What Are You To Me exhibition at Centrespace Gallery

This weekend, I went into town and bought way too many things and got very tired and annoyed at people because THERE WERE SO MANY EVERYWHERE. On Saturday, I also visited an art college's open day for the foundation diploma, so I guess that's partly why I had so many feelings about what I saw later. I went to visit the Centrespace gallery in the Bristol city centre. I've only been there once before, and it's so tucked away it's amazing it's still open. Here is the street it's on:

Teeny tiny gallery road

I've walked past that road so many times, but today I went in and it felt like walking into a secret room in my grandparents' house; you can hear people talking about their memories (home videos being shown on small televisions or projectors) and as soon as you go in there's soft lighting but there are so many things to look at and you just think what the hell is this? But in a good way.

What Are You To Me is a collection of treasures that the collaborators have gathered from their families - photo albums, suitcases, clothes, lightbulbs, a pipe... You're invited to interact with anything you want to in the exhibit, and there are even biscuits & sweets laid out. It feels so cosy and I just wanted to be so quiet in there because it felt like being in my grandparents' attic, trying to be quiet while I looked through all their things because they would wonder what I was doing if they heard me walking around. Paper luggage tags are placed all around the room, where people have written about memories of their family, and you're encouraged to write your own. A lot of it is in faded sepia tones, but then there are some really stand-out pieces like the wedding dress in a suitcase, and a wall covered in descriptions of items (which really reminded me of unphotographable's concept of "a picture I did not take"). I found it so interesting to see these precious items taken account of so objectively, even though they carry so many memories for the people they now belong to.

Hand-drawn family tree

I've started trying to film the things I see as well as photographing them, so this is my attempt at doing that. What Are You To Me is open at the Centrespace gallery on Leonard Lane, just off Corn Street, until 20th November.

Employment and that

So..... I have a job! (At least for a little while, anyway.)
Urban Outfitters held a recruitment evening last week, and a few days later I got called back for a group interview, then was told I'd been offered a Christmas temping job there.

Anyway, today there was an induction - mainly paperwork - and we got to look around the store and go through some of the basics. IT ALL LOOKS SO NICE AND COOL AND PRETTY AND ORGANIZED, I CAN'T DEAL WITH IT. Also everyone else is so cool and stylish and so what UO employees should look like, and I'm just stood there thinking, how the hell am I even here.
I'm super lucky to have even got the job, and I don't really know how it happened; a lot of my friends applied, as well as around 300 other people which is just crazy (!!) and I think around 20 people were given temporary positions, which is just like whaaaaat. (Very coherent, as usual.)
I'm super keen to get some better clothes because we need to represent the company well and such, so I am excited for my discount card to come through especially! I'm going to do some looking around soon to plan some more outfits, although I'm only contracted for one shift a week so I could possibly get away with being a horrific outfit repeater for a little while.

In other news, life decision of the day is to do an art foundation course for a year and then have another think about uni. My brother went to uni and he did learn a lot education-wise and cooking-wise and life-wise but I know a lot of people who didn't go to uni and have still found jobs they like, whether it took them a little while or a long time. Plus, visual artist and visual merchandising manager are real life legit jobs - like, you get paid for being creative. Amazing.

Basically, whether I go to uni or not, there will be a day where I have to make a decision and start looking for a sustainable source of income. I'm kind of afraid of it, and it's something that really preoccupies me at the moment and has been messing up my mental health over the past few weeks (stress levels have been going super high) but art is something I like doing and there is still a lot of Bristol that I want to see. I'm gonna try and finish applying to uni this year, because it's good practice, but to be honest, I do really wish that I'd asked for more help with deciding what i want to do.

I hope you're okay and you have a good week and stuff!!!!!
- Alice

Bristol Fashion Week

Photos and outfit sets from the live blogging event / catwalk show on 27/9/13.
All the photos I took (the good onces, at least) are now uploaded on my Flickr, but these are the ones I referenced to create polyvore sets after the show.

Bristol Fashion Week

#bfwaw13 times a MILLION

So, a little while back, I was on twitter, and I saw someone mention blogging at / about Bristol Fashion Week at the Mall Cribbs Causeway. I've been before with my mum a few years back, so I looked into it, then ended up talking to Claire, the PR & Comms Executive at the Mall (!), who got me and Billie free tickets and a blogging pass to Bristol Fashion Week, and today was the day we got to go.

 (I will be posting outfit photos & polyvore sets soon, but here's the blogging part for now)

Bloomberg New Contemporaries at Spike Island

So Spike Island has a new exhibition that starts tomorrow (13th September) and goes on until 10th November. It's called Bloomberg New Contemporaries, and it's been going on since the late 80s under its current name (other connected annual stuff has been going on since the late 40s, so it's pretty long-running). Once it's finished in Bristol, the exhibition is heading for London's ICA.

I'm gonna be volunteering to be at the gallery for a few days while the exhibition is on, and today, all the volunteers and invigilators were invited to come and meet some of the staff at Spike Island, have a tour of the upstairs studio spaces and look at the exhibition before the public, to get an idea of what it's like. One studio in the building has 24-hour access, which I thought was pretty amazing. Nobody was working in the studios that we saw, but they still all looked really interesting and artsy.

Because of how BNC works, there's no real bias involved - anyone studying fine art who a) graduated last year, b) is a postgraduate or c) is in their final year, can apply for their work to be featured. When they select works to go in, the art is chosen purely by looking at photographs of it. The people choosing the art don't get to know the person's name, gender or age until they've been confirmed.

Everyone who works at Spike Island is really nice; they explained everything really clearly and gave us lots of time to go round looking at the art by ourselves before being told the details of some of the pieces. All the volunteers got given a free copy of the Bloomberg New Contemporaries catalogue, which has full-page photos in & is super nice aesthetically. You can buy copies from the main desk at Spike Island.

I could've got some of this wrong, because I was getting really tired towards the end and I knew I still had to do a half-hour's walk back to the station, but as far as I can remember, this is what they said.

You might think it'd all be conceptual work, or that because the artists are graduates or still studying, the work won't be very good quality, but there's a huge range of great art available to look at, and some of the big names in art were featured in Bloomberg New Contemporaries once (David Hockney and Damien Hirst, for example) so it's worth a look.

- Alice

Summer masterpost (because I forget to write on here ever)

So I've actually had a pretty good summer this year! Normally, I say at the start, "this is gonna be crap", and it is. This year was a little different.

Firstly, there was Secret Garden Party. I've never been to SGP before, and getting there took a while. I got there on Wednesday so I didn't get ultra-crap shifts for stewarding, but it did mean I was camping by myself for a night. The whole thing was really different to anything I've ever been to before, and I had a really great time. If you ever go to SGP, DO NOT IGNORE THE SECRET ACTS / TBAs. This year they were not crappy last-minute bookings. They were people like Chase & Status. (Fun story, I had to do a 3AM til 9AM shift on the entrance to boutique camping. Pretty Mr Chase / Mr Status persuaded me and the security man to let him and his friends in at around 6AM saying they would be no trouble. A while later, a radio call came through saying one of his friends had gone AWOL on a ketamine-fuelled adventure. Thanks for being no trouble, pretty man.)

Next, I went to Bruges, then France with my parents. It was actually okay! Parental holidays get pretty repetitive, but I don't have to pay my own travelling fees so thank you parents, I hope I have repaid you through my lying around at home. I've never been to Bruges before, and we saw the historical touristy stuff. Also architecture, sooooo much nice architecture.
My aunt's house in France was the same as ever, super nice. We've been to visit her most years since I was born which has helped with my French and our general keeping-in-touch. My aunt is really musical; I love how often she just walks around the house singing or sits down to play a song from Amelie in the middle of the afternoon. My aunt and uncle have an amazing house and it makes me feel like I'm staying in a design magazine.

The most recent thing I did was go to Green Man festival on the day I got my AS level results. It's a lot more chilled out than SGP, a little more middle-class, and super child-friendly. (I envy those kids who can say they went to their first festival aged 3. Such cool parents.) At this one I chose to do litter-picking - I know, sounds awful - because it was that or stewarding and I wanted to know what it'd be like. It was actually not as bad as I thought it'd be! You still get to walk around and see the festival, as well as some of your favourite bands if you're lucky (assigned to be at the main stage on Sunday night, whuuuuuuuuut). I think if I volunteer again, it'll be stewarding, because some of the things I've heard people having to pick up was so grim. The worst it got for me was nappies.

