Taste

For out second project for studio practice 3 is Taste. This was the brief we were given.

YEAR 2 (Module TID 1360) – STUDIO PRACTICE 3

Project Aims:

This project will enable you to create a body of work in response to the theme of Taste.

You will explore notions of Taste acquired through social, class and cultural contexts and develop an appropriate response within your strand subject area that conforms to, extends or proposes alternatives to current paradigms and notions of Taste.

Brief:

In your subject strand you will explore appropriate contexts for your work and individual response to the brief. These contexts may include the gallery, a publication (book, journal or fanzine), site specific, lens-based, magazine, internet, animation, collaboration, community, performance etc. You can make objects, images and/or illustrations, for example exploring, problem solving and communicating ideas within appropriate contexts.

Keep sketchbooks, notebooks and a developing blog to trace the development of your ideas and imagery and the cultural/artistic contexts for this production as you begin to Identify and define the terms Taste, Culture and Class.

Develop a body of work or series of works, as an illustrator or artist that demonstrate your understanding and interpretation of subject matter on the theme of Taste. Identifying and defining the terms of Taste, Culture and Class explore the theme as either Challenge, Critique or Celebration.

Areas of research may include:

family and community background

high, popular and low culture

communication of narratives through media; film, music, TV, Internet and social media

inherited skills and interests

peer group cultures

dominant, alternative or sub-cultures

aesthetics

fashions

collective identities and culture

communities and collective interests

education and social mobility

technologies

notions of similarity and difference; gender, race, sexuality, religion

shared community, regional, global values

customs, histories and traditions; ; heritage, nostalgia, industry and leisure

hierarchies ; ‘top down’ or ‘bottom up’ influences

personal expression, consensus and individualism

wealth

kitsch and trash

re-defining and free-floating markers of taste

political or ideological affiliation

Sources may include:

Exploring images, objects, sections of film, graphic novels and comics, wallpaper pattern books, gallery catalogues, picture books, interior design magazines, antiques or works of art catalogues, car manuals, DIY guides, household/lifestyle catalogues (e.g. Ikea, Liberty, B&Q), holiday brochures, menu cards, online clothing catalogues, etc. that determine and refine aspects of your approach to the Taste, Culture and Class.

Your initial responses may include a series of drawings, colour studies, prints or collages that experiment with the notion of ‘coding’, ‘signifiers’ and semiotic groupings. Work from these and a range of media to analyse and deconstruct the ‘iconic’ and stereotypical as you pursue your own interests and reflections on Taste, Culture and or Class within the chosen contexts of your subject area.

You may consider for example:

• How does an understanding of Culture and Taste guide the way we acknowledge, interpret, value and understand cultural objects/cultural capital?
• How are cultural artefacts and behaviour codified and how do we decode and employ the codes ourselves as artists and illustrators within our own practice?