Our next lecture feature the photographer, curator and publisher, Sian Bonnell. Sian has worked alongside galleries like the The Gallery of Liverpool.

For the lecture itself Sian explained his starting point, he graduated in 1968 and was originally a sculpture artist. He made the switch to photography when he did a shoot in Florence, originally he had no idea what to do with the images he collected so he created a series out of them called Manners.

Sian started to get intrigued with the countryside as the environment provided a diverse set of colours to use for visual flair, he began taking stuff from home and placing them in the walking areas and started to implement humour within his photos as the domestic clashed with the wild.

Sian would expand on his work and start implementing inspirations such as B movies into his photos as shown through his work in Glowing. However one I managed to visit and will talk about later is his work in JUMP!

The lecture was quite fun and it was interesting on learning the works of Sian Bonnell and how he took in house objects and tried to mesh it with the backdrops of nature. I’ve similar in the past for my second year in uni when I took a toy and placed within the walking areas near Acton so it was intriguing to hear similar has been done in a professional level.

For this lecture we were introduced to Brandon and Mike who were representing the brand design agency called uniform. The point of this company is to assist with promoting and keeping brands up to date by experimenting with new technology to promote brands in a unique and interactive way. They’ve worked around 485 projects last year alone.

The talked about the diverse set of minds and perspectives within their company and have created a template of creative thinking that goes problem then insight then strategy then creative. They work alongside the client and even involve them in workshops to enhance the level of collaboration between the two groups involved. They implement the perspective of the audience by carrying out survey so they know on what areas to focus on for the brand.

The group is known to take risks and push a brand’s identity and new technology as far as they can push it, they never settle for less and strive to create near perfection, they experiment with new tech in workshops even using far out tech like virtual reality to replicate client projects but are happy to honour simplicity at times.

The creative methods are certainly interesting to me especially with their thought process of understanding the problems you face, play fail fast, play, tell stories, create meaningful experiences, keep an ear to the ground, follow your gut and stick to your principals.

The lecture was certainly very interesting meanly through the ways they implemented technology and experimented constantly. These are both factors that photography can implement and can also be a way to expand a personal brand among the market. I hope to put more focus on experimentation on my end as I tend to be simple in my methods of photography and experimentation can increase my skills and make me more diverse in ability and brand recognition.

After the Christmas break was over we had our first lecture of the term this time we were visited by Denise Courcoux, Assistant Exhibitions Registrar at the Tate Liverpool Art Gallery.

The lecture started off with Denise talking about her education which involved completing Undergraduate BA Fine Art with English Literature and how she managed to secure a placement through experimental learning at the National Museum Liverpool.

We went over on how to construct a professional CV and Denise listed things that she did prior to reaching her current job such as volunteering, casual work, utilising Uol’s Careers and employability as a resource. She later got her first proper job as an information assistant at Bluecoat.

At Bluecoat, Denise advanced towards the role of Gallery Coordinator and later the exhibitions officer. This role involved coordinating temporary exhibition, installations, the deinstalls, booking contractors, working with artists as well as partners and project management. Through this work experience Denise discovered some interests and potential new work skills within the environment.

Denise would return to education and go complete a Post Graduate Studies that involved an MA Art Gallery and Museum studies, opportunities presented by professional practice, an art curating route and this allowed Denise to develop here research interests.

Her next job involved Denise managing the small independent Nantwich Museum, she was responsible for managing everything within the museum.

She then went a different route and proceeded into the Wired Acrial Theatre where she would be responsible as company administrator for the performing arts which involved managing accounts and taking bookings, this helped Denise gain marketing experience.

Denise then moved towards the Science and Industry Museum taking up the role of Exhibitions Production Coordinator involving her with coordinating major temporary exhibitions, providing improvements to permanent displays, managing contractors and even leading the smaller projects of the museum.

Her next step was the Part Sunlight Museum where she worked as a museum officer, the role made her responsible for collections, exhibitions, learning and events within the independent museum, experiences where gained for Denise in terms of partnerships.

Lastly Denise moved to and currently works for Tate Liverpool, she works there as a Art Exhibitions Register where she is responsible for loans, collection swaps, fine art shipping, insurance, enviromental and securuty standards and location cotnrol.

During this Denise involved herself in writing practice where she would review, report and do interviews as a means to branch herself out.

During the Q&A we received answers from Denise to be open minded and keep calm and how experience is an important factor and you should gain as much as possible as shown by Denise’s own work record.

This lecture was very interesting for me, I understood through the pathway that Denise went through on how you can start from the bottom and raise towards Independence through great deal of work experience and I found it interesting on how she decided to branch out through writing. It my be good to leave a personal note to expand on different areas as I could use this to increase the variety of different sectors of art I can contribute to and gain experience from.

For this guest lecture we were visited by Nick Munro, a award winning product designer who owned his own company.

The presentation began with the story of how Nick advanced in his studies, he originally was an engineer who went to Imperial College London to study engineering and design. He comments on how he uses heroes to define a path and created a term to describe a personal approach called KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). Nick started to expand his skills and tried out Glassware and later on tried out Ceramics. Next step was setting up shop and creating his personal brand and thanks to PR from the press, Nick’s brand allowed him to push for partnerships with a great number of different people, companies and events including the London Olympics.

The segment of the lecture that interested me was when he started bringing up points about protection of your I.P and the possibilities of your own work being duplicated. He brings up how it’s best to avoid spilling your secrets of know how to competitors otherwise you run the risk of them copying your work. Nick also advice on how the simple stuff are much easier to duplicate in comparison to more difficult stuff.

Overall, while Nick’s own work isn’t really compatible to my own, his experiences with the business side of things allowed me to gather a bit more info in terms of what to look out for in terms of dealing with competitors and things to avoid doing so that my own work doesn’t risk the possibility of being duplicated.