Administration Officer at Accessible Arts

I've been AWOL from my blog as of late, and here's why:

In June I applied and received a position at Accessible Arts, an organisation who helps people with disability be fully included in arts and culture in NSW.

I've had contact with Accessible Arts in the past if you remember, John Demos' residency at the Big Fag Press, his solo exhibition at The Cross Art Projects including Josh Charles' beautiful doco, and the Supported Studio Network forum in which John and I were both panellists. I also attended a training day at Accessible Arts on Disability Awareness.

Anyway, I'm the Administration Officer and my role is largely database management, day to day bookkeeping with MYOB, and general administration. I am so grateful to be part of such a wonderful group of people, and it feels so rewarding to work towards a cause I believe is so important.

You can read the Accessible Arts July Newsletter in which I am introduced, and you can see me at the bottom of the staff information here

My colleague Jo Agius also welcomes me in her Auslan translation of the newsletter (at 5:24 - 5:40)

We've been learning a bit of Auslan (Australian Sign Language) at work, which I've found very interesting. I can say:

Hi, How are you? Welcome. My name is Louise. I'm 26. I live with my partner, Nathan, I like cats. I have one cat called Poppy. I am the administration person at Accessible Arts.

We've also learnt a host of other useful phases for use around work - things like, Are you busy? Can I help you? What time is the meeting? I forgot. I'm working on MYOB. This week, I'm learning the volunteer procedure. I am working on the database instructions. See you tomorrow. Have a good night/ weekend.

Our upcoming Arts Activated conference means we're also learning to give directions, like "turn left, go up the stairs/lift to the registration desk on level 2 in room 5."

As someone who speaks English, Polish and teaches French, I've found Auslan very interesting from a linguistic point of view. And some of my understanding of language sentence structures and tenses has actually been useful. I'm thinking about maybe taking an Auslan course, but I'm not sure if I have time.

Kiribati - Putting a Face to Climate Change

This is a cross blog post of mine from Runway Australian Experimental Art on the theme of our latest issue Runway #24 ISLANDS

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The polemical topic of refugee rights has never been so prominent in common Australian discourses as it is today. It is a hot topic for discussion in Parliament, the media, and around the dinner table of many Australians. While there are many refugees fleeing from persecution, war and terror, there will soon be refugees who have simply lost their homes, fresh water and livelihood to the Climate Change we in Australia can ignore so easily. Our latest issue of Runway focussed on the theme “ISLANDS”, which reminded me of the work of Jon Lewis, Australian photographer, founder of Greenpeace Australia and a thoroughly inspiring tutor at the University of Technology, Sydney. Jon Lewis spent 6 months in 2009 travelling through the Republic of Kiribati, which consists of 33 atolls in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean and south of Hawaii. The entire nation has been under threat from drastic changes in weather patterns, fresh water salination and rising sea levels. Lewis produced a series of photographs entitled “Portraits from the Edge” Kiribati – Putting a Face to Climate Change.

Abaro Mud Kid-Tarawa.  © All rights reserved Jon Lewis 2009 Australia. Photo courtesy of the artist.

The impact of Climate Change on the people of Kiribati is far more significant today than just a few years ago, and in recent news a man named Ioane Teitiota has just lost his appeal for refugee status in New Zealand as the world’s first Climate Change refugee. Experts predict that the nation of Kiribati has only 30-40 years left before climate change renders it uninhabitable, and it seems Australia will most likely be facing a new influx of “asylum seekers” in coming years.

Other Worlds Zine Fair

The Big Fag Press has decided to withdraw our participation in the Sydney Writer’s Festival MCA Zine fair this year. We will instead redirect our energy by taking part in an alternative event - the Other Worlds Zine Fair.

Our decision comes after much deliberation. We are opposed to the Abbott government's Operation Sovereign Borders scheme which violates refugee and human rights. The recent expanded involvement by MCA sponsor Transfield in offshore detention centres in Nauru and Manus Island is something we at Big Fag Press take a stand against.

The Big Fag Press does not wish to endorse an event which is supported by money raised from the mandatory detention of refugees.

We are hopeful that awareness raised, no matter how small, will have an effect on the conscience and opinions of everyday Australians, which will in turn eventuate in changes to federal discriminatory laws.

Please come along to this event and say hey to us. The facebook event is here. I am personally making a zine for sale and we're taking along a lot of our latest prints!

