manchester Art Gallery
Volunteering
I have started volunteering at Manchester Art Gallery. As I want to be a primary school teacher, it is useful to help build up my experience and I want to see how children interact with the artwork in the gallery. The 'Family Activity Day', that I am volunteering with, likes to encourage parents/carers and their children to play together, promoting that being creative is not just for children, adults should join in too and engage with the artwork. When the children see the adults creating pieces of artwork, the children will model this behaviour.
In the first session I volunteered in, using different fabrics and materials, they were encouraged to dress up or make an object/person that was in the paintings in the gallery. Many of them liked to dress up together and pose in the style of the painting for a photograph, one woman and her child made a textile wall hanging, a group of children made animals from the paintings using the different materials and another group created a large imstallation on the floor, looking at the different textures in the paintings.
The adults and children all interacted together, working in groups and taking photographs of the session. I liked seeing that the parents/carers were having as much fun as the children and they were able to engage in their creative abilities. I enjoyed the volunteering and will be taking part in more sessions throughout the year.

Friday, 15 October 2010

The Cornerhouse Manchester
Unspooling Exhibition
Harald Smykla
Pictographic shorthand notations of a film, created in real time while Smykla watched it, drawing a kind of reverse storyboard. Sequences of swift line drawings chase one another like words written on a page. It is the capturing of a film, in this case, Nick Roeg' film Insignificance, through live drawing. The work is also a live performance. Smykla uses an overhead projector, showing his personal and physical interpretation of the film in visual language. Towards the end of the film, signs of exhaustion, stress and relief are significant in the notations as the performance lasts the length of the film.
I really like Smykla's work, similar to Wearing's photographs, the viewer is able to connect to the artist as the notations show his personal thoughts and interpretations of the film. What can the viewer understand from the notations? Did Smykla enjoy the film? What was his analysis of it? I also like how it is a live performance. The usual passive process of watching a film becomes an active one. The notations reminds me of hieroglyphic style drawings.
Elizabeth McAlpine

McAlpine has taken single film frames of actors with their eyes closed in an iconic Frank Stella painting. The artist is showing the repetitions and gestures that are inherent in popular media.



Elizabeth McAlpine
Hyena Stomp
2006
C-print on plexiglass, 180 x 180 cm



Harald Smykla
Movie Protocol
2010
Pen on Acetate






































Wednesday, 13 October 2010

Tutorial

  • Nikolaj Bendiklarsen
  • Breda Beban-couples going to their favourite places, Breda taking photographs of them in the space.
  • Interaction, getting the public involved in the artwork. Public participation.
  • An artist in India, gave children disposible cameras to take photographs. Children are inspired by different objects to adults, have an enthusiastic, creative outlook.
  • Brand, consumerism, Advertising, Celebrity endorsement
  • Ask children their favourite place or food and photograph them with it.
  • Double exposures-opposites, stereotypes, poverty, poor, rich, deprived, affluent
  • Become more technical with double exposure. For example, do not take them by chance and at random. Know what it is I want to take and line up the photographs.

Saturday, 9 October 2010

The Cube Gallery-Manchester
Designed Disorder Exhibition



Designed Disorder proposes absurd and practical solutions into future implications and changes that may occure from a future designed by engineering nd science. For example, how we behave, mass consume, self medicate and travel.


The Toaster Project
Thomas Thwaites
2008

"I'm Thomas Thwaites and I'm trying to build a toaster, from scratch-beginning by mining the raw materials and ending with a product that Argos sells for only £3.99."

Have we passed the point at which we have stopped being able to make the objects that surround us? Is it possible to produce a simple everyday mass produced Argos toaster by hand? Or is this proposition absurd-what are the difficulties and costs we face?

For nine months, Thwaites to dusused mines around Britain, digging up raw materials, processing and forming them into a hand crafted pastiche of a toaster. The contrast in scale between products sold to consumers and the industry that produces them, Thwaites believes is ridiculous. Thwaites has taken to example of a toaster. The massive industrial activity devoted to making objects which enable the consumer to toast bread more efficiently. He compares the desire and fulfillment of a toaster in relation to the global industry.

Red Goods
James Chamber
2010

From the 1960s onwards, research has shown that the exposure to media violence leads to increased aggression. Red Goods are a range of products which allow individuals to enjoy media violence in a safe way, by providing an outlet for physical aggression. They provide surrogacy for aggressive tendancies. For example, the 'Strange Poise Lamp' is a floor lamp which mimics the action of someone strangling someone to death. Smoke alarms can be turned off by punching them.

I think that it is a good idea because they are useful outlets for excessive aggresive energy. We can enact our violent fantasies and channel some of our pent up aggression. I would not say I have an aggressive nature, but I believe that if people do, it is a clever way to release their anger.

Affective Sensory Extensions
Bjorn Franke
2006

A short film and collection of three wearable devices that monitor health related information concerning the user's body. The devices create an immediate and unpleasant experience by anticipating the long term affects of the user's behaviour. The devices are:

'Stressed Device'
Measures the user's stress levels and starts to scratch unpleasantly to force the user to wind down.

'Cramped Device'
Measures body postures and induces an artificial cramp if the user's position is too static or unhealthy.

'Sunburned Device'
Measures the sun's radiation and creates artificial sunburn to force the user to leave the sun.

I think this is a practical and preferable solution to these health issues. I think it is a good idea to help in the decrease of stress levels, body pain caused by poor posture and sunburn.

I Live on the Edge, A Cupcake Away From A Coma
James Gilpin
2010

Millions worldwide experience Type 1 diabetes. James Gilpin is a Type 1 diabetic and has used his direct personal experience of living with the condition to inform his work this year. Diabetic patients produce a large scale of sugar in their urine. Can this be recycled to make whisky? I think it can help diabetics turn their condition into an advantage.






James Chambers
Red Goods
2010




Thomas Thwaites

The Toaster Project

2009


















Monday, 4 October 2010

Geoffrey Key
A recent exhibition on display at the Whalley Art Decor Gallery was of the artist Geoffrey Key. Born in Manchester, 1941 he lives and works in the North West of England and has built up an international following. His work can be found in galleries, public and private, all over the world. He is regarded as one of the most important artist working in Britain today.
The vivid use of colour and the bold, confident lines that flow within his paintings capture and hold the viewers attention. The subject of Key's paintings are usually of landscape, factoryscape, nude, jester, clown, hore or figure subjects. The compositions Key uses, the bold lines and the figures in his paintings remind me of the work of Picasso and the Cubism movement. However, Key's work still manages to create individuality and displays his diligent expression of form, light and colour.



Two Girls
2009, Oil on Canvas
20in x 24in


Church and Trees
2009, Oil on Canvas
20in x 30in


Window Dancers II
2010, Oil on Canvas
20in x 30in