GSA Degree Show 2023: School of Design

The Glasgow School of Art has generated another exciting cohort in this year’s School of Design, most of whom began in the midst of the 2020 pandemic. Graduating in 2023, they join the world of upcoming designers, following in the footsteps of world-renowned alumni. 

Communication Design

This year, Communication Design took a playful route to exploring popular cultures from around the world. The theme opens up a variety of perspectives and technical approaches, and allows students to experiment with any medium. They are a group confident in expressing their strong concepts and proficient making skills. This year, many fourth-year students take advantage of the opportunity to explore and expertly tailor the moving image format. 

Nancy Heley, a designer for Glasgow University Magazine, demonstrates her capacity to master skills in numerous fields by showing her short film How To Drink Irn Bru, which depicts Scots' passionate and humorous relationship with the iconic drink. Dusty Watts explores the potential of humour by creating a light-hearted story in a mockumentary-style film about Brad 'The Butcher' Benson, a fictional character who unravels the mysterious theatricality of World Wrestling Entertainment through an analysis of wrestling culture's everchanging aesthetics. Sport, being an important component of culture in general, remains a major focus of the students. 

Eliza Hart, who is interested in cultural identity and contrasts past with contemporary, juxtaposes English football with the Church of England, both ritualistic English groups, and evaluates both through the prism of the increasing tendency towards secularisation. Eliza's project resulted in a variety of outcomes, including a Conservatoire singer participating and chanting in his chorister's garments and a football scarf, which she considers a highlight of the process.

Culture is also studied from the standpoint of social issues. Chloe Dalziel's charcoal animation, To Fuel The Fire, draws on the experience of being a domestic abuse victim and focuses on rage fueled by the Scottish courts' failure to provide support. This project exposes the hopeless state of the court system through the hideous bodily transformations of the animation's main character and attempts to provide a sense of relatability to anyone living a similar situation. 

Malcolm Allan, who grew up in North Lanarkshire, also reflects on his experiences in his research series titled Along The Periphery in which he provides a glimpse into a world that many, including some Glaswegians, are unaware of. He collects stories about the city shedding its working-class identity and becoming touristic by documenting Glasgow's outer 'overspill' housing structures with his digital camera. 

In conversations with MDes Communication Design students, they expressed their highly hopeful and enthusiastic attitude about their time at the GSA, where the tutors' persistent support allowed them to fall in love with their exploration process. 

Shawna Li, for example, learned the value of visualisation through her work with abstract graphics and geometric shapes. Food culture was a connecting point for others. Megan Park creates T-shirt print designs as a celebration of Italian cuisine, while Yucheng Chen's illustrations discuss the presentation of Chinese diaspora culture mixed with her childhood memories. 

Interior Design

As students asked larger-scale cultural questions, they were also thinking with care about a place they love, particularly about the sustainable solutions in their hands, and Interior Design students are no exception. Aino Larvala, in her studio practice, is interested in creating easily accessible spaces that strive to prolong the life cycle of household objects by repairing and upcycling them in one convenient spot. Her Glasgow City Workshop project rethinks the purpose of department stores and replaces the notion of purchases with repair and remaking by proposing a community space where people can come together in a non-consuming and creative way to demonstrate that an inner city sustainable lifestyle can be affordable, easy and fun. 

Product Design Engineering

Product Design graduate India Hay’s work takes an intriguing approach towards the enhancement of user experience. TacTILE is a haptic floor tiling system, designed to be used in theme parks. It uses low-frequency vibration to provide a unique sensation and helps create a memorable experience for theme park visitors. Its modular tile system is fully scalable and the vibrotactile sensation of each individual tile can be customised.

Making a positive impact on people's lives is at the centre of Katherine Hancock’s work. Her Universal Stretcher Wheel Unit is designed to aid Mountain Rescue teams by reducing the time needed to attach and detach their stretchers onto it. Its lightweight aluminium structure and wide bike tyre provide easy, quick and efficient transportation and descent over any terrain.

Michael Gartside’s main goal is to develop a machine to ease small-scale waste management. In order to ensure it can be applied anywhere in the world, the manual compaction mechanism is designed to be simple and economical. The box structure is created by welding the steel sheet components, and the key mechanism involves steel gears, which multiply the force applied by the user through the crank handle by four times on the compaction plate.

Silversmithing and Jewellery

Inspired by brutalist architecture and her admiration for contrasting materials, Lucy Johnson’s final collection, titled For the Love of Concrete, includes both wearable and sculptural objects. She uses techniques such as scoring and folding, texturing and oxidising metal which she combines with cast concrete objects to create sharp, geometric shapes that deceive viewer perception. The pieces consist of multiple, modular components resembling the external structure of buildings.  

Alice Biolo’s collection, Under the skin, is comprised of nine hollow, silver brooches, each incorporating a hidden compartment of spiky steel pins. The work focuses on pain and trauma and aims to start a conversation about mental health. This is achieved by hiding the pins and allowing them to be visible only from the back, giving the wearer the choice to share this detail with an audience.

Niamh Wright delves deep into her thoughts and emotions and takes inspiration by needlework and handweaving which help her to self-soothe when overwhelmed. She utilises laser cut acrylics and mother of pearl, and combines them with neon threads, silver details and handwoven wire to create evocative, complex structures. The collection identifies the positive effect the process of needlework has had for women throughout history and celebrates free-thinking and the ability to understand oneself. 

Interaction Design

Vytautas Bikauskas’s work is a response to the daily notebooks his aunt Dalia kept for the past 20 years and acts as an homage to her life of transition. The work is a growing multimedia collection of responses to Dalia's labour including prints, calendars, photographs, interviews, audiovisual and interactive media, sculpture and performance. Collaboration is of fundamental importance to Vytautas and the performative elements included are interpretations of students from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Inese Verebe creates a sound installation inspired by the limitations people were faced with due to strict censorship within the Soviet Union. This resulted in illegal recordings populating the black market and even pirate radio stations appearing. By limiting sounds able to be produced at the installation, creating simple, fun interactions, such as a pirate broadcast to a Soviet radio, Inese is hoping that users will reinvent themselves. 

James Robinson’s work seeks to give users an opportunity to utilise cybernetic systems as a creative space by embracing the advantages of the digital world. Inspired by the process-oriented approach of the New Brutalism movement, the simple structure of the welded steel frame encasing a shuttered concrete block accentuates the work itself. Participants are urged to interact with the installation using the touch-plates to establish a feedback loop that is informed by light and sound, increasing the system's entropy and producing individual experiences.

Fashion

Lydia Budler’s work celebrates lesbian artefacts, and their research centres around the Glasgow Women's Library's Lesbian Archives. They place a high value on the message conveyed through textiles. The use of elaborate beading and hand embroidery provides a personal flavour to the work, almost like handwriting alongside whichever tale they convey. They regard their work as art to educate and challenge conformity. Their art expresses a strong narrative and creates a story throughout this endeavour.

The Kallipyga collection showcases Scarlett David-Gray’s rebellious approach to fashion, inspired by Hans Bellmer's Les Jeux de la Poupée series. This delicate and bold collection explores the sensuality of the human body by revealing what is typically concealed. The designs feature distorted sharp suiting lines and a thick, hand-stitched drape emphasising the waist of dresses and skirts while paying attention to the stomach and back. The focus is on revealing what is often hidden.

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The School of Design Degree Show runs 2-11 Jun in the Reid Building, 164 Renfrew Street, Glasgow. It is also available to view online at gsashowcase.net