Audio available - Accessible Arts Supported Studio Network Forum

The audio from Supported Studio Networks: Possibility and Potential has just been released. If you want to read a previous blog post about the project, see this previous post of mine.

Artist John Demos and I are panellists at the beginning of this one, Building Culture, but you can find the rest of the audios on the Accessible Arts site.

4 tonne tango!

We had our big moving day from Woolloomooloo to Glebe on Tuesday! The following photos give a pretty good idea of what that entailed.

And a quick montage I made of the day:

It'll probably be a month or so until we're settled into our new home. There's some brilliant old stories about the Glebe viaducts. It's lucky I don't believe in ghosts!

*All photos and footage are mine.

Accessible Arts Disability Training Day

Yesterday courtesy of the Big Fag (thanks guys!), I attended a course on disability training at Accessible Arts run by Amanda Tink.

This was instigated by my project with John Demos, who's been doing a residency with our Press, funded by Arts NSW and administered by Accessible Arts.

There were quite a few things I learnt that I didn't know before. I generally treat everyone around me with respect, but when it comes a person with a disability, it's important to understand life from their perspective and make sure you know what phrases to use and how to approach them.

The section on stereotypes was one I was already very familiar with, but the section on communication was an important one for me. The difference, for example, between saying to a person who uses a wheelchair "do you need some help?" and "would you like some help?" is a good example because the idea of need perhaps takes away a little of their feelings of independence. That said, a person with a disability is not necessarily always in need of help - and they probably get asked that question about 10 times a day.

There's also many disabilities that are invisible. In fact, 1 in 5 Australians identify with having a disability, but the most prominent kinds of disabilities are psychological or health related. These people may find it difficult in work places as to whether or not to disclose their disability. Disclosure may mean they for example, would not prevail in a job interview. However should they not disclose, their disability may cause them difficulty at work.

Amanda played us this amazing video from the UK Disability Rights Commission: (you can find the second part on YouTube)

Language was also a key factor of the training session. Personally, I would never use words like spastic or retard, but I wasn't aware that perhaps a word like "handicapped" might cause offence. The best way to refer to people with impairments is to first regard them as a person, and to not assume anything about their life. So for example, you should say a "person with cerebral palsy" not "he suffers from cerebral palsy". You should not say "the deaf man", you should say "person who is deaf/ hearing impaired". And generally, it's better to find out a person's name! Also never talk about them as if they are not present, obviously. There's also things like being honest if you haven't understood what a person has said, and knowing the difference between simple language and moderate speed as opposed to talking to someone as if they were a child.

One thing that came up was how some people who are deaf sometimes don't consider themselves to have an impairment at all. Rather, that their ability to use sign language simply places them in a separate linguistic culture, one which has been extensively developed. I didn't know that before.

50 years ago being left handed was considered something of a disability. 20 years ago being gay meant you had a psychiatric condition. It's the society and world that shifts. It was interesting to look at how society has treated the issue of disability over time, beginning with a religious perspective that a person with an impairment must be so because he had sinned, or his family had sinned. Then from a medical perspective we would do the best for a person we could medically, and then they would just have to do the best they could to try and integrate within their family and get by.

The current model stemmed from the UK in the 70's where we think of people who have an impairment as not them being disabled, but rather than society itself is disabling them because of all the barriers they face, taking a wheelchair up stairs, or trying to find a cinema session that has audio captions.

Not many organisations have Disability Action Plans - only about 40% of arts organisations in Australia. It's important to understand that it's not a matter of building a ramp and hanging some audio tour headphones on the walls, it's about creating an environment that is entirely welcoming and not hostile through a range of means, both physical and emotional, and then, making the community of people with disabilities aware of those changes.

Anyway, I learnt a lot at the training session and I'm sure it will help me in my many current endeavours!

John Demos' Accessible Arts Residency at the Big Fag

John Demos. Photo Louise Anderson

John Demos working at the Big Fag Press, Photo Louise Anderson

John Demos with his original work "Antitoxicus" Photo Louise Anderson

For about 3 months we've had John Demos down at Firstdraft Depot working on some prints on the Big Fag as part of his residency mentorship program thanks to his Amplify Your Art grant. John has been coming in one day a week to create his beautiful works and experience the process of making those works into prints on our offset proofing press.

I've been mostly managing this project solo, and it's been an amazing experience for me. Art is the way John experiences his life, and his works are an exploration of belonging and home, and the words and images that mean those things to him. When he's not practising, John is browsing countless Sydney galleries where the attendants all know him by name. This is a kind of passion I feel is rare in just about any field.

