2011: A Year of Instagraming
For me, 2011 has been an odd year for taking photographs. The last 12 months have passed by with my camera barely leaving it’s drawer and yet I’ve probably taken more photos this year then ever before. For the time being at-least, it would seem that my phone has become my main piece of equipment. Despite the obvious loss of image quality, the last few months have been great because of the ease, spontaneity and convenience of always having a camera at hand. Although I hope to soon return to the world of taking “proper photos” for now I’m quite happy to have rediscovered the snapshot and have certainly had a lot of fun along the way.
One thing which has been quite prevalent through 2011 is my use of Instagram. Despite originally being quite cynical of it’s faux-retro aesthetic I quickly learnt to forget all about it and just have fun. The app has allowed me glimpse into the small fractured moments of different lives and different places, and each new image continues to hint at the fragmented lives of others.
In this post I wanted to share some of my favourite Instagram photos from this year; from the street I once lived on to the trips away and the places seen. Hopefully they’re an insight into a small slice of my 2011.
Follow me on Instagram: @philipkennedy.
The Prix Pictet 2011
Last night I headed along to the opening of the Prix Pictet at Dublin’s Gallery of Photography. Now in it’s third year, the exhibition of this international photography prize is quickly becoming one of my favourite highlights of the year. The competition’s mandate is “to use the power of photography to communicate vital messages to a global audience”, and after themes of ‘water’ and ‘earth’ (see last years post), this year’s exhibitions has taken ‘growth’ as it’s starting point. It’s a far more abstract theme and one which has led to rich exhibition, with photographers examining the duality of the word with a strong sense of both the beautiful and the brutal.
This year’s winner was Mitch Epstein who won the award back in March for his series entitled ‘American Power’. Other personal highlights of the show include Michael Wolf‘s haunting tower blocks of Hong Kong and Edward Burtynsky‘s images of the America’s transportation and motor culture.
The Prix Pictet runs from 3rd December 2011 – 15th of January 2012
Open House 2011
Once again Dublin has had the pleasure of another exciting few days in the company of the terrific Open House Dublin, and once more the doors of hundreds of buildings around the capital have been bravely opened to satisfy the architectural hunger of the inquisitive and curious public. Following on from my previous post about a visit to Busáras, I thought I’d continue to share a few more of the highlights from my weekend and add to the handful of selected architectural gems that occasionally populate this blog.
One of the first stops on my architectural trail was a visit to Donaghy and Dimond Architects on Francis Street. The ground floor office dates back as far as 1825, and above their studio is a a three-story house. It’s a beautiful living space and it shows just how nice city living can be. The cantilevered bathroom is particularly lovely and the whole building manages to balance its contemporary sensibility with its own historic past.
Speaking of the historic past, I couldn’t help but take a walking tour of Trinity College in the hopes of getting to visit its historic library. It’s been many years since I last visited The Long Room and it’s still as amazing as the first time I saw it (making the €8.50 you’d normally have to pay to visit almost justifiable). Built between 1712 and 1732 (with an extension in 1860), the space is filled with more then 200,000 of the Library’s oldest books. It’s an incredible sight and it’s pretty much the epitome of what you’d want an old library to look like!
I also got to visit the house above, a gem of a building hidden in a quite lane in the north of Dublin’s Stoneybatter. Designed by A2 Architects, it’s a building which is both striking and beautiful.
Last year the house won an AAI award. At the event, the invited critic was the American architecture critic Charles Jencks who thought the photographs of the house were “as good as Edward Hopper”. I’m particularly fond of how he describes the image above: “It’s so poignant, almost melancholy” he’s reported to have said. For Jencks, “it’s late Sunday afternoon and everything [is] gone, and there’s no sign of any food or hope. Look at how the light hits her head…” It’s both a funny and fitting description of the house, but there’s a real beauty in the starkness of the space and a feeling upon visiting that the minimalist nature of the home sits perfectly with its owner.
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If you’re interested in more posts from previous Open House visits feel free to check out Busáras, The Plastic House, Aviva Stadium, The Iveagh Trust Flat, Liberty Hall, A-House and Lighthouse Cinema.
Busáras, Dublin
Last weekend I was given a tour of the Busáras building as part of Open House Dublin. Designed under the mentorship of Architect Michael Scott, the building was completed in 1953. Built to be Dublin’s Central Bus Station, it is often considered to be one of Ireland’s best examples of the International Modernist style. Originally conceived back in 1945, the building’s development slowly progressed against the backdrop of public opposition and criticism, with many people dissatisfied by the building’s appearance as well as its cost.
Today, Busáras has faded into the fabric of the city. This is the way that so many buildings go over time, they become place which we forget to look at. Nowadays it’s simply an overcrowded space that has become both outdated and in need of restoration. It’s difficult to imagine that there was once a time when it was held with such important regard. For its architects, its style was far more then just a set of architectural principles – it was a means to move Ireland on from the inward-thinking ways of the countries past. Busáras was a way to show that Ireland could be as great as any other European city and that the Irish could also proudly create forward-thinking modernist designs.
