Future Bound Book in the shops

Future Bound -
Lucy Carasco (left) and
Elli Abernethy (right)

After months of hard work by the students at UCA Epsom's Diploma in Art & Design- Foundation Studies and the Pre-U Level Diploma not only is their Final Exhibition on the horizon but this fantastic book. The Future Bound book has now arrived in the Sampson Low Ltd offices and we are very excited about releasing it into the world.

Just like the students who will be graduating to bigger and better things in the months to come, we hope the Future Bound book will do the same in Art circles. Heralding the arrival of a new crop of artistic talent on the creative scene.

If you would like to buy a copy then we have 30 first editions available on Amazon, just follow this link - BUY FUTURE BOUND

In due course the publisher will also carry them on their site.
www.sampsonlow.com

If you would like to see who appears in the book itself then check out the Index page (right).

Laura Matthews (front)
Alice Firman, Rosie Howe and Elisabeth Lewis (Back)

The students worked together with the 4 artists from CollectConnect - Stuart Simler, Bryan Benge, Alban Low and Dean Reddick. The project was devised to give the students an early experience of working and submitting their work in a professional capacity.

The ISBN for the book is 978-0-9534712-2-5 and this allowed us to attach several students names to the code but not unfortunately all. Laura Matthews provided the excellent front cover image and we chose her and two others, Charlotte Harris and Natasha Skliar-Ward to be the book's authors. The back cover artists, Alice Firman, Rosie Howe and Elisabeth Lewis were awarded illustrator credits. We had to select 3 of the 4 CollectConnect to be editors too, but all have played their part and we are grateful to the work they had done behind the scenes.

Future Bound magnet exhibition

The Final Exhibition of all the students work will be on Tuesday 4th June, 5-8pm at UCA Epsom.
As well as some of the books to flick through, we'll have the 65 copies for the artists to pick up/take home and an exhibition of all their work. Not your normal exhibit, these will be in the form of 70 magnets on a fridge door. Come and say hello on the day and experience this insightful and original book.

AL.

Simone Ackuaku - Word of Mouth

How to make a modern statement?
Fashion or opinion, it is increasingly easy to cast your online pebble into the internet pond and watch the ripples radiate on search engines worldwide, but are there just too many voices with nothing to say or contribute out there. We need filters to protect our sanity, like a bad case of spacejunk our voices burn up on the atmospheric firewalls of the planets Twitter and Facebook.



Simone H Ackuaku - Its Statement

There are endless books, websites and experts who help you raise your profile at the temple of Google. A pressurised pecking order where not only must you be in Google's first page but in the top three names. Our lives will soon resemble a never ending season of football leagues, sections of our online lives being relegated and promoted, achievements judged on a Champion's League of online shouting. Let us not forget that the internet is like space, and the Alien tagline of  'In space no one can hear you scream' is very apt.

It would be easy to announce the demise of human contact and debate. I know this not true. I watch my daughter play in our street, endless conversations, discussions and debates about the same subjects that occupied my 8 year's old mind. Mostly about saving face after some humiliating sporting defeat in my case.

It is true though that we are bombarded with more and more information. Where is it all heading and will we reach a limit where our brains can't cope any more. What becomes a commodity is Silence, the ability to spend time with  a person or object in the physical world, the simple pleasure of seeing and experiencing a fleeting moment without having to capture it on a smartphone.

A smile. A statement.

Not the insipid words that escape from those spotless super white film-star gnashers though.
I would want to listen to the words that came from the picture (above), what would Simone H Ackuaku's mouth have to say.  If only the drawing could talk . Like all the students in the Future Bound book I'll have to find out when we launch on the 13th June 2013.

Choco Canal - Bad Teeth

It was the simplicity of Simone's image that made me smile this morning.

AL.

ps. The whole teeth idea reminded me very much of an unusual artist that I saw at Nottingham's Lightbite exhibition in 2011. Choco Canal.

Choco Canal - Claudia Winkleman

Alice Firman - Ammunition of Expression

 

Alice Firman's Future

With the most recent news from Boston today the future takes a seismic leap and we land flat on our faces once again. The yellow brick road ahead of us is full of cracks and the uneven surface looks daunting. We do not live in a Chocolate box world and it is refreshing that some fashion doesn't either.

I'm currently working on a book about the Future with students from University for the Creative Arts - Epsom. We've had 52 entries so far with such a broad range of styles and quality. They come from a wide spectrum of disciplines too. These are pre-degree minds, fresh and ripe with ideas about the future.

Over the next month I'll be writing about some of the pages that have caught my eye.
Alice Firman's entry certainly did! Who knows whether we will need gas masks and protective clothing to walk the streets safely but I see a future where we will be proud to display our personal slogans across our chests . The Protest in its purest form is fast becoming a laughing joke. Huge numbers of people rally against wars, cuts and most recently funerals but if you haven't got your hands on the wheel of the media band wagon then its a lost cause.

If the choice 'to buy or not to buy' is one of society's catalysts for change then Fashion must be at the tip of future revolutions. Here is an artform that has the ability to communicate ideas, bind communities together through identity and offers the ammunition of expression. Unlike the powerful online voices that unfortunately wither in the ether, the future of fashion gives us the chance to wear our hearts and ideologies on our sleeves.

Alice Firman displays a dark future ahead of us in her FutureBound page, but will she be a voice for change? At CollectConnect we will be keeping an eye on her when she takes the journey north to Scotland next year for her BA. Hopefully in 3 years time we'll see a new style of kilt invading our southern counties once again. One that reflects the true defiance and strength of the tartan clans rather than the limp variety we are served at weddings nowadays.

AL.

Deadline extended - 21st April

The end of year show has been put back to 13th June at Epsom UCA and this has given us some extra time to get the book together.
So we've extended the deadline to the 21st April 2013.

We've had 50 artworks submitted already and I'm slowly processing them and you'll find low resolution version in the slideshow (right).
Bryan, Stuart, Dean and myself have been enjoying the variety that comes into the Collectconnect email ever day.

This week Sampson Low Ltd's official Bloggist Philip J Deed will be writing about some of the work that has caught his eye.

AL

welcome to The Future Bound project

Welcome to the Future Bound book project.

The collectconnect group of artists will be working with students from UCA Epsom's Diploma in Art & Design - Foundation Studies and Pre-U Level 3 Diploma to produce a book that is inspired by the Future. We'll be asking the artists and designers at UCA Epsom to imagine what the future holds for them personally, the concerns of creative people and even the whole human race.

We'll be starting you on the road to self sufficiency regarding publicity and an online presence. Laying the foundations for an exciting and long career in the creative field by involving you in a 'live' project that would  grace any professional's CV or website.

Get involved by visiting the submit page and follow the instructions.

We aim to create/organise a public exhibition to to launch the book.
Full details will be on the exhibition page when we know more.

Don't forget we want to receive your image before the 22nd March Deadline.
Send it to collectconnect4@gmail.com

Thank you,
Alban, Bryan, Dean and Stuart