Group and Personal Research

As a group we allocated ourselves tasks for the holidays, and I was to find 175 quotes from past and present staff and students about Manchester School of Art. I had a look on the MMU website to try and find some alumni who had said something about their time at MSA and there were several snippets that we can use. Also I began trying to gather quotes from current staff and students the week before Easter; I aim to continue with this when we go back.

In terms of personal research I am less interested in the sole use of text, and will look at the idea of 175 colours and 175 papers, ways of presenting them, and how they work together.

I thought about the fact that in the 175 years that MSA has been running, it must have seen dramatic colour changes, for example the victorian era is seen as dark and gothic while in the 1960s bright psychedelic shades were popular: these contrasting times could be represented with contrasting colours in my work. I could also take pictures around the art school from the new and old buildings to find other sources of colour. Finding offcuts from people's current work might be quite interesting as well, for example from the backing cloth in the print room.