High-tech and traditional arts await Exposure

A digital IPad application for fashionistas, a new twist on tapa cloth and a vampire-inspired cook book are among the quirky designs which form part of the eagerly awaited Exposure exhibition of work by graduating students from the School of Design.

In a year in which the school has celebrated its 125th anniversary the exhibition, which is open to the public from November 5-19, continues the reputation for innovative design interpretation enjoyed by the school, a forerunner institution to the College of Creative Arts, for more than a century.

The expanding role of multi-media in the arts is explored with projects such as a collaboration between Lisa Martin and Natasha Godetz, and their twin disciplines of digital and advertising design around the message of raising awareness about the spread of arthritis.

They distributed a ‘challenge box’ to pupils aged 15 to 18 years at two secondary schools, comprising items such as blow arms and giant gloves and cards with instructions to try and then carry out simple everyday tasks such as opening a chocolate bar wrapper or using a can-opener.

“It’s designed to be fun and interactive to allow teens to experience a little of what it is like to have the disease,” they said.

Natasha Mead has devised a fully functional iPad app combining a do-it-yourself yet high fashion aesthetic with a selection of self-generated instructions for users. The graphic design student says the app operates in a digital magazine format, which allows users to make their own fashion designs following a photo gallery of step-by-step instructions.

“I wanted to make it so that people would want to engage with a Do It Yourself concept which can be a means of genuine creative expression.”

Textile design student Sonya Withers, has turned to more traditional art forms, in her case the Polynesian beaten bark –like tapa cloth, to portray ideas of connection to her identity as a New Zealand-born Samoan and how Samoan culture has spread though immigration from their homeland.

Raised in both the fa’a Samoan way and as a New Zealander, the fourth-year student used design as a tool to explore and adapt these ideas of connection to Tapa.

“A variety of approaches, processes and influences were explored in this project to create a six-piece textile collection that reflect adaptation and hybridism of Tapa to textile process,” she says.

Fine arts student Jonathan Cameron has used the current pop culture fixation with vampires to create a limited edition cookbook Vamp: High Tea Edition. He bought powdered pig blood and ‘cooked’ all nine recipes from his book himself, creating delicately extravagant treats, that on closer inspection revolt the general public.

Meanwhile, fashion design students showcase a range of designs aimed at attracting tastes ranging from the baroque, to an investigation of order and solidity in fashion design and its contrasting style of asymmetry, as well as a selection of environmentally friendly- inspired children’s wear.