Whilst down at the Press, I introduced John and his liaison Kristina Tito to Jo Holder from The Cross Art Projects gallery. He's been offered the opportunity to exhibit his work at the end of our mentorship there in October/ November. This is such a great opportunity for him to make contacts, show his work and most importantly give a voice to artists like himself who benefit so much from Supported Studio Networks.

We're just in the printing phase now, and the entire project is taking shape. I organised some paper sponsorship from K.W. Doggett, which has been great for John to experiment on. He loves discovering new kinds of paper and mediums to work with, and asks endless questions about ink mixing, how the press works and what kind of things we've printed on before.

We've made up ten metal plates of John's work separated into different colours, and he'll end up with a series of about 4 works, plus a few others where he will experiment with layering different works on top of each other, and then using them as a basis for more hand- rendered work.

Josh Charles has been making a short documentary of the entire project.

Spending any time at all with John has shown me that he has a little story about everything. It's really important to give John a platform from which to tell those stories - through his art, but also his practice, which can potentially, as he says, "influence other people towards art".

Review of Justin Shoulder & Collaborators: The River Eats

A couple of weeks ago Diego Bonetto printed Justin Shoulder's Poster for the River Eats on our Big Fag Press machine. The poster itself is amazing - one of the most intricate, visually engaging prints we've done.

As a thank you, Justin got Diego and I a couple of seats at the preview show at Performance Space a couple of weeks ago.

Poster for the River Eats, design by Matt Stegh, printed on the Big Fag Press

The River Eats is Justin Shoulder and collaborator's phantasmagorical performance which flabbergasts the audience with its somewhat trippy tale of a creature called Pinky who transforms from a histrionic self-obsessed attention whore into a mesmerising butterfly.

The scintillating performance is an overwhelming sensual experience - hypnotic light movements and dramatic music hold you spellbound while Pinky prances around in exquisite costumes undergoing her (its?) identity metamorphosis.

The audience sits disillusioned in a way that cannot quite be described in words, unsure of whether to laugh or clap, and half feeling like they may have fallen into a psychedelic dream or unknowingly consumed some illegal substance.

The River Eats was a confronting experience. The one word that came to my mind whilst watching was akrasia - the concept of acting against one's better judgement, despite conscious knowledge and prescience of events to come. This is a phenomenon which I think is present in many a mind's decision in the modern world. When this psychological conflict is applied to identity, we have people are caught in a constant battle between who they are, who they think they should be, and who society sees them to be.

Pinky is caught in this battle, and frolics from one spotlight to the next until (s)he is confronted by her equal and opposite identity, exorcises yearning for fame and fiction, and is eventually reborn into the character Oo - a beautiful black and pink butterfly whose force is derived from the river, from nature.

Justin Shoulder has created a plethora of strange creatures like Pinky, often inspired by various cultural traditions, fables, myths, stories and masquerade, and all with the intent to deconstruct how we emotionally relate to our reality.

Pinky specifically was derived from the idea in Taoism that identities have a sort of Yin and Yang, that every energy force has an equal opposite. Shoulder was also inspired by a visit to the Brazilian Amazon, which for him embodied notions of life and death, rebirth and decay.

The River Eats Trailer from Justin Shoulder on Vimeo.

Cake Decorations in Love

Image from: The Age, 'Gay or Straight, Love is Love'

Those of you who know me, know I'm a 'wannabe' cake decorator, so this image caught my eye because the decorations are really awesome and something I'd love to try. However currently, this image - as cute as it is - is controversial.

I was once approached on the street by a charity worker who asked me what I thought is the most fundamental human right. I think he wanted me to say clean water, because polluted water is one of the most serious issues faced globally. Anyway, I wasn't really thinking, but my response was "love". I think maybe I threw him for a second, but yes, I truly believe that along with clean water, food and shelter, people have the right to love and be loved, and to be heard and understood.

So hear me out.

I'm an atheist, I don't believe in any higher governing power, but that doesn't mean I don't have a set of morals and values by which I live. I do, and one of them is the fact that in this sometimes scary world, humans have the ability to love one another, to do good to one another, and to fulfil each others' lives. I would say this belief is something close to what I might call my faith. It is what makes me a thankful person. It is what brings meaning to my life.

So the idea that people oppose the relationship and marriage of two people who love each other, and intend no harm to society, that is a threat to my beliefs.

