Cardiff School of Art and Design Masters Degree Show Opens

September 11, 2017 by

 

Cardiff Met Masters Show at the Cardiff School of Art and Design, Llandaff, Cardiff.

 

The hugely varied exhibition from Cardiff Metropolitan University’s students will be hosted at the Llandaff Campus’ state of the art School of Art and Design.

Showcasing the final projects of young artists who have just completed a Masters across a range of disciplines from art and design to Ceramics, Fine Art and Product Design, visitors are welcome to the FREE exhibition from 10am until 4pm until Wednesday.

 

Here are a few of the varied works:

 

 

CSAD Ceramics Student Uses Empirical Process to Achieve Philosophical Progress

Twenty-three-year old Nathan Mullis, from Cardiff is in the early stages of his artistic career and has just completed a Master’s degree in Ceramics at Cardiff School of Art and Design. He already has an impressive record of exhibitions. This September, his latest project, “Small Worlds”, will be showcased at the CSAD Masters’ Degree Show and also displayed at this year’s British Ceramics Biennale FRESH prize.

Nathan is aesthetically drawn to everyday objects and structures that dominate our immediate environment, he shapes raw material – mainly clay and ceramics – to create environments inspired by his imagination and intuition.

His Masters’ final project, ‘Small Worlds’, is a series of 20 independent sculptures, which work collectively in harmony.

Nathan explains: “The objects cohere to the same universal similarities I find myself in, voicing the ‘primal’, which is what unites them. The sculptures create a language that comes together to create a bridge between the past and present to characterise an aesthetic distinctiveness.

“To some extent, the language of these sculptures creates a discourse which displaces and modifies each other. The sculptures are drawn from a subconscious instinct, a raw urge to withdraw oneself from mind to physical rendition and rendition to form.

Nathan Mullis insta

“My approach is empirical in nature and draws on my experiences and observations, where I create and respond to the material intuitively. Each object has an individual pre-sense, yet when they exist collectively the dialogue is more complex, which in turn extends the narrative.”

The genesis of “small worlds” goes all the way back to Nathan’s childhood memories, which continue to fuel his imagination today. But the project really started developing from an extensive exploration of clay during his final Undergraduate year studying Fine Art at CSAD.

He says: “ Without the extensive and open facilities the University invites and the wide breadth of resources it has, none of this would be possible.”

For Nathan, no choice of material is left to chance. Ceramics requires plenty of patience and can become costly.

He says: “Although contemporary ceramics has been around for a long time, it has never been so popular as in the last 15 years, and in the past few Ceramics has made an important revival in the world of Fine Art.

“I believe I am so engaged with the work of artists like Anish Kapoor or Ron Nagle, because of how they construct meaning through the selectiveness of their materials and how they further manipulate those materials for the greater audience, ‘fabricating’ immense sculptures that captivate and engage your vision.”

Nathan is about to join CSAD’s Incubation Unit, which allows young developing artists and creative practitioners to kickstart their careers, by providing them with a studio and exhibition space to enable them to support themselves on the beginning their journeys in the artistic world.

He has also received a £1000 bursary from the Fenton Arts Trust as well as being selected for the prestigious FRESH Prize in Stoke on Trent, which has selected just 22 from 110 talented recent Ceramics graduates from across the UK and Ireland to exhibit from 23 September to 5 November 2017.

To see more of his work, see http://www.nathanmullisartist.co.uk/

 

Young Cardiff-based Designer Promotes Sustainable Manufacturing Methods

Solving problems in a sustainable manner has become Andrew Hallam’s creative purpose. Since moving to Cardiff, the 23-year-old designer from Nottingham has nurtured a growing interest for efficient manufacturing methods.

Andrew, who just completed a Masters in Product design at CSAD, explains: “My approach to design is that of a realistic nature, designing products and manufacturing systems that society needs today and that can be implemented tomorrow.  No design should be made without purpose, there must always be a need and it should exist to make someone’s life just that little bit easier.”

The ‘realistic designer’, as he calls himself, has several other projects in the pipeline, including the launch of a business designing and making large-scale purpose designed pet enclosures, having looked at animals’ real needs.

