Nottingham Contemporary: An Encounter that took a part of me / FOXP2

Since I am back at university in Nottingham and as always, looking for various cultural and creative landscapes that can influence my work, I thought I would take a trip down to the Nottingham Contemporary to check out the new exhibition that is showing from 15th October - 15th January 2017.

Whilst I was there I was particularly interested in the work of Otobong Nkanga which was called 'The Encounter That Took a Part of Me' and 'The Taste of Stones'. Both parts of the exhibition consisted of large tapestries, wall drawings and installations that traced different areas in botanical and geographical studies, alongside a constellation of various pieces that were from environmental and natural elements of the world. I found these pieces of art very important because in the upcoming weeks I am taking part in a 'Self Promotion project' which looks into different visual ways of promoting ourselves through designs and styles. Therefore, since the exhibitions by Nkanga included a range of graphic and abstract patterns that depicted her own emotions about a subject, I thought these would be great inspiration for when it comes to creating my own diverse prints for my business cards or even taking inspiration for the design of my online portfolio. As a fashion communication student, I definitely feel it is important to start looking at wider backgrounds to capture influence and inspiration for my projects to ensure that my ideas are unique yet filled with imagination and interesting contexts.

Finally, I admired the exhibition by Otobong Nkanga because it translated a relationship between different entities, corruption, ideological shift and power imbalance, which were all depicted through an in-depth composition of contaminated materials and textures to reflect the different turmoil's that had caused the social breakdown. Although none of the work I will be taking part in soon will feature as heavy or intense subjects as this, again, as a creative, I thought it was important to see how different characteristics or problems in society can be depicted through prints, textures and surface materials to communicate a narrative.

The next exhibition I visited in the gallery was 'FOXP2' by Marguerite Humeau. I really liked this exhibition because it allowed me to appreciate the effectivity of merging synthetic voices with sculptures to not only communicate an innovative kind of visual language, but to also show a historical interpretation of the evolution of humans and their formation throughout history.

The exhibition, which displays prototypes of living beings with different degrees of sentience, also taught me of new ways to visual communicate subjects such as biology, psychology and education in a creative and aesthetically pleasing way. Although I am a fashion student, it is very important that I keep up to date with wider contextual references because it is argued that they do have a great impact on the evolvement and the dynamics of trends and also have an effect on consumers behaviour.

Lastly, I liked how the exhibition used a range of different pink hues to create a composition and contrast within the room against the immaculate white elephant sculptures. Again as a creative myself, I enjoyed how this composition enabled the details and the textures of the sculptures to be witnessed and appreciated more, forming new dimensions and volumes within the room. I also liked how the colour scheme and sculptures brought a futuristic, abstract aesthetic to the exhibition which was ironic considering it was based on the evolution of humans and the creation of 'FOXP2' over 100,000 years ago.