The Future Folk at Goldsmith’s BA Design Show

It’s that time of year again; Graduate Season. When up and coming designers, illustrators, artists and all round creatives are given the opportunity to celebrate their hard work and show their industries just what they’re made of.

Here at Sketchbook we’re passionate about exploring emerging creative talent, it’s an exciting time for us and for the designers who are stepping away from the drawing boards and into the unknown.  

And so in a two floor open gallery space in Shoreditch, as white wash walls and dirty wooden floors played host, we scouted out the creative works of final year students from Goldsmiths University of London BA Design and BEng/MEng Design Innovation programmes.

Engaging with questions of the everyday, exploring the environment, gender, sexuality, consumption, media and individual realities from sports spectatorship to superstition, we were instructed to take in the show from the bottom level up we explored the ideas and questions of tomorrow’s designers. Through fashion, installations, illustration and production, while interactive works invite the viewer to become an active part of the process leaving their own creative mark on an ongoing piece, we found ourselves questioning too.

Graduate Sophie Start’s The Idea of Nature questions our reaction to the environment around us and the ideas, objects and experiences we create in relation to it. As part of her installation, Sophie asks the viewer ‘what is nature?’ inviting them to draw, what, for them, nature is, from a simple leaf, to a cartoon robot. The viewer then stuck their drawing alongside the other contributions, continuing a wall mood board of what symbolises nature for each individual who has passed through the show.

While one designer was opening our eyes to the world around us, another was breaking it down.

 Marianne Standfield’s collection of printed t-shirts depicting female body parts that can literally be worn on your chest and bondage inspired unisex pieces aims to deconstruct the barriers of sexuality in the fashion and beauty industry. While women’s fashion has been borrowing from the boys for some time these dramatic garments do not attribute themselves to either the male or female wearer but for all.

 Marianne Standfield’s designs

With innovative and engaging designers displaying their talent, offering creative comeback to the questions of a modern world, the show was a great success and definitely got us thinking.

Designer Ben Redford in action as he explores the idea that ‘everyone can be a maker now’, production is available for everyone and ‘every object a potential tool.’

But if the questioning and exposure had left us feeling a little unsure of ourselves, we needn’t have worried as designer Anisha Chandarana had the perfect solution. ‘You can’t create a design solution for insecurities’, so instead she brought groups of people together and got them talking about their insecurities. Finding that they needed something to occupy their hands while they talked she got them knitting, and ‘Knit Through It’ was born, a how to guide for knitting fun blush sparing accessories including an eye patch, nose glove, ear band and knitted beard, all while getting our fears out in the open.

So here’s to the Future Folk!

http://www.futurefolkdesign.co.uk/

Text: MARISSA/BAXTER 
   Images: MARISSA/BAXTER