I'm glad to have actually done stuff this year. I always worry about missing out on stuff, and I think it's better to be able to say "yeah I've done that, it was crap" than to just have to say "I don't know, I hear it's okay...." I recently read a post by Gina that sums up the idea of missing out and the summer break:

"I remember before I started uni I posted loads on here about how I’d go out all the time and get off my face and spend loads of time in cute cafes reading and sitting in parks with my friends and an anon was like “omg uni isn’t like that!!” and IT WAS. If you want to have a romantic, twee or exciting life YOU CAN but YOU HAVE TO MAKE IT HAPPEN!!! Sitting on Tumblr reblogging what you wish ur life was like and actually doing it are two v different things and I promise it’s worth the hassle because it ends up you’re two weeks away from moving back and you wanna cry every time you think about it because it’s going to be so great."

Hope you had a good summer~
-Alice

BBC Three - mental health season

Okay, so BBC Three has recently been showing some programs on the theme of mental illness. As much as I'd love to say so far it has all been AMAZING and INSIGHTFUL and ACCURATE about EVERYTHING, I can't. I have some issues with it.

Aaaaand cue rant.

Let's start with the title of this group of programs. It's a Mad World. Okay, they're probably trying to poke fun at the phrase, challenge the stigma around the association between mental illness and craziness, but I think this could be lost on some people. Moving on.

Don't Call Me Crazy: a three-part program documenting the events at an adolescent mental health unit in Greater Manchester. When I heard about it, I thought it would be really good, showing a true representation of mental health sufferers. Don't get me wrong - it did that. To an extent. The issue I had with this is that the McGuinness Unit is an inpatient-only unit. There are many units like it up and down the country - some are inpatient, some are for day patients and inpatients.

Yes, the program might have changed some people's views about mental illness, because the unit doesn't look like a standard hospital ward (side note - people are also treated for mental illness in hospital wards, but typically this is for intensive care, eating disorders or physical conditions, ie self harm, relating to the mental illness. Extra side note, I am not a trained professional, I just know people who've experienced this kind of thing, so what I say might not be true for everyone everywhere). But the program only looks at inpatients - people who have been struggling too much to cope with everyday life - and people who have been sectioned under the mental health act. Being sectioned means the nurses in charge of your care have the right to choose what you do / eat, and you will usually be under more supervision, because you are deemed at risk or something similar to that.

I don't know how many people know about the day unit side of things. Loads of young people attend the day program of mental health units because, like inpatients, they find life on the outside too difficult at the moment, but don't currently need as much supervision from staff and are able to cope overnight at home. This is a side of mental health hospitals I would really like to see covered by programs like this. Yes, Don't Call Me Crazy did make a really good start in showing what it's like to be an inpatient, but being a day patient is much more common and I think that needs to be shown and expressed.

Next, I watched Diaries of a Broken Mind. Again, I have an issue with the title. It suggests there's something wrong with you if you have a mental illness. It reminds me of something I heard once about negative thoughts, and how "it's not necessarily a bad way of thinking, it's just that this way is better". It just gives me that underlying sense that people with mental illnesses are broken and need to be fixed.

Watching people record their own perspective of their mental disorder was really interesting. I'd never heard or seen anyone speak about agoraphobia or bipolar disorder, and I'd never even heard of dissociative identity disorder (which, I now know, is like multiple personality disorder). Again, the program highlights the issues that people with severe or little-known mental disorders experience, and again, there was very little coverage of the less severe, and more common, disorders like depression and anxiety. (I guess the less well-known disorders make for better and more interesting TV?)

This program did give me a real insight into different mental illnesses and people's experience of them, though - so did Don't Call Me Crazy, to an extent - but I just hope that whatever BBC Three has planned next for mental health season, it's a little, well, better.

End of opinions.
- Alice

Little Birdy

photo from Little Birdy's facebook page.

I would say I'm gonna start blogging more often, but I can only do that when I've actually gone out and done stuff (which isn't that often)! Anyway, it's been a while.