Registered as self-employed, Andrew has already manufactured several hedgehog houses and owl boxes for residential use and is now looking to expand his practice to bird boxes, bat boxes, dog kennels, small to large-scale aviaries and anything else that is domestic pet related.

 

Cardiff Met Masters Show at the Cardiff School of Art and Design, Llandaff, Cardiff. Picture shows Andy Hallam.

 

Andrew grew up surrounded by pets of all sorts, some more exotic than others. While his sister has become the manager of a pet shop, Andrew works with his mother who runs ‘Animal Antic Encounters’, a petting zoo that caters for children’s parties.

Andrew said: “My goal is to make high quality, well-built solutions that will last and be recognized as my own whilst being sustainable.”

Andrew has been selected to join CSAD’s Incubation Unit, which will give him access to a studio and to the University’s facilities for just £100 per month. He will make best use of this opportunity to work on a confidential prototype project for John Littlewood, a Senior Architectural Lecturer at the University.

Andrew says: “I am a strong believer in high quality products. Just because a product is cheap doesn’t mean it is the best value for money, it’s in fact often not.

“In my practice, I consider the use of materials, the way they are processed and recycled, to maximise the energy and material used in every way possible as well as creating as little impact on the environment and people as absolutely necessary. I will always use an alternative to plastic wherever I can. For my business, I will mainly use aluminium and wood, some of the most sustainable materials we have on the planet.

“Sustainability isn’t just about being green or eco-friendly, it is about thinking about the lifetime of the product making it of higher quality so it last longer making it more worthwhile.”

 

Alex Hirst, a Product Design Masters student at Cardiff School of Art and Design, helps tackle missed NHS appointments with his final project.

Alex, a 32-year-old ex-senior advertising accountant manager, is preparing to showcase the result of a one-year Masters course in Product Design. His creation provides a practical solution to reduce the number of hospital appointments missed due to patients being unable to find the right department for their appointment. 

From his frequent contact with doctors and patients at University Hospital of Wales, Alex realised that hospitals face a big problem with the number of missed appointments. People arriving late to appointments or missing them entirely, has a knock-on effect on NHS waiting times, leads to inefficient use of staff, diverts resources away from where they are really needed, and is a financial cost to the NHS.

Conversations with out-patients revealed that the phenomenon of missed hospital appointments cannot just be explained by forgetfulness, but is partly caused by patients getting lost on the way to their appointment.

 

Cardiff Met Masters Show at the Cardiff School of Art and Design, Llandaff, Cardiff. Picture shows Alex Hurst.

 

Alex noted “Many hospitals are like the Heath – they are huge buildings with a very complex layout. GPS doesn’t work inside and out-patients have great difficulty finding the right department for their appointment.”

Motivated by a desire to solve problems, Alex thought he might be able to help minimise the number of missed appointments.

CSAD’s Product Design course asks its students to cooperate with an industrial partner to tackle an unmet need. Alex worked closely with the Health Board to develop a technical solution

“The product is a working prototype to guide patients to where their appointment is. It involves an interactive screen with a bespoke website and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID).”

Similar to a barcode, RFID provides unique identification for an object. In this case, patients will arrive at the hospital with the letter giving their appointment details. They will scan the letter and the interactive screen will bring up the details of where their appointment is; the software then shows them a plan of the hospital and guides them to the appointment.

“It is a technical version of customer service. It has potential to be adapted to any hospital layout and can benefit out-patients, visitors and new staff.”

During his undergraduate Fine Art degree, Alex worked with reclaimed metal to create kinetic sculpture. However, he then worked in advertising for several before the transition into product design and medical devices.

This was confirmed by Alex’s attendance at the. With financial support from Cardiff Met and Santander mobility fund, Alex was able to travel to Yale University to compete with 200 other attendees at the Yale Healthcare Hackathon 2017 to develop a product to address an unmet need in healthcare and worked on a project about pollution levels in cities and the impact of this on asthmatic children. He developed a smart bracelet to communicate key health information to a child’s parents and won the ‘Careers, Life and Yale’ prize.

 

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