Immersion

By Millie Findlay

Fight that sickening feeling of dread following graduation with Immersion, a collaborative programme between University of the Arts London, Passport and Palmer Hamilton Partnership which aims to give graduates the skills they need to get their foot in the door of the creative industries.

(Click any image to enlarge it)

We have all had it - that panicked feeling and the question, "What am I doing with my life?" You may have just graduated with flying colours, but now what? Perhaps you have been picked up by a gallery, or landed a huge commission, or perhaps you have not been so lucky. Those first few steps after finishing your degree seem the hardest ever, and with times as hard as they are, the job market can seem a daunting prospect.

Help is at hand: Immersion is an intensive programme designed to help art and design graduates fight their way through the quagmire that is graduate employment, identify their goals and give them the skills to achieve them. With a diverse programme including CV writing, portfolio assistance, mentoring and networking events, Immersion is unique in offering creative graduates advice from a business perspective, which can be hard to find!

With a stellar line-up of industry insiders including Ian Nelson, Worldwide Head of Design at Ellesse and Alistair Hall, Director of We Made This, Immersion aims to provide a wealth of knowledge to new graduates from those who have already made it. Learning takes place in the form of workshops, expert presentations, peer learning and practical group exercises, all of which encourages participants to identify their goals, enhance their skills and get the contacts to take those all-important first steps into the world of work.

The cost is £160, and the programme takes place over 12 weeks part-time.

If this sounds like something you would be interested in, check out the jotta Immersion group, or the Immersion website for more details and the application form.

Get Your Artwork Displayed Across London

By Millie Ross

VICE UK and Levi’s 501s can help you bypass the whole languishing-in-a-cramped-studio-eating-pot-noodles part of becoming an “artist”. All you have to do is tell them how you would incorporate the ethos of Living Unbuttoned into a large art installation and you could have your art displayed in public sites throughout London, and then BAM – you’re the next Emin.

Maya Huyuk, Felice Varini, Richard Sarson, BLU (Click any image to enlarge it)

If you are selected from the teeming hordes of hopefuls to have your work featured as part of the Live Unbutton campaign, you work will be blown up to HUGE proportions, and displayed in Camden, Shoreditch and Soho.

The winner of the competition will work with the project mentor, Ben Freeman, expert on design, graphics, photography and the publisher of all round amazing magazine FUN, to translate their work from small scale, to ‘size of a large building scale’.

Once up, your work will remain on show for one month.

Your work need not be in any fixed medium or format, be it oil painting, papier-mâché, carved granite – whatever, we want to see it. All entries simply need to reflect the essence of the 501 jeans Live Unbuttoned campaign.

The competition opens on the 3rd of August and closes on the 1st of September, that allows you artistic types about a month to submit your ideas to VICE via the entry form.

Inspirational images above by-

( Remember, your work can be any format, any style, and any medium. So don’t take these examples as guidelines, only as little squares of inspiration that you are totally free to ignore).

Maya Huyuk

http://www.mayahayuk.com

Felice Varini

http://www.varini.org/

Richard Sarson

http://www.richardsarson.com

BLU

http://www.blublu.org/

Matt & Ross

By Esther Bradley

Matt & Ross forged an ongoing collaboration when they met at the Surrey Institute of Art and Design. With a wealth of projects inspired by location and adaptation, the pair’s site-specific work for jotta’s Together, At The Junction exhibition is a modernist mutation for a dying mall.

The penguin donkey begins it's journey in the Lake District, then lands at the Elephant Rooms as elephant donkey! (Click any image to enlarge it)

'Charging Thunder "Duke-a-roo" Cavalcade', created for the jottaContemporary show at Elephant and Castle, is based around a furniture throwback of the 1930’s: A bookcase for the classic penguin paperback that looks a lot like a donkey, unsurprisingly nick-named, a Penguin Donkey.

60 years since it’s conception, the bookcase is still being produced for a mass market, contrasting sharply with the soon to be demolished shopping centre, widely regarded as a modernist design disaster.

In 1963 the literary pack-mule was transformed into several mythical creatures as a project run by Grizedale Arts, in the Lake District, where Matt is a resident artist. Here the design classic grew a head and tail and proceeded to eat grass in Lawson Park. After discussions with the directors of the company, Matt and Ross arrived at a new use for the Penguin Donkey.

Making it their site-specific, animal answer to the jottaContemporary brief, the duo have mutated the beasts further. Wearing elephant tusks and carrying a castle, they embody changes taken place through its migration to the new south London locale. At its core, the works reference escape and altering localities, particularly relevant to the Elephant and Castle area being a home for migrants and diversity.

Instead of literature, the Penguin Donkey-Elephant is stacked inside with slabs of Kendal Mint Cake, valued by mountaineers for it’s high energy content. Was this what kept it going on the long trip down from Cumbria? We like to think it served as a tasty reward for the explorer-visitors who found their way through south London’s infamous underground maze.

Check out Matt & Ross' upcoming shows here, and the Grizedale write up on the show here.