Urban Exhibition At Wintec's Ramp Gallery

MEDIA RELEASE
November 2 2007
URBAN EXHIBITION AT WINTEC'S RAMP GALLERY

A Wintec (Waikato Institute of Technology) , School of Media Arts curated exhibition, a project in two parts, opens on November 12 in Hamilton.

Entitled ‘ the means by which we find our way’ the exhibition features twenty-six urban images.

It was born from a desire to bring the 'wider design world' to Hamilton within the context of local surroundings. Paring down an original 100+ photographs, twenty-six images were selected that covered local urban locations: some iconic to New Zealand (ie. corner dairy), others common to most cities (ie. library) and a few that held particularly interesting, if not random, words (ie. havoc). By removing the textual component from the imagery, empty canvases were created; brandless city streets that became all the more generic and less location-specific.

After an initial call for interest, design educators from around the world were provided these blank-images along with the 'missing text' and encouraged to reintegrate the textual content back into the image by placing the text back into what they thought was the original position, working it back in as graffiti, generating new meaning by the organisation of the words or by including new graphical elements. If the designers were representing a country with multiple languages or were multi-lingual themselves, they were encouraged to use a translation of the text with or without the English text that was provided.

Although the project allows for a casual viewer, it raises deeper questions and issues. ‘The means by which we find our way’ intends to spark discussion about colloquial visual language and to initiate dialogue about cultural residue – how space and the meaning of words can inform design decisions. As an exhibition, this project adds to the debate about the role that research plays in graphic design professional practice and graphic design's non-commercial function.

For more information about the project and the exhibition, please visit:
http://www.designproject.co.nz/themeans

Corner of Anglesea Street and Caro Street, Hamilton

LEDGE features excerpts part two

International design educators were asked to respond to the following topic:
Describe an experience that, due to an unfamiliar language, knowledge, format, timing or environment, led to a greater level of appreciation or understanding of visual communication. The results are a myriad of poignant and sometimes anecdotal travel stories, commentary and remembrances that shed new light on typography and design and how they function.

Ledge features submissions by the following designers:
Halim Choueiry
Icograda Vice President
Virginia Commonwealth University
Doha, Qatar Dario M. Muhafara
Cofounder of the digital type foundry tipo.net.ar
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Carole Goodman
Queens College
Flushing, New York, U.S.A Iris Utikal
Koln International School of Design
Koln, Germany
Isabel Meirelles
Northeastern University
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A Hyla Willis
Robert Morris University
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
LEDGE exhibition and preview dates run concurrently with RAMP Gallery.

The exhibition is free and open to the public at Wintec
R Block, Gate 2, Collingwood Street, Hamilton
Open 12 – 4 pm Monday to Friday

ENDS

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