A few weeks back, Bristol-based crafter Little Birdy posted a giveaway on her facebook, and I ended up being the lucky winner! I was sent all of the items pictured above, individually bubble-wrapped in a lovely hand-decorated parcel. I first heard of Little Birdy when I started going to Making Things Club, a club that's helped me feel brave enough to try different crafting techniques and find out about different arts-and-crafts people. I'm super glad to have found out about all of them, and am especially thankful to Little Birdy for putting the giveaway on. Below are some close-up photos of a few of the items I received. 

I love this little pin (even though I don't live in Southville). It's made from shrink plastic, has a lovely colour scheme, and I always worry about wearing it out in case the horns get damaged.

This hen currently lives in my parents' room, seeing as my mum very subtly mentioned how much she liked it ("can I have one? I want this one." I often feel like I'm the mum). Little Birdy makes them from fabric scraps, and the feet are made of wire.

These upcycled mini-pincushions have become one of the most well-known pieces made by Little Birdy recently, when they were featured in Reloved magazine. They are one of my favourite combinations in the world - cute and useful! - and since it arrived, I've been scouting the charity shops for small cups and saucers to try my hand at making some of my own.

Little Birdy makes a huge variety of things. She has some amazing hand-illustrated porcelain in her shop, and her Madam hens are just incredible - they have huge Antoinette-esque bouffants!

There is currently a giveaway on Little Birdy's facebook page to win one of the pincushions featured in Reloved magazine, so go and take a look, or check out her website.

- Alice

The Birdcage, 15th June

So I've only ever been to the Birdcage twice (so far - I will be going back there a lot more often now that I know they have well-priced tea and good taste in music). Last night I went with my friend Billie to see 3 bands for £3. In all honesty, I had no clue who they were and hadn't listened to any of their music before we went, but we were figured it would be a good night because of the venue, and it was really nice!

Elder Island, Mouse Deer and Gold Road were playing. I have to be honest here - my memory isn't great, so my mind has just kind of smushed the three bands together into one big circus troupe-type collective, but I really enjoyed their sound. There was a lot of band-member crossover here, which worked surprisingly well - I don't know why, but I always assumed that if you're in more than one band you'll still be sticking to the same genre in each. I think the reason it worked so well having bands sharing members is because they played different roles each time, from backup to main singer and changing around with instruments. I also loved the fact that egg shakers were involved. (I don't know why, but they rank highly on my favourite instruments list - probably because they're one of the few things I can play.) It was also great to see some brass action going on; I don't think enough bands make use of it!

The evening was really fun. We arrived at about 8pm, so Elder Island were already playing. They had a really interesting sound, the kind of thing you can sit and just listen to, trying to hear all the different layers to the songs (so many!). As a venue, the Birdcage attracts what you might call the stereotypical "indie" crowd - in short, a lot of well-dressed, classy people. Big love to the velvet jackets, waistcoats and tea dresses in particular. The night went really well and the atmosphere was great: even though I'd never heard of these bands before, it felt really natural listening to them, and you could see that everyone was enjoying watching them, from the couple sat watching from their chairs, looking perfectly at home, to the bar staff dancing away behind the counter, and the lead singer who at one point sat down on the settee at the very front and watched her band-mates play for a little while. It might have had something to do with the fact that when they weren't playing, the band members were just sitting on sofas and drinking, like everybody else. Gotta love a humble band.

ANYWAY, let's try and get back to the whole point of this post! The bands were great. They have a real summery, old-time feel to them - some songs for walking around on sunny days, some for dancing your little feet off, and there were even some songs that felt like they were made for just sitting and listening to on warm nights, taking them in. All in all, an amazing variety of sounds.

Great job, bands. Great choice, Birdcage.

-Alice

Hey!

So my name's Alice, and this is gonna be my 'personal' blog, I guess - I've had a tumblr for a while but people can get very comfy in the image they make of you, and on there I am a picture and art blogger (or re-blogger, I guess). Incorporating personal posts within that has never been easy, and I never know what to say, so I figure I'll just dump all that stuff here.

I promise I'll try and make it okay and less boring to read for you than this.

- Alice