Because in my philosophy of right and wrong, every person in this world deserves the chance to be happy.

For me, that's all there is to it.

City of Sydney Cultural & Creative Sector Forum

*Image is mine from Instagram

I just thought I'd do a quick post on this. Last Wednesday I attended the City of Sydney's Cultural and Creative Sector Forum representing the Big Fag Press. I thought it was a really interesting couple of hours, and I was inspired to know how invested the council is in listening to the thoughts and ideas of people who work in creative fields, in order to see how best to help them be able to use the city as a canvas for their creative endeavours.

Furthermore, it couldn't have been a better place for networking - my table had a guy who works for the City of Sydney outdoor event management, a woman from ArtsHub, a woman from the Red Room Company, a guy who works in the youth music industry, one of the founders of the College of Event Management, and a woman from Waverley Council.

At the beginning I wasn't really sure I would have anything to contribute, but the discussion led to many things I had ideas about. Our table came up with a few collective agreements. One was that Sydney is very much a lively place in terms of art and culture. "Top down" events like Vivid Sydney, the Biennale, Chinese New Year and the NYE fireworks are very successful. We also agreed on the fact that the government does a lot to support smaller initiatives, but that maybe these efforts could be slightly better directed. In terms of "grassroots" initiatives, there was much talk on making it more accessible to individual young artists or smaller collectives wanting to just get out there and express creativity. I spoke of how, last year with my Ivory Tower posters, there was just no place to go out and put them. The dedicated City of Sydney poles for posters just get covered by advertising, and anywhere else they got ripped down. It would be so great if there was just spaces around for spontaneous public art. Places where you don't need to be a verified "emerging creative" to use. The Guerilla Photography project on Elizabeth St by Fairfax photographers was something that was brought up - but nobody really knows if doing something like that is okay. Is it considered defacing public property? If Clover Moore hadn't particularly liked those photographs installed in that place, would they have received fines for doing it?

Another thing I brought up was along the same lines - to me, at least when I'm walking around the streets instagramming things, it's the oddities, the interesting graffiti, the chic little cafes, and the funny coloured walls that get my attention. I like things that are different, and provide an alternate to a cookie cutter town of gloria jeans, lowes and perfectly arranged front gardens. A point was brought up about spaces being unused at certain times - there are many places that, for example, are in use Monday to Friday 9-5pm, but completely useless at other times. So here is where my idea comes through - why can't artists be the ones to decorate the city - to make the boring interesting. Why can't we designate it a business carpark by day and a pop-up art gallery by night? Why does a wall have to be a brick wall - getting a company building wall graffitied by local artists could attract valid attention to your business.

And thus brings up another point. About legal, OH&S, and regulatory council hoops to jump through. I remember when I was doing my Open House project in Foley St in 2010, we had a lot of forms to fill out and information to gather, like making sure people had their RSA's and everything. I know it's a lot to do with people's safety, which definitely should be put above all else. But getting through all that bureaucracy is a major hurdle for an artist or a small collective wanting to set up a guerilla pop-up gallery.

Much of our other discussion was about live music venues and making sure under drinking age teenagers also have access to entertainment, which I think is equally important.

Many of the other tables came up with similar points about reducing the "red tape" for artists and giving more opportunities to "grassroots" programs. Overall I found the forum had a very positive outcome, especially if some of these ideas are taken on by the City of Sydney. They could even have a direct impact on ARI's like the Big Fag Press, like Runway, like Firstdraft. Very exciting!

Daddy's Little Princess

Daddy's Little Princess at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre by Linda Wilken opened a couple of weeks ago. If you remember, I first met Linda by chance at the Firstdraft Depot where she was undertaking a residency and I was working at the Big fag Press. We discovered we had some conceptual ideas in common and I interviewed her for Ivory Tower Magazine last year (page 10 in this document).

Sexualisation and objectification of young girls is a current social and political issue. This exhibition represents the way young girls in contemporary western cultures develop their identity based on popular culture and stereotyping which begins in childhood. Influenced through magazines, music videos, social media and the internet, these ‘young consumers’ are being seduced into stylising themselves on hyper-sexualised ideals.

-From the Casula Powerhouse website

Here are some photos I took of Daddy's Little Princess.

[All photos are mine of Linda Wilken's work at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre]

Free Money!

