Fans of light trickery and abstract imagery should visit this exhibition before it ends on March 27th (and hope when they get there that it's not too crowded).

Rather than write a long review, I'll just post a few pictures, but to really appreciate the work you need to see it in person to get a sense of both the movement of the installation, and the slightly odd dislocation of your vision and balance — it's not as extreme as I described here after seeing his last exhibition, but worth experiencing all the same.

More photos here.

Instead, one thing I decided to do was go and check out this year's Serpentine Pavilion. (It is hard and shiny and very very red and the cafe is expensive and there's not really much more to be said about it. I also popped into the Serpentine Gallery as I am wont to do when I am in the area, but the Wolfgang Tillmans exhibition was pretty dull.) When I got off the bus outside the Albert Hall, I noticed that there was an exhibition of Roman Cieślewicz posters at the Royal College of Art. I'd been interested in seeing it but I thought it had already closed, so that was a nice surprise (it closed at the weekend though).

The exhibition was good fun. Cieślewicz had a varied career, designing book covers and film posters in Poland in the 50s and 60s, as well as working for all sorts of magazines and institutions when he moved to Paris. There was a strong use of collage which I found quite inspiring and I was looking forward to going home and creating something, when I came into the last room and found a collage workshop taking place. So I collected some printouts of various source images, sat myself in a corner with some scissors and glue and got my art on!

This poster is the first piece I glued down, though it wasn't my first collage idea but more like my third or fourth. The other ones weren't working for me because the pieces were all printed on different-coloured paper and some were awkward sizes and it wasn't as coherent as I wanted. But once I started on this piece it came together really quickly. (the colours came out a bit weird on the camera but it's too big for my scanner!).

After that, I made this one, from just four pieces — see if you can spot the individual elements.

I also took some photos of some of the other collages because I thought they were brilliant.

This fishman was made by the women running the workshop. I later found out one of them was Natsko Seki whose illustration has made the design-blog rounds a few times recently. (The other woman was from Finland but I didn't find out her name.)

This one was done by a teenage boy who kept making it bigger and bigger until it was about half his size.

It's a shame I can't give anyone a proper credit for the rest of these

And here's one last picture, a remixed version of my first collage poster. I ran it through Plastic Bullet when I was feeling bored, and this was my favourite result because it looks like it was taken underwater. Plastic Bullet is fun for that.

I'd like to make more collages now but while I have a box file full of clippings, I don't have any engravings like the ones I used here and they're fun to play with. Anyone know a good resource for copyright-free illos? Most of the sites I've looked at have truly awful search funtions and it takes ages to find anything even remotely interesting or useable.

"I think there’s at least a decent chance that tomorrow actually could be better than today, and science and technology could still help it along. That idea’s not really a book. 'WHTTWOT' became a book when I realized that society’s shift from optimism to cynicism was a lot like a character arc in a story. In particular, it sounded to me like the arc of a parent-child relationship. Young children idolize their parents as the infallible centers of their universe. Later, as teens, they realize their parents are ordinary flawed people and the relationship can turn dark and angry.”

[via cityofsound]

Despite that, and my whinging about it on Twitter, there were a couple of good cultural points in the last week. On Tuesday I got a text from Pedro who had a spare ticket to the Martin Parr talk that night (another event from the London Literature Festival, like the Buzz Aldrin one I went to a couple of weekends ago). I killed a couple of hours beforehand by wandering around Southwark taking photos, but hated almost all of the results, which was a bit annoying. The monochrome light really didn't help, as I had to keep remembering to switch exposure and white balance and when I forgot to do so (which was most of the time), none of the pictures came out properly — white parts are over-exposed and dark areas are completely obscured.

Before the talk, I popped into the National Theatre to have a look at the the Press Photographers' Year exhibition. Annoyingly, the photos are displayed so small on the website that you lose a lot of the detail that makes them good, so I definitely recommend having a look at the exhibition itself — it's on 'til the end of August. It was interesting though; as someone who spends a lot of time on Flickr, I couldn't help but notice how much better some of the amateur photographers on there can be sometimes . Several times over I found myself thinking I'd already seen the same thing done better and more strikingly on Flickr, although in many cases the press photographers can get closer to some amazing subjects. It was also quite a lot fun watching the reactions of some of the other people looking at the photos, although the two ladies of a certain age talking loudly about all the celebrities they recognised were annoying as hell.

