Ines Ting

My own design practice is predominantly centred around illustration. I create under the name XENIX, that I initially launched as a clothing label but now use as my creative platform.

Drawing is may main form of expression, using mainly fine liner or markers for larger scale. Main inspiration is drawn from ideas within punk, street art, skate culture and more. I would describe my work to have a dark, aggressive and sensual aesthetic, with my illustrations incorporating the same eerie alien-like creatures. Beside illustration prints, I’ve produced some apparel, skate decks, a surfboard and have currently started tattooing. 

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When it comes to taste, my style has been influenced much more by fine artists compared to graphic designers despite studying communication design. One of the first artists who largely influenced my style was Claire Boucher, more commonly known as Grimes, a Canadian singer and song writer.  She produces  music that has a dream pop, electronic music sound, categorised as synth-pop. She also creates all the art her album covers, her album cover for Visions (2012) , being the artwork that majorly caught my eye with its dark punk skull illustration. All her other work greatly inspires me, alien like female characters being the salient element of her drawings, very similar to mine. By listening to her music, I can see how her style parallels and is translated between her sweet and hazy sound and unique art.  

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Another artist whom I admire is Del Kathryn Barton, an Australian artist who creates a range of art from paintings to illustrations and collage. She is best known for her whimsical images of animals and people using a gouache, glitter, marker and sequins. The combination of how she merges animal and human structure together blended with natural elements such as organic forms and plants, forming a fanciful hybrid is what I find amazing.  The use of colour and mixed media is also super impressive, producing psychedelic images. 

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Due to my elective last year of screen printing, I was able to learn how to manually screen print. The poster work I made reminds me of the same style that the Earthworks Poster Collective were producing between the late 1960s and early 1990s. They used “anarchic language, photographic imagery appropriated from the mass media and the use of fluorescent poster inks DIY aesthetic” (Berry, 2009). They also screen printed as a means to produce due to the cost effectiveness of the process. Their work was influenced by 1970s British punk fanzines which also parallels to my roots of inspiration. Although their poster work were centred around social and political issues unlike mine, the same do it yourself style is adopted. Other prints I made via screen-printing were adopted onto textile as I printed them on tees and released them on XENIX as ‘Raw Rebellion,’ a punk driven satanic looking graphic.

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I have also established a music and art collective with five mates called Synesthetic running club events and day parties. I take part in the art direction designing most of the poster, making art installations, calico banners and sometimes framed illustration for the ‘art exhibition’ element to our events. I also help with the overall event management. Being apart of the music scene develops a close relationship to poster making, a comment made by Mike Callaghan, a member of the Earthworks Poster Collective in the 1979 (Poyner, 2013). An inspiration of mine with poster design is Melbourne based Darren Oorloff, his influence from the 90s rave culture is also evident in his work such as having sci-fi elements incorporated and using fluorescent colours. Having my own creative outlet allows me to slowly build my own brand and curating a music and art collective also means I can develop other skills.

Bibliography

J. Berry, ‘Earthworks and Beyond, Chapter Eleven’ , pages 182-197, 2009.

R. Poyner, ‘Design Observer, Inkahoots and Socially Concerned Design: Part 1’, 2013. http://designobserver.com/feature/inkahoots-and-socially-concerned-design-part-1/37948

The Store, 2017, ‘The Artist: Del Kathryn Barton’, https://www.thestore.com.au/category/artists/del-kathryn-barton?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIpJb36O_C4QIVFa6WCh2Nvg1SEAAYASAAEgJLO_D_BwE, accessed 9 April 2018.

D. Oorloff, 2019 ,http://darrenoorloff.com, accessed 9 April 2018.

Ines Ting

One afternoon I visited Designing Women, a temporary exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in the city of Melbourne. Located on the third floor was an exhibition showcasing womens design, an industry that has throughout history, been male dominated. The showroom upstairs was relatively small, with the walls painted black, creating an intimate environment in which the viewer follows a serpent like foot path, making them circle around the works to see from all angles. The room was sparse, with elderly couples predominate, although there were some engaging information panels made seperate For Kids. The works were divided into four categories, Leadership, Community, Teamwork and Research (Women in Design). The designs themselves when collated together were all rather random, accentuating the diversity and creativity in the design field. Works ranging from a real life sized horse figurine made into a lamp, to haute couture dresses, Indigenous design and futuristic furniture. 

As I entered the room, the first design I observed and that stood out to me was a furniture design titled Ghost, a curvaceous and contemporary glass armchair. It was produced in 2016 and designed in 1987 by Cini Boeri and Tomu Katayanagi in collaboration for an Italian manufacturer Fiam. Due to the coloured lighting and purple back wall, discrete reflections of the lights mirrored onto the glass surface. 

Continuing into the next section, another piece that stood out was Linda Jackson’s Tiwi outfit, a piece made in collaboration with Josette Orsto’s silk batiks and other Indigenous artists and art centres. The collation of Indigenous necklaces were collected by Jackson and the prints on her batiks take inspiration and reference from Tiwi Island performers during ceremonies. Her visits to the numerous communities conveys she has worked and met people in order to obtain the knowledge to authentically represent Indigenous culture (Australian Indigenous Design Charter). Yvonne Koolmatrie’s woven fish scoop out of sedge was also created through the sharing of knowledge as she uses Ngarrindijeri coil and the bundle technique, she says a “skill, and the grass itself, are gifts of the old people.” 

Personally I found the exhibition rather erratic. Designs from all over the world with inspirations drawn from different art periods and a range of cultures. Within each type of design there was no border of what was exhibited. In the fashion design industry, Dress by Dutch designer Iris van Herpen was made for singer Bjork, made of acrylic, nylon and metal with the method of 3D printing. This juxtaposes another fashion item by Lee Darroch, a possum skin cloak that represents and honours her family heritage. 

The exhibition showcased a majority of industrial designs and a few fashion design pieces and reminds us about despite the lower numbers of women designers, so “much potential may be lost through the discouragement of creative women” if their work like these are not celebrated (Bruce, 1990).  After reading that the number of women employed as industrial designers in industry show them as less than 1% (Bruce, 1990), it is relieving to see an exhibition dedicated to display womens design.  

Bibliography

M. Bruce, 2009. Design Studies, ‘Women designer- is there a gender trap?’, Vol 11 N2 April, pages 114-120, accessed 1 April 2019.

R. Kennedy and M. Kelly Australian Indigenous Design Charter, pages 1-22, accessed 1 April 2019.

V. Margolin, 2013, ‘Design Studies: Tasks and Challenges’, The Design Journal, 16:4, 400-407, DOI: 10.2752/175630613X13746645186043, accessed 1 April 2019.

National Gallery of Victoria, temporary exhibition ‘Women in Design’ from 28 Sep 18 – 29 Sep 19, visited 28th March 2019.