I came across this on facebook - Doug Eaton decided to spend his 65th birthday doing good deeds for others. He wrote out this sign and was giving away $5 notes to passers by.

I like this idea because it has beautiful anti-superficial ideas and a strong focus on getting people to think about their social responsibility. To me it says, you know, if you have the basic financial situation to provide for the things you really need, then you're doing okay, and if you can't afford that huge screen tv, you'll probably still survive. I think when asked for money from the homeless, everyone at least occasionally thinks, "well, I need my money" (I know I do). But as the sign says, if you have the basics, you can always afford a few dollars. ((Says me, who's just purchased a shiny laptop!!))

Of course, I tend not to like giving out money because I want to know what happens to my few dollars, which is why I'm always giving away my lunch instead!

It was suggested on a blog somewhere I read that this guy is probably religious. I find that a little presumptuous. Can atheists not do good deeds?

Editorial Philosophy

My "evolving" editorial philosophy:

Editorial Philosophy

"The best way to predict the future is to create it" – Peter Drucker.

LookUp (working title)’s philosophy centres around the idea of sustainability. In environmental terms, sustainability means using the resources of today while ensuring not to detract from the needs of the future. LookUp extends the use of the word sustainability by applying it to any world issue. For example, sustainability as applied to consumerism may allude to the idea that the contemporary society is not balancing its need for material wealth with a seemingly forgotten need for the happiness within. LookUp is about reclaiming the true essence of design: creating an object that solves a problem or rectifies a societal need; a feature that can be said is missing from much contemporary design, especially in fashion.

Business Placement

LookUp provides what no other fashion/ lifestyle magazine provides: a second dimension. LookUp does not aim to sell garments, epitomise the beauty of the latest fashion styles, or convey the latest celebrity intrigue, to the public. LookUp combines the love of amateur craft such as Frankie, the environmental concerns of Peppermint, the parody of Adbusters, the format subversion of Is Not Magazine, the satire of Zoolander, I Hurt I am in Fashion and the Onion, and the Utopian future ideas in Kelli Anderson and the Yes Men’s hoax New York Times in 2008.  

Target Market

In contrast to the Fashion/ Lifestyle magazines of today whose Target Market is always a fairly specific age group and gender, LookUp prefers to look beyond age and other less meaningful demographics and reaches out more to a group of people who share in the philosophy that the only thing standing between the world we have and the world that could be is the dream of making it so. LookUp embodies the quote of Peter Drucker, a creation aspiring to be future by design.

Objectivity

The objective through the definition of LookUp’s philosophy is to reach out to a society which is not always aiming to attain a sustainable future. Through its target market, it endeavours to encourage critical thought and activism and, through consumer demand, eventually force creative business to change its own philosophies.

Content

LookUp will achieve its objectives through a series of creative endeavours and collaborations that seek to encourage critical thought and provide visions of the world we could have. The content will be intellectual and largely based on theory, and many parts will involve the technique of satire. Imagery will be largely artistic and conceptual, while written pieces will be closer to literary works, rather than journalism. Advertisements will be exclusively hoax ads/ spoof ads/ or serious ads only from business/ companies who parallel LookUp’s vision. The publication will include basic things one might expect to find in a magazine such as horoscopes and crosswords, however these will be deconstructed either through parody, or changing their essential uses. LookUp will also include photography and art that returns to its most basic forms: displaying the beauty of raw practice and creative talent, as well as showcasing the older practices of lithographic printing.

Outcome

LookUp is not just a “magazine”, it is also about confronting the very definition of “magazine”. It publishes two poster magazines as street art each year with the aim of encouraging user input on the theme, running alongside its online forum, all of which is documented and included in the annual publication. LookUp ensures its practices adhere to its own philosophy including fair trade, use of sustainable resources, and encompassing forgotten practices of printing by its relations with the Big Fag Press team.

Topicality

The theme of Issue 1 is Fashion, specifically looking at psychological sustainability with regards to self-image, and how this is situated in the realms of body image issues, practice within fashion systems, the ideal body and self esteem.

It draws on Plato’s theory of forms which looks at the concept of a perfect form that exists outside of reality. (Plato Symposium 210E) For example beauty has a perfect form that we aspire to. The fashion industry constantly provides us with a fantasy world through catwalks, advertising, and imagery, and I am concerned with society’s lack of ability to critically separate this fantasy from reality (Franklin 2010).