Also annoying, especially for Pedro, was that he ended up having to work late and was unable to attend Martin Parr's talk, which on the whole was pretty good. Since he was talking about his recent book, Parrworld (also the subject of a current exhibition), I'd already heard some of it, having been to the launch last year. This time, though, instead of just talking about his collection of Saddam Hussein watches, or his Margaret Thatcher memorabilia, he also talked quite a bit about his collection of photography books, which was really interesting; forming a bit of a history of the artform. I'd be really interested in hearing speak more about that aspect of photography in greater detail, because he didn't just focus on the well-known names, but talked about people I'd never heard of before. He also showed a few photos from his upcoming book, Luxury, but I've already seen a few of them and I still think that his strongest work was the stuff he did in the late 80s — although some of the stuff that's on the Magnum blog (which he didn't show at the talk) is also bloody brilliant.

Went to a couple of other small exhibitions this week, too. Popped into the NPG, ostensibly to see the BP Portrait Award but only managed to get around half of it because it was too crowded, as it always is. From what I could see, there was again a lot of photo-realism, or at least portraits that were too obviously based off photo-reference. I don't always mind that style of painting, but in most cases I found myself thinking that it would have been just as strong an image if it had been left as a photo and not converted into paint. I may go back and try and have a better look, if it's not too crowded, but to be honest I've had the same opinion re: too much photo-realism for the last few years, so I don't think it'll change.

Having given up on the Portrait Award show, I was pleasantly surprised to come across the Fabiola exhibit, because it's just exactly the kind of thing that tickles my fancy. Not only do the two rooms filled with similar images look great from afar, they reward closer attention, as you start to see all the differences and unique qualities of each portrait. Well worth a look if you're passing by the NPG.

On Friday I popped into the V&A with the intention of saying a quick hello to my friend Kaz Rubins, who's just started her residency as in-house artist. Whilst I was there, several people came by, including Karrie Fransman, Mark Stafford, Steve Marchant, Ian Rakoff (curator of the Rakoff Collection) and The Man At The Crossroads, Paul Gravett, and we ended up having a quick comics jam, doing a panel each, for Kaz's guestbook. I also had a nice chat with Mary Butcher, the in-house basketry designer, whose guestbook currently takes the form of a long thin strip of weaving material for people to sign, which will be woven into a basket when the residency is over. That's such a lovely idea! She also has a great selection of woven items such as bowls and kettle descalers to demonstrate that it's not just baskets that use the technique.

Karrie and I went off to have a look at the Telling Tales exhibition, which is really good. It's full of 3D design work inspired by fairy tales and other forms of literature. Some of the furniture is a bit too conceptual to be comfortable, but Tord Boontje's fig tree wardrobe and Wieki Somers' boat bathtub are both fantastic (in all senses of the word) and functional.

After that, we ended up in the Raphael Room, watching a mini-retrospective fashion show of Giles Deacon's designs from the last five years. We had fun snarking about the models with poor posture and how badly some of the clothes had been cut. The clothes weren't as radical as we'd been led to believe, either, and we agreed that they'd have been much more radical if they'd been designed for women who were size 20 instead of size 6. There were a couple of outlandishly fun outfits though, like the hairy egg dress, or the one with the helmet that made the model look like a SMASH robot in fetishwear (see some pics here), and there were a few that were undeniably attractive, especially if you could make a sweeping entrance down a grand staircase. But how often does one get to do that?

I'm not really a fan of Annie Leibovitz's photos (I don't always like the way they're lit, and find that they tend to lack a certain spontaneity), but I like this quote from her: "The camera makes you forget you're there. It's not like you are hiding but you forget, you are just looking so much."

This quote came via Ward Jenkins, who recently posted some great pages from his sketchbook, and shared some nice insights on his creativity:

"When I draw and sketch people and places around me, I lose myself in the process. Even though I have a certain knowledge of how to start each sketch or drawing, it's still a surprise to me how it turns out. [...] I'm constantly surprised by the results I see on each page, each drawing. [...] Even though I might approach each drawing differently, I know that my overall style comes through, creating an overall artistic signature, or 'voice', that can't be denied. The end result might look similar to the viewer, but, I know personally, I took the 'road less traveled', and that my artistic journey was one of newness and wonder with each page, each drawing."

