Couture Butchery

This is a butcher and clothing shop I found on coolhunter.com that is based in Sydney. It perfectly combines my themes of vulgar and unusual beauty. Its a nightmare with all the meat hanging around but the clothes are beautiful and everything is displayed like art, even the meat is beautiful. The textured walls of the restaurant are really cosy and I think I would feel like I'm a teddy bears stomach of I was in this room. Its the perfect contrast to the butchery in the shop.

I'm not sure how I feel about this shop. I really love the concept and it looks beautiful on the internet but I think if I was to visit the shop it would freak me out abit!

I would definitly love to lie on these walls!
victor chuchill butchery

These textures would work on the garments maybe in knit with a contrast of the long pile walls and then the sculptural foam. This could be translated into knit really well.

Victor Churchill Butchery

 I think this would really work as a way to display clothes in a conceptual way and to have them going round so peoples attention is held.

Victor Churchill Butchery
Front of the shop

Where the Wild Things Are part 2

In this post I'm going to talk more about the film adaptation than the book as they do vary in the depth of the story and I think the film is more of an adult fantasy film than a child's film. 

I love the beasts within the story. In the book the illustrations are beautiful. The beasts have a real human cross over. Some of them have human feet but are then covered in fur where as others have horns and chicken clawed feet. They are totally brought to life in the movie and its so worth a watch! It will open up your imagination and heart. 

Plastic dolls of the beasts.
Courtesy of Doobybrain.com

The main difference in the film is the depth that Jonze takes the beats personalities. 

They are very reflective of human emotions and when you watch it you will so be able to relate to most the situations and emotions! 

They are vast, feathered, horned, clawed, beaked and definitely wild — irrational and dangerous, even when showing affection.

You've got Carol, who is an impulsive wild thing,

KW is a loner,

Douglas is a peace keeper,

Judith is a pushover,

Ira is an aggressive and suspicious girlfriend,

Alexander is ignored, belittled and mistreated

and Bull is a quiet intimidating but hulk of a beast.

The film has many positive quotes through out it and this is one of them. We should never stop dreaming, hoping and imagining. This is something that we sometimes loose sight of when we grow up but we should never stop and this film really hit this home for me so I decided to right the craziest ideas and hopes down and I am going to do something about every single one of them!

My favourite quote from the movie.

I also think that the story is empowering to children and is the opposite of a nightmare or Brothers Grimm story as it is enabling children's imagination in a positive way as Max overpowers the beasts are scared of him and he is brave and no harm is done. 

I would like my designs to reflect this mismash of emotions and contrasts in behaviour and also aesthetics. I want something colourful but dark, warm and protective, textured and smooth, big but also small. I wonder if this is possible?!

My favourite image from the entire movie when all the animals and max are at one with each other.

Where the Wild Things Are

Naturally after the Secret Garden Party I had to revisit Where The Wild Things Are as it brings together all of my ideas and memories from the summer. 

 

This has a real nostalgic pull on my heart strings as I was read this book as a child and me and my brother would play at being max and the beasts! It has since been developed into a feature length film by Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers that I am also a huge fan of. 

The front cover of the book. 

The basic outline of the story is of A young boy named Max has an active imagination, and he throws tantrums if others don't go along with what he wants. Following an incident with Claire (his sister) and her friends and his Mother paying more attention to her boyfriend than to him - max throws a tantrum and is sent to his bedroom by his mother. He runs away from home wearing his wolf costume at the time. Max not only runs away physically, but runs toward a world in his imagination. This world, an ocean away, is inhabited by large wild beasts, including one named Carol who is much like Max himself in temperament. Instead of eating Max like they normally would, the wild things befriend Max as he is not scared of them and he proclaims himself a king who can magically solve all their problems. He gets caught up in all of the beasts separate issues but also manages to make them have fun and gets them to dance by declaring that the wild rumpus has begun. He eventually misses home and realises that he can't save the beasts from being upset and angry. He realises that sometimes people do things they don't mean and that people are complicated so he decides to leave the beasts and go home. When he gets home he finds his mum has left his dinner by his bed and its still hot so she does still love him.  

I love this story as it is simply about childhood innocence and how children aren't adults and do confuse their emotions and don't yet understand how other people feel or why they do things. 

Im going to do a few posts about this as I'm fascinated by the story and the imagery involved in the book and film.

p.s. Im thinking of using the front cover as the colour palette for a autumn/winter collection what does every one think? Maybe too bright or too green?

Not so secret garden party part 3

Ok so this is my last post about this festival now!
The had a whole range of entertainment at the party including a paint throwing sub-party where people bought bags of powder paint and were able to throw them and cover people in gorgeous paints, this is very similar to the Indian festival of 'Holi". 


By far my favourite section was the adult toys section! This isn't as rude as it first sounds it was pure and innocent fun. They set up adult sized playgrounds which made you remember your childhood innocence and you couldn't help but get carried away and become as free and easy as a child. I loved this section of the festival as it was just amazing to watch everybody's transformation and seeing people have fun by improvising and using their imaginations. 
The quote in the image below summarises this for me. 

