Tag: MOD

The 2018 BA Design show MOD opens next week in Peckham, bringing you this year’s batch of innovative graduation projects pushing the boundaries of design. Here is another peek:

“Ananya Patel’s project Reclayming Territory is mapped around the position of traditional, cultural craft in a world driven by modern, westernised design. The project began with an interest in a ceramic studio, the Ceramic Centre, in her hometown in India, which became a platform to explore the agency of craft as a vehicle of social empowerment and decolonisation. This contextualised the work in the wider polemics of colonisation and the hegemonic relationship between the coloniser and the colonised, which is explored specifically through the connection between India and Britain.

This investigation takes place through a dual practice. One part involves material experimentation with clay, a process generated by craft methodologies in India. The other involves extensive research into archives and colonial historiography, which is then used to inform the objects made from clay. The clay is collected from the River Thames in London before being transported to the Ceramic Centre in India for making objects. The river acts as the thread that weaves these sites and histories into a narrative that highlights the spiritual, cultural and political role of the river in shaping civilisation and empire, and the design process developed around the physical exchange of clay between the two countries becomes a metaphor that highlights the notion of stolen, borrowed and shared territory.

Patel brings together both aspects of her practice in focusing on a particular act of decolonisation in British Indian history, through which the hierarchy was challenged. In telling this narrative, she developed a portable archive of decolonised historiography. It is built through collaborating and starting conversations with the institutions and individuals who contributed to the collection of research, and through engaging Indian craft practitioners in making ceramic objects that historically mobilised social, political and cultural liberation. The collection was set up as a pop-up archive at sites along the Thames where the London clay was collected, and was used to generate conversations about colonisation and to document the significance of decolonisation to various individuals and communities in today’s sociocultural landscape.”

See more work from the show on the MOD Instagram account. The show will be open to the public 8-10 June at Unit 8 Copeland Park in Peckham. The Press and Industry private view takes place on the evening of 7 June.

 

The 2018 BA Design show MOD is almost here! Here is another sample of the student projects that will be on display, with “Space and the Feminine Body” by Devon Alex Greene:

“The aim of my project is to reclaim the everyday physical spaces where women’s bodies have been restricted, in situations where the right to personal, physical and public space has been taken away. I have created tools to help women in these everyday situations. My aim is to encourage women to use their bodies to feel and be powerful through body language and stance, rebelling against the learned behavior that forces women to contort themselves to be smaller beings, or forces them out of public space when their bodies are commented on. The outcomes include:

• ‘The scum guard’ is a tool for women to use when riding their bikes, inspired by a story of a woman who was harassed on her bike.
• An inflatable bag aimed to reclaim space for women.”

See more work from the show on the MOD Instagram account. The show will be open to the public 8-10 June at Unit 8 Copeland Park in Peckham. The Press and Industry private view takes place on the evening of 7 June.

The 2018 BA Design show MOD is almost here! Here is another sample of the student projects that will be on display, with “Material Mentor” by Josie King:

“This project creates a new use for a material that has been oozing into every school and living room – slime. The aim is to create a systemised process for improvised making. The slime is integral to this because, as a no- newtonian fluid, it almost has a mind of its own. Usually the designer has complete control over their outcome, and the decisions involved. Using slime on the other hand operates more as a collaboration between the material and the maker. The designer no longer has complete agency over the outcome, the slime shifts their design process into improvised reactionary making, following their material mentor.

This has resulted in a series of improvised furniture, mimicking the domestic space. Inspired by the dual meaning of the word ‘bodge’; meaning to both clumsily mend or make something, and to define greenwood crafts. The bench was made in collaboration with a traditional greenwood woodworker, to test how this improvised making process translated to other craft practitioners.

This improvised process is designed to return the maker to a playful amateur, where their knowledge no longer influences their design process. This improvised technique fosters creative solutions through a bodged, untraditional approach to design.”

See more work from the show on the MOD Instagram account. The show will be open to the public 8-10 June at Unit 8 Copeland Park in Peckham. The Press and Industry private view takes place on the evening of 7 June.