Bank Holiday Closure

MoDiP, along with the rest of the AUB campus, will be closed on Monday 1st of May and will reopen Tuesday 2nd May.

Dorine Bessière - MoDiP Project Review

My exhibition called “A Plastic Life” is now up and will run for a few weeks.

Dorine Bessière. (2017). A Plastic Life. Exhibition.

Several disposable objects from the museum’s collection have been selected to be photographed on a white background such as pens, plates, cutlery, straws, lighters, razors, coffee cups, toothbrushes, milk and soda bottles… However the ones that retain my attention are the following:

Through the Photoshop software I have been cutting out each objects one by one in order to create different repetitive patterns. After a few experimentations I could see that some were more pleasant than others to the eyes. Indeed depending on the shape of the object photographed, the pattern arrangement was more or less enjoyable.

 

Dorine Bessière. (2017). Toothbrushes.

Pens Experimentations
 

Dorine Bessière. (2017).

Dorine Bessière. (2017).

Dorine Bessière. (2017).

Dorine Bessière. (2017).

Dorine Bessière. (2017).

Dorine Bessière. (2017).

Cutlery 
 

Dorine Bessière. (2017). Cutlery.

Dorine Bessière. (2017). Cutlery.

At this point I also needed to start thinking about how to display my work in the museum for the exhibition. I was given five cabinets to fill, two were vertical and three were horizontal. I continued to experiment by rethinking the format used.

Straws
 

Dorine Bessière. (2017). Straws.

Dorine Bessière. (2017). Straws.

Milk bottles
 

Dorine Bessière. (2017). Pink Milk Bottles.

Dorine Bessière. (2017). Blue Milk Bottles.

In order to fill up the five museum cabinets properly for the exhibition, I decided to print three of the pictures horizontally and three others vertically.

I have chosen to focus on two individual objects (yellow toothbrush, milk bottle) and three sets of objects of different colours (razors, straws, pens).
Spending a lot of time playing around with format and colours, I decided that the toothbrushes would work well on its own (filling the horizontal left tank), whereas the milk bottles would work as a diptych (filling the horizontal right tank) and the messy razors, straws and pens would work well as a triptych (filling the three central vitrines).  

Dorine Bessière. (2017). Straws.

 
The research around the plastic material and our massive consumption of it nowadays was a really interesting topic to explore. Furthermore, working in collaboration with the Museum of Design in Plastics was a great opportunity for me to undertake as a live project. I would definitely recommend the experience.  

Through this eye-catching project I believe that the message I tried to communicate was well received. Indeed the viewer from far away sees only several patterns and it is only after you step closer to the pieces that you are able to recognised the objects, realising what the patterns are made of.

 

Dorine Bessière. (2017). Pens.

 

Dorine Bessière. (2017). Razors.

Dorine Bessière (Student Creative)

www.dorine-bessiere.com

dorine.bessiere@gmail.com

 

Dorine is an MA Photography student at the Arts University Bournemouth

BXL photographic archive #0123

In 2010, MoDiP was donated a large archive of images relating to a single company. Bakelite Xylonite Ltd, also known as British Xylonite Ltd or BXL, was possibly one of the first British firms to successfully manufacture a plastics material in commercial quantities. The company was established in 1875 and after a long history went into liquidation in the late 2000s. The images we have in the collection are concentrated around the 1960s through to the 1980s and show us glimpses of the manufacturing process, products and the company’s employees during this time. We plan to share an image each week to give a flavour of the archive. If you want to see more you can view the whole collection on our website.

This week’s image shows the stiffness of three reinforced plastics boards.

To get a better view of the image and find out more have a look at it on our website http://www.modip.ac.uk/artefact/bxl--0759

We are still working on the documentation of the archive, some of the images we know more about than others. It would be fantastic if we could fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge, if you know anything about the company or specific images it would be good to hear from you.
Louise Dennis (Assistant Curator)

Tell us how we have helped you

We at MoDiP are interested in the different ways we have helped our audience.

Have you visited an exhibition and thought 'wow, I didn't know that'?

Have you used a resource on our website and changed how you work?

Have we helped with your research?

We would love to hear from you.  Please take a few minutes to answer our very short survey.

Louise Dennis (Assistant Curator)

Closed for Bank Holidays

MoDiP, along with the rest of the AUB campus, will be closed from Thursday 13th April and will reopen Tuesday 18th April.

Did you know? #59

Did you know that all of our past exhibitions are available online?

Design for childhood: Pre-school plastics

Designing products for young children and babies under the age of four is different from designing for adults.  The designer has two audiences to please; the child with their specific physical and sensory needs, and the adult who will be purchasing the product.

This exhibition explores a number of areas where designers have utilised the specific properties of plastics materials to create products that fulfil the needs of both the child and the care giver.

Louise Dennis (Assistant Curator)

A different view #53

There are many ways to look at the objects in the MoDiP collection.  With this series of posts I want to highlight the interesting views of objects that we may ordinarily miss.  These include the underside of an object, the surface pattern, or traces of manufacturing processes.

Title: Stig Lindberg juicer
Designer: Lindberg, Stig
Manufacturer: Gustavsberg
Object number: AIBDC : 007115

Louise Dennis (Assistant Curator)