If you ever get the chance to visit the top floor of the building you’ll find an old staff canteen up there. It’s a space that looks as though very little has changed since its opening in 1953. Upon the walls hang a series of photographs. These show images of the building during it’s early years. These are photographs of Busáras in it’s heyday; a reminder of how great the building once was and a way to view an important step in the history of Ireland’s development. It is a true architectural gem!
‘Me in You’ by Kings of Convenience
I posted this earlier today on The Fox Is Black but I think I love it enough too want to share it here as well. Kings of Convenience are one of my most listened to bands and I think my early love for Scandinavia stemmed from listening to these guys during my late-teens. The video above was shot on the roof of Eirik Glambek Bøe’s house in Bergen by Panorama Hardanger and it really fills me with wanderlust and a desire to head back to Norway soon. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Keep Sketch Badges
Some of you may remember that a few months ago I wrote about a beautiful set of pencils which I received from designer Alex Synge (you can read about them here). Recently Alex has decided to expanded his range of pencils into a small collaborative design and illustration project called Keep Sketch and he has enlisted the helping hands of four great Irish designers to create a unique series of limited-edition notebooks. The designers are Ross Henderson (APT Designs), Dave Comiskey, Fuchsia Macaree and Karl Toomey (Synth Eastwood).
Unfortunately a project like this needs money and so Alex is hoping to raise enough cash through the funding website Fund it so that this idea can become a reality. By funding the project there are all manner of rewards that can be earned including great notebooks, tote bags and pencils. Currently there’s only five days left so you really should get on board. You can find out more details online here.
As well as being able to get a great set of notebooks, every pledge will also receive a limited-edition Keep Sketch badge which I designed for the project (above). Produced by Busy Beaver Button Co. in Chicago, the finished design is a minimalist affair with the Keep Sketch slogan written in hand-drawn type. I’m delighted to have been asked by Alex to contribute to this project and hope that it succeeds in reaching its target. Fund it here!
Update (14th September 2011): Delighted to say that this project has reached it’s target. A big thanks to all those who helped out. I will keep you updated on how things go as soon as I hear.
Tectonic Magazine
A few months ago I was contacted by Sean Alzetta who at the time was working on an architecture magazine as part of his final year at ACAD. He’d asked if I’d be interested in contributing a small interview to the magazine for a piece about spaces where people live. I was happy to help out and I think Sean and the rest of his group seemed to have done a really excellent job with the magazine. You can take a look at some more images of it on Sean’s portfolio site by clicking on design and heading down to the section marked Tectonic Magazine. I was interested to see what the finished piece would look like so I asked Sean to send me on a copy of the interview once it was done. You can read it by clicking here.
A Return
Less in the vein of a prodigal son and more like the teenager who’s sneaking back from a night out – I have none-the-less returned to the world of blogging. It wasn’t that I even planned to leave, it just sort of happened that way. The exciting world of the art college graduate is a strange one filled with highs-and-lows and twists-and-turns; and it presents its alumni with unpredicted opportunities and misfortunes at every step. Graduates be warned, if you don’t watch yourself, you too may (un)luckily end up like I did.
This long-story-short version of things recently culminated with me finishing up work about a month ago as a technician for a student support service which I’d been running for the last two and a half years. It wasn’t the sort of thing I pictured I’d be doing after leaving college and it’s not something I imagined I’d be doing for all that long, but as these things go, that’s how it happened. For a while I didn’t mind it, in fact I quite enjoyed it. Yet deep down I felt there were other things I could be doing with my time. Blog posts and twitter updates from others started pouring into my life as I saw other folk doing the kind of things I wished I was doing. So what did I do? I sat it out. I waited till it was a good time to call it a day and now I find myself ready to return to the world of make-and-do. After almost two and a half years of having no free time I’m now ready to return to my role as ‘the art college graduate’.
Except now I’m feeling a little rusty around the edges and maybe a little off form. That’s why I’ve snuck in the back door and skipped the ticker-tape parade that they hold for prodigal sons. I’ve worked on a new portfolio which you can check out here and hopefully over the coming weeks I’ll start blogging again. Changes and tweaks will happen as the days go by around this site but as I’ve slowly learned, personal sites are never finished.. Anyway, I won’t keep you much longer – I’ve a slump to claw out of, some projects to start and most importantly – some hot coffee to drink!
Spaceman Sketch
A friend of mine has recently started a masters course in Music and Media Technologies and one of his assignments has asked for an animation. I was delighted when he asked if I could help him out by drawing a spaceman for the project. Above you can see a small glimpse of the little fella who has managed to grow a bit of a beard on account of the amount of time he has spent in space. If I ever get to see the finished piece I’ll hopefully share it here.
Pause
Hi readers, I’ll be putting Fieldwork on pause for the next few weeks while I get the things I need doing done. Don’t worry though, this isn’t one of those ‘throwing in the towel’ type posts; in fact, I’ll probably be cluttering up the internet even more in the next few weeks as for the last few months I’ve been lucky enough to be adding posts over on my favourite blog: The Fox Is Black.
Hopefully I’ll get back to Fieldwork at the end of May or so. I already have some great ideas and changes on how I’d like this blog to work so ‘watch this space’. But for now I just need a little time to myself to get a lot of boring things out of the way and free up some time for the summer. Talk to you then!