I don't entirely lose myself in the process of photographing in the same way that Ward describes himself doing when drawing (and the same way other people have mentioned doing), but I do find that properly looking at things — and for things — sets off a chain reaction of finding even more things to look at. It's a simple fact: the more you become aware of your environment, the more of it there is to be aware of. (Shilpa has a recent post on colour and serendipity which illustrates this to great effect.)

People who wield cameras on a frequent basis might relate to this experiential way of seeing, but it's often inexplicable behaviour to those who don't. Friends who don't experience it often get confused and even a little annoyed by the way I might suddenly stop in the middle of the street, or run off around a hidden corner when I've spotted something that they had not only not seen, but can't understand why I would want to capture anyway. As they see me crouching into an awkward pose, or rearranging sauce bottles on a cafe table, the reaction is often along the lines of, "is there anything you don't photograph?" The tone of voice is often one of surprise, and even slight disgust, as the subjects I am usually most fond of are those that most people would consider "boring" — but that is what I like most about those subjects.

Even other photographers have had a similar reaction, as they wonder why I would bother with such inconsequential details. Ironically, this reaction has often come from those people who cannot experience a single thing (particularly social gatherings) without taking a photograph of it. Sometimes those people are so busy shooting that they aren't actually looking, and I can understand why other people get annoyed with them. There's a certain detachment, of holding everything at arm's length by hiding behind a camera; eternally being the observer but never the participant.

I think my approach is different. I like to focus on things that are usually overlooked or considered unworthy of attention because they are too mediocre to even consider — things like brick walls and sauce bottles, cracks in the pavement, paint splashes on concrete — not to keep life at arm's length, but to treasure the tiny details that people take for granted and show that they are worthy of not being forgotten.

It's interesting to me to find new ways of looking at these things in order to bring out their attractive qualities; whether it be the colours or the shapes or the textures, or a combination of all three. Of course, even though such subjects may be an unlikely focus to the casual observer, they've been done to death by other photographers — and therein lies the other challenge: how to make such images look fresh and new, and imbued with your own personality. This can be much harder to achieve with a camera than it is with a pencil; everyone can develop an idiosyncratic drawing style, but a camera is designed to ostensibly be impartial. Of course it isn't impartial; for one thing, what I consider to be attractive qualities is entirely subjective and will differ from the person standing next to me (which is presumably why I get these questions in the first place), but it's surprising how often one photographer will frame the same subject in exactly the same way as another, without having been aware of the first (as I unintentionally did in the pictures linked in this paragraph); whereas a pair of people drawing the same thing will usually come up with different illustration styles (in life drawing sessions, for example).

"I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste." -Marcel Duchamp

This second quote Ward mentions in his post is a good reminder not to get too complacent in one's work, too, and is one I've seen espoused by a number of creative people I admire. Rian Hughes said something similar in a recent interview¹:

"Sometimes I’ll purposefully set myself up to work against familiar approaches, just to make things difficult and interesting. [...] I’ll probably find a way to make the technology do something other than what it was intended for."

This attitude is also prevalent amongst a large number of the geeks that I know; the ones who hack stuff to create new and wonderful things. It's something I often admire in others but don't try nearly as often as I should myself: I need to be reminded that it's good to leave my comfort zone once in a while. Unfortunately, it's not something I find easy to do (obviously, it's a comfort zone and moving out of it is, well, not comfortable), and I think it's something I'll continue to resist until I have some external encouragement. As it is, I can only be envious of those who seemingly manage to do it so easily, apparently even without the safety-net of a support network to encourage them. I'm not confident enough to do without a support network, but I'm also not good at asking for help from others, either. It's a stupidly self-destructive habit; whilst outwardly it may seem like I'm being resolutely independent, really I'm just muddling through and not always successfully. It's important to have a constructive response from your peers; in particular, that those people whose work you respect and admire also notice and appreciate your own efforts, especially when you make the effort to try something new.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with all this actually. Just some ideas I needed to get out of my head. I suppose having done so, it would be good to know what other people think. That would be in keeping with what I said in the last paragraph, after all.

¹I've had that link bookmarked for ages and kept forgetting to post it; it's worth a read, if only for the fact that he's finally made an announcement about his upcoming return to comics (whoo!) — news which I've been sitting on but desperate to share ever since he told me about it nine months ago! And I've been looking forward to his two books on design for almost a year; he had the run of the IPC magazine archives for his source material, and I can't wait to see the results (especially as at the moment there's almost nothing about them online).