Image Nick Caro.   King Stag with tribal twist.

The theme really fitted in with my research and I was fascinated with the realisation on how we prepare our children for adult life as soon as we can and then as soon as we become adults with responsibilities we want to escape them all and become children again. We love nothing more than to dress up and swing around in playgrounds! We don't get to do this in the real world as society would think we were a bit strange so this weekend enables those wishes so we can become like children once again. 

 Everybody just let themselves go and didn't think about the stress of reality. I would totally recommend this festival to anyone who wants to just get away from it all for a weekend. You can be anyone you want to be and everyone is so open minded, anything goes its incredible! Just leave all of your sensible and rationale self at home as you wont need it for this weekend.

Scandinavian Folklore

Going back to the nightmare theme I discovered the Scandinavian heritage is riddled with tales of folklore including Trolls, witches and mystical nymphs and elves. I first discovered this topic when I was looking into nightmares and Brothers Grimm.


These tales are told to children to show them that anything is possible and to ignite their imagination. They are scary tales and some children do have nightmares from these but again they are told to them to prepare them for the real world and the dangers in the outside world. 

I was struck by the beautiful imagery that accomponies these tales and the play on beauty and ugly. I was particularly interested in the Trolls and the human animal cross over and the tales of outsmarting the Trolls.

A Troll counting his fortune, John Bauer
http://www.themeshack.net/2008downloads/200812/1228/patches/JohnBauerArt-wallpaper.jpg

The tales of Trolls show that money can buy you happiness as the Trolls are very rich but very unhappy and that they are mesmerised by beauty as they are so scary looking. Young Scandinavian children understand the concept of Trolls and are scared of them as they often steal children in the tales, and a way to teach children to brush their teeth is to tell them to get rid of the very small "tooth trolls" that otherwise will make holes in their teeth. (Torbjørn Egner's "Karius og Baktus").

The Huldra was supposed to be an breath taking beauty, often naked woman, inhabitant of the deep of the forests. John Bauer. http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRiBxTV9iIDyVAdefw7epZtfO8cf8N7foDDuf84EW_7yHbpQ8YCOF1cxTcQNQ

John Bauer
http://www.artsycraftsy.com/bauer/jb_queen.jpg

The illustartor John Bauer is prevalent in the illustration of the folklore tales the and his work had a lot of elements of Gustav Klimt's paintings within it, they were painting at the same time and I wonder if Bauer was influenced by Klimt's colour schemes and style. 

Klimt's "Forces of Evil"
http://www.iklimt.com/

Trolls transfixed on the Huldra, John Bauer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:John_Bauer_1915.jpg

Here you can see the similarity between the subject matter and some of the patterns between Bauer and Klimt's work. I would like to use these creatures as a starting point to create my own folk tale. Im thinking of creating my own creatures with their own personalities to design clothes around, maybe to use each personality of the creatures as a basis for designs. Im thinking of looking into traditional folklore clothing to compliment this?

The Stuff Of Nightmares

Continuing with the nightmare theme from the last post this is an exhibition from the V&A Childhood Museum in London. It is on until February and is really worth a visit as it feels like a raw and expressive exhibition, very far away from the polished and carefully planned exhibitions usually put on.


This instillation was made by local schoolchildren working with artists to recreate things they have seen in nightmares. It takes a closer look at the playthings of innocents.
The imagery was very strong and it messed around with innocent looking toys that were made harrowing by the surrounding scene and the context they were placed in. The children and artists played with scale, theme and textures.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/images/image/71358-small.jpg

 Imagery taken from a Brother Grimm fairytale

 Terrifying human bunny

Love the fragile and virginal white crochet blanket with the contrast of the dirty back drop.

 Mish mash of themes and objects, animals with creepy doll heads

 Birds were constant throughout the exhibition along with long noses which are often prevalent in scary stories and fairy tales representing evil

When walking around the instillation it felt like you were in a hallucinogenic state as there were bright colours and toys that had their heads replaced with dolls heads and toys that only had one leg.  

 The overall exhibition

Toys in a line up that had been created by the kids to have scary legs and faces

The exhibition also said that it is good to tell children these tales in order to prepare them for the real world and to teach them right and wrong and what is dangerous. I think it was a very effective exhibition and it helped the children to put their fears into 3D form and to face up-to them and realise they are not as scary as they first thought. 

For more information visit: www.vam.ac.uk/moc/whats_on/exhibitions_and_displays/the_stuff_of_nightmares/

Lost and found

Over the summer I found myself getting lost and being found, wandering and being stranded.
I discovered I had broken my neck over the summer and had to go through a lot of painful treatment which left me delirious and lost between dreamworlds and nightmares. I was trapped but then eventually freed.
I spent my summer in the wilderness camping and wandering, this sparked off my summer research which became focused around nightmares, the forest and its beasts and other wonderful creatures.
The following posts are a summary of my summer research.