This design for the song Fire by the band Dream Wife is part of the self directed music based brief I’ve been working on for 603. Earlier in the year I had some contact with bands about work, but I haven’t reached out in a while, as I’ve been focused on building up my extended practice portfolio with a greater range of work outside of the music based stuff.
I’ve made a conscious effort to focus on the music of smaller bands with my responses, mainly because their music hasn’t been done to death or mined for ideas already, so it acts as a clean slate for me creatively, and I find it a lot more exciting to adapt something into the visual that might not have been adapted before. This, and also because the bands are smaller and thereby more likely of actually becoming aware of the work I’m doing.
The band Dream Wife liked this Instagram post, and made me aware they had actually seen it. It feels strange to talk about professionals responding to my work on Instagram because I don’t always feel like it's incredibly relevant, or a definite indicator of anything. However, I thought that each small development is still an example of moving forward and slowly becoming known by more practitioners and professionals moving out of uni, which is something I really want to boost.
My research around feminism and the sexual harassment scandal happening in the entertainment industry right now has fuelled a lot of my work currently for 603. I wanted to make work that actually could have an impact, maybe raising money for certain causes against sexual harassment. Thinking about this, I chose to look into the Times Up movement, which was started in response to the slew of allegations that arose against several people across the entertainment industry, after Harvey Weinstein opened the floodgates.
I often feel like my work lacks permanence. As in, I make it, the brief finishes, and my work remains there as nothing really but a reminder of past ideas. I really want to change this about my practice and make things that have more of a lasting impact, and can be translated into different mediums and reach audiences it might not just directly coming from me. This is also why I’m interested in making work for Times Up, my work could take on a greater meaning and actually reach people outside the sphere it currently exists in.
This is my response to the ItsNiceThat short brief for International Womens Day. Feminism is something that’s been cropping up a lot in my research and practice a lot lately, so it was a nice challenge to try to apply what I’ve learned to an actual brief response. This design is one of a few that I’ve been trying to adapt into a poster series or zine, so I enjoyed this brief as it gave me the opportunity not only to explore some more feminist themes within my work, but help me visualise maybe how these illustrations can work in context, be it as a series of posters, book etc.
