Beatles to Bowie - National Portrait Gllery

My visit to this exhibition in Late December was initially one of interest from the point of view of. I had grown up with many aspects of the period covered by this exhibition and it was visually relevant to me as a review of the imagery and publications that I had seen or owned during that period. Magazines, record sleeves and sheet music provided and interesting record of the period. There was also a visual reminder, relevant to my current research, of the styles and production methods associated with graphics and print of the time. Evidence of the use of Letraset and relatively crude montage of visual items, especially from the very early party of the decade.  The photo qualities were mixed; Some clearly from music and fashion journalism sources where photos were iconic and gave a clear sense of musical developments of the time but were not necessarily technically sound, whereas some studio shots, for instance those by David Bailey, showed the standard of photography that had made their originators famous.

A well structured and resourced exhibition. Of particular interest to anyone, who like me, grew up through the 1960's.

Update work in progress

Following some downtime over Christmas I have now begun to consider approaches to my final piece of work to define my "Manifesto".  In trying to define my intentions I have been deliberating over the content of my visual statement to include constraints but also options for the breadth of my investigations. Whilst I am still intent on investigating hand drawn/rendered/constructed approaches - avoiding the need of the computer as an initial working tool - I am becoming aware that there will be times when I will want to fully utilise the computer as a production tool. Therefore I have included the rider in my manifesto that "Iwill acknowledge the computer s a production tool" I don't see this as a"cop out" but merely a recognition of the technology as a very powerful too for processing final visual outcomes prior to print, where this is intended.

I have found that my focus has developed from earlier work in the semester and that I am now taking on broader visual references from artists including Robert Rauschenberg and Joe Tilson. Iam aware that I am now stating an outline direction but equally want to keep options open to allow my work to develop in the light of ongoing visual research. My final piece is based on the idea of avoiding the use of the "mouse" as a first stage in ideas and visual developments and this piece of work started as a paste-up of type as titles relating to activities suggesting my approaches but developed in some part as the phonemes from the title - Masnifesto. I have also drawn imagery for the peice and included a scan of notes from my sketchbook defining my "manifesto" at this stage. After experimenting with hand drawn type for this element of the work I felt that the working quality of my sketchbook list with crossings out and amendments gave a more fluid impression of my intentions. I am now at the stage of making some further and final amendments to my "Manifesto" prior to the submission deadline and will post the final outcome(s) as they materialise.