GSA Degree Show: Design

The June degree show in the Reid Building will bring together the seven design departments of the GSA – Product Design, Interior Design, Communication Design, Silversmithing & Jewellery and Fashion & Textiles. For the GSA itself it’s a sophomore landmark, as it marks the second year the Design degree show will be housed in the GSA’s new purpose built design school. 

Within Fashion & Textiles, there’s a range of deployment, subversion and rejection of traditional materials and techniques. For Luis Miguel Sanchez (whose third year fashion show was featured widely in national news publications), inspiration is found in hardware stores rather than among more conventional fabrics. Many of the materials he has used in his degree show collection are more commonly used for agricultural purposes, for example the netting that protects strawberry crops. Metal detailing on accessories and garments turn out to be repurposed utilitarian hooks and connectors.

Staying true to his unusual materials, the structures and silhouettes of Sanchez’ collection have been taken from what he refers to as his “collages.” In a series of photographs, Sanchez adorns his body with objects, for example a chair, to break up the natural silhouette of the human form. This effect is reproduced in his garments with the use of more voluminous materials at certain points in the clothing to detract from the usual shape. All across his work, Sanchez ensures that nothing is made too easy for him, denying himself the luxury of elegant materials and svelte silhouettes.

Also in Fashion, Jane Maguire takes a different tack with the structure of her degree show presentation, as her final collection will be accompanied by a fashion film. Maguire has collaborated with a sculpture student in order to produce a film in which a young woman begins to define herself and perceive her own sense of Otherness. With an emphasis on a philosophical and psychological notion of the Other, Maguire sets her work apart as conceptually sophisticated. Nevertheless, the narrative of the film depends on the materials and garments within the moving image, which in their patterns derive a lot of inspiration from fine art painters and the art of the self. The project is as much conceptual as it is personal, with Maguire using the film and collection as a product and exploration of the huge changes she has experienced within herself during four years of art school.

There is just as much a personal bent in the work of the Jewellery department. Representing the entire degree show, Rachel Blair’s work is featured across the promotional materials produced by the GSA. Describing her work as “self-soothers,” Blair explains that an experience of homesickness informs much of her collection after she came hundreds of miles away from her home on a remote Orkney island to attend GSA. Day to day, though she puts effort into keeping this specific stress under wraps, within her work she parallels her heightened sensitivity with the specific kind of beauty within the objects and how they are used.

All the pieces in Rachel Blair’s final collection are tension set, a technique that has been around since the 1960s whereby precious stones are held in place by the pressure of spring loaded metal. In Blair’s case, it is layers and layers of paper which are set into the pieces using this technique. One reason Blair guesses as to why her work was chosen as representative of the entire exhibition, is its connection with sketchbooking (a practice common to all the fine art and design disciplines) as she colours paper using drawing materials, like ink and masking tape. Sketchbooks are for her elemental not only for assessment, but for her own personal interest in being well-rounded in a range of creative skills and as part of the process of pushing out into the world, and exchanging ideas.

Just as Blair’s work comes from a feeling of disconnectedness, in Product Design Claudia Vasiliu is developing a concept that employs sound as a means of creating a more meaningful engagement with the present and the past. More specifically, Vasiliu looks at how sound can be used to create a personal history, and not be taken for granted alongside more conventional means of personal documentation – e.g. photos and video.

Concretely, Vasiliu proposes “a set of interactive objects that live in the domestic environment and archive the sounds of people and objects within the house.” Then played back within the same space, Vasiliu plans for what she calls “schizophonia”: a split of perception created by these devices between what is perceived and what is present. Exposing the potential poignancy of this project, Vasiliu considers the use of these kinds of devices in a situation when a member of the household has died, but their presence could be “replayed in an attempt to fill the empty spaces.”

Also in Product Design, Martins Daknis is as well concerned with the innovative use of technology, but in his case he is looking towards social media as a means of mediating the difficulties of the autistic spectrum condition, which may cause difficulty in establishing contact and long lasting relationships. Daknis uses a schedule for digital interaction, beginning with the users outlining their personal experiences and issues with their autism, as well as individual hobbies and interests. From this basis, potential friendships can be identified and suggested. After this, these like-minded people can engage with one another digitally, and make a more comfortable transition to meeting one another in the real world. Daknis’s project is socially ambitious, looking to establish a better peer community for those with an autism spectrum condition.

Technological innovation is again the order of the day in Visual Communication, though exhibitor Sam Rowe presents an interesting complicating of its relationship with printed media. While Wikipedia classically relies on a network of references to virtual and physical media, it itself is thought of as an evolution from huge sets of Encyclopaediae. However, Rowe proposes a means of converting the pages of Wikipedia into the literal pages of printed books, which are structured around connections made via the hyperlinks within subject specific pages. Pointing to and perhaps also problematising the presumption that a book can reduce infinite information into a digestible body of rational knowledge, there is also the potential for less straightforward, more poetic word associations, which could see 'design' being related to 'collecting' via the Wikipedia page for 'material culture.'

In Interior Design, their degree show centres on an imagined project in which they create thorough proposals for the conversion of an already existing building in Glasgow. Jerry Krylov looks to the former Odeon cinema on Renfield Street, and proposes an inner city climbing centre. With the relatively simple addition of some climbing bolts inside, his project pivots on an effective spareness and light edits to the building.

Amongst the atmosphere of poignancy, social engagement and ambitious problem solving, Tara Masterson Hally will present her cynical souvenir shop. As part of the Work In Progress show, Masterson showed bags that read, 'Have a Day', 'Thanks for Nothing', 'Do you ever feel like a plastic bag?' and 'All the Worst'. The concept for her final presentation can be loosely thought of as 'souvenirs from hell', and a meditation on the aesthetics of bad taste, gaudy consumerist, capitalist positivity, 'ridiculous happiness'. Across mugs, keychains and postcards, Masterson-Hally will present in a playful and funny way, her practice of critical and reflective design.

While there may be certain obvious discipline-specific concerns, there are considerations that unite students across the Design school. Cutting across the entirety of the GSA is an anxiety to present work that somehow goes toward justifying itself, whether in a wry criticism, subtle poignancy or in its novelty and innovation.