Previous two...

I have made the previous two posts because they reminded me of each other but thinking about them more critically...they have a few elements in common yet the results are aesthetically and conceptually very different.

Both designers use cutlery or crockery.
Both designers apply their creativity to design lighting.

Siavoshi presents the cutlery in a way that transforms the ordinary and the everyday cutlery to be regarded as something much more precious with an underlying element of humour. Whilst Maurer manipulates the crockery and cutlery to create this 3-dimensional snapshot of a moment of explosion, a more somber subject matter. Similarly, this takes the material out of its usual context but conceptually the process is very different.

I am interested in lighting such as this because it is both functional and aesthetic yet it is not tactile. I find this a very fascinating subject area of product design. Off course, other forms of interior lighting are more tactile than the pendant light. I guess I see the pendant light in a realm not to distant from art, to be looked at and appreciated aesthetically and used but all within limits or context.

Ingo Maurer

'Ingo Maurer

Ingo Maurer makes lighting feel like a discovery. No matter how familiar or even plain a fixture's parts, it throws an emotional switch to "On." How else to explain the instantaneous delight in Lucellino? (His signature winged lightbulb.) Then there's the mischievous mirth triggered by Porca Miseria! (A chandelier made of exploding crockery.)

Maurer has a knack for tapping into deep resonances with the most elusive of materials: light.This ability may well have sprung from his early experiences. As a country boy, he was mesmerized by the play of sunlight on Germany's Lake Constance, where his father was a fisherman and an inventor. This fascination developed quickly into a talent for designing witty, sophisticated objects...'

Text Julie V. Iovine
Section SUPPLEMENT; Hall of Fame; Pg. 16
Date December 1, 2007
Source Interior Design Magazine

I saw this piece recently in the Museum of Modern Art which took me by surprise. The sense of movement and explosion is very dramatic. I have included a more "narrative" description than my own.

Designer Ingo Maurer
Location The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Photograph Amir Daoud

'Made-Over MoMA Rearranges The Furniture, And the Attitude

...None is more spectacular than a chandelier of broken porcelain and cutlery caught in mid-explosion. The piece, "Porca Miseria!," was created by German lighting designer Ingo Maurer in 1994 as a humorous expression of anger. (The name means "Damn It!") It remains a superb example of how poetry can creep into the industrial process, even if plates and teacups are broken by hand with a jeweler's hammer. But viewed through the prism of Sept. 11, 2001, Maurer conveys something frighteningly modern: the fragility of normal life...'

Text Linda Hales
Section Style; C01
Date October 30, 2004
Source The Washington Post

Ali Siavoshi

Piece HAMMERED

Description A ceiling light made of 42 pieces of different types of drinking glasses.

Piece HUNGRY
Description Ceiling light in 2 sizes. Large 115cm and Small 43cm. Wall light 43cm. Chrome plated cutlery.

'While doing his dissertation Ali has become very interested in working with objects of everyday use and transforming them into lighting fixtures. This has led to designs involving umbrellas, cutlery and even coat hangers which represent design not in the expected form of stylishness but with a sense of humour which brings these objects closer to the audience.'

Photograph & Text www.alialiali.com

David Mach

'Being a sculptor leads everything I do. Every project I take on starts from that point. I believe that an artist must be an ideasmonger responding to all kinds of physical location, social and political environments, to materials, to processes, to timescales and budgets. I also believe that sculpture just about encompasses everything - a painting can be a sculpture, a TV ad can be a sculpture, a dance, a performance, a film, a video - all of these kinds of art and many more can be sculpture.

When I have ideas I want to make them, and not just some of them, but all of them. As a result of that my sculpture covers a multitude of sins. I like to work in as many different materials as possible. It's no understatement to say I am a materials junkie - jumping from highly-painted realistic cast fibreglass pieces to sculpture with coathangers, to a thatched barn roof laced with fibre-optics to designs for camera obscures (or at least the buildings to house them) and layouts for parks.'

Text David Mach
Source www.davidmach.com

Installation Like a Virgin
Location Ujazdowski Castle Centre For Contemporary Art, Warsaw
Date March 1993
Source www.sculpture.org.uk

The use of leaflets above only hints towards the creative imagination of David Mach. Other materials that have been transformed by Mach include coat hangers, matchsticks and car tyres. Mach is able to manipulate the thoughts we have about conventional everyday materials.

Shop Windows...

...at Selfridges.

'The above four examples are the 1:1 scale model of the Concorde engine by PostlerFerguson (they bought the manuals for 5 quid on ebay!), Matthew Plummer Fernandez' Apifera (inspired by comparing the function of window displays to the art of attraction of flowers), (We)Make's Beryl & Friends recycled lamp shades and Toby Summerskill & Jim Rokos' Kaleidoscope'

Photographs & Text www.core77.com/
Location Selfridges, London
Source www.core77.com/

Garbage City

I came accross this series of photographs by Klavs Bo Christensen which I find very powerful. I find it intriguing that this industry and more so this way of life has been the subject of artists working in various media and I wonder how this might inform my own work.

Photograph Klavs Bo Christensen
Location Manshiyat Naser, or “Garbage City”, Cairo
Source www.klavs.dk/

'These striking photos by Danish photographer Klavs Bo Christensen were taken in Manshiyat Naser, or “Garbage City”; a district on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt. Although the first impression when looking at these images might be that of a filthy slum, there is (or at least was) rather more order here than is first apparent. Until recently, Cairo's waste disposal was the responsibility of the Zabbaleen,...'

Source http://eclectica.co.uk

Garbage Dreams

Film Garbage Dreams