Museum of Design in Plastics: Dorine Bessière

Wednesday 26 April 2017

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).

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.

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.