LookUp’s philosophy aims to create a fantasy of its own, which is a world that operates prioritising what ethically and morally would make a better world. This issue is therefore aimed at consumers of fashion with the capacity to critically analyse the difference between reality and fashion’s ideal form as well as change consumer demand and ultimately reach the fashion industry in order to instigate practices which fit within LookUp’s better world. 

Business Structure

LookUp is not-for-profit, independently published, and relies on grants through promotion of charity organisations. LookUp publishes limited edition copies of its magazine and Street Art Posters, which can be purchased online. Money from sales pays for printing, and splits the rest among contributors.

EXPORT: Graduate Show

I found many things inspiring at EXPORT, the Visual Communication Graduate Show from last year. I thought I'd do a post to collate my inspiration.

*All images taken from the EXPORT Graduate show website unless expressely mentioned.

Karina Lee - The Space Between

This book inspired me both conceptually and visually. It presented a sense of abstract perspective on the world - that just like being able to read between the lines of a page, perhaps we should be looking for "the space between" in life, in the world. The typography, photography and layout work was inspired by a kind of unity between art and science. I believe the inspiration for the work was to discover a kind of beauty and magnificence in science. It made me think of ways to try and re-discover the beauty in what I'm about to undertake this year.

Emmalie Narathipakorn - Basically Happy

Basically happy was interesting to me because it incorporated quotes and opinons of individual people and the perspective of the concept of happiness through their eyes. I liked the psychology behind it - afterall, happiness itself is such a widely misunderstood and stereotyped idea, perhaps people of the modern world only know that they're happy when they're not constantly wondering if they're not.

Joanna Grygierczyk - Hunters and Googlers

I liked Hunters and Googlers because of the truth in the social commentary. And that truth is, when faced with a problem or a question or even a basic instinct, a world with access to the internet has a desire, sometimes beyond one that is rational, to "Google" the problem. I don't think I'm the only one who has, on a bored or lonely night typed the words I see below into Google, and wonder maybe if Google will respond. It made me recall a night maybe a year ago I spent a good half hour talking to Cleverbot, which through an artificial intelligence database of language basically responds to you in Instant Messenger as if it were a real person - mostly quite amusing.

Lindy Napier - Femme Enigmatique

This work mainly inspired me by the way the leaflet was put together - essentially a stack of folded paper circles glued specifically on 2 of the 4 edges. It was beautiful the way it opened out and presented the work in rather an abstract way.

[Photographs of Femme Enigmatique taken by me at the EXPORT exhibition]

Stephanie Hing - In Retrospect

In Retrospect looks at everyday amazing things that perhaps with advancements in technology and lifestyle, one day may be obsolete. I liked the concept and the photography.

Bettina Pham -Vanoir

The minimalistic photography in this project really appealed to me.

Chantelle Lorge - Today

Today is mostly a photography project collated within a book that looks at the transience of what seem to be unimportant events in one's lifetime, yet if for some reason (like Alzheimer's Disease), you would one day forget them, well, the tragedy of those lost tiny bits of beauty in a single moment. The classic lesson - Carpe Diem. 

Dena Taiebet & Kate Disher-Quill - Our Town

I've mentioned Kate Disher-Quill before, she and I collaborated in our Open House project. This is her sequel if you like, to that. She got specific quotes about the feelings of individuals in her city and did a lot of beautiful portraiture work, and then exhibited these pieces of truth on projections in laneways and cliffs. I like the idea of facing the truths about other people and being unafraid to speak them.

It reminds me of this quote I once heard -
"If we knew each other's secrets, what comforts we should find" -  John Churton Collins.

Teresa Tan - Sleep Deprivation and the Joy of Losing Grip

This video can be found on "Tezatron" Teresa Tan's website (which by the way has a lot of other cool photography and stuff). It's about a specific mental atmosphere about emotional 'inertia' and in Teresa's words largely inspired by the concept of "Weltschmerz".

Ashleigh Steel - Everyday, everyday

This here is another project that celebrates the seemingly banal moments of existence, but when you look a little closer at these things, you realise that sometimes the tiny stupid things are worth a thought, a consideration. I love the toothbrushes.

Thomas Fethers - En Masse

En Masse interests me both from an extraordinary visual and typographic element, as well as this witty concept which sees him looking at (and sometimes judging) Social Media as essentially, a faith or religion, which truthfully, sometimes it can feel a bit like that. The whole project is a satire of the contemporary world of facebook, twitter, posts, tags, likes, shares, pokes, etc. It's quite clever.