28 April 2012

UPCOMING EXHIBITION: 'BAA', 21 JUNE - 31 JULY 2012 AT MARSDEN WOO PROJECT SPACE

In collaboration with the artist Bryan Illsley and poet Christopher Reid, this June I am producing a very special exhibition: 'Baa', at Marsden Woo Project Space...

Baa by Bryan Illsley and Christopher Reid
Produced by Alida Sayer
21 June to 31 July 2012

The longstanding friendship of artist Bryan Illsley and poet Christopher Reid has given rise to a number of limited edition artist’s books. Baa is the most recent, combining Reid’s poem of the same name, a re-imagining of the nursery rhyme Baa Baa Black Sheep, and prints of small paintings made by Illsley in response. The book has been produced by Tatjana Marsden.

As with many of Illsley and Reid’s creative collaborations, Baa was initially made as a gift for friends and supporters. But on this occasion visual designer and artist Alida Sayer has intervened, with the intention of creating a dialogue between their little-known joint activity and a wider gallery audience. With the consent of artist and poet she has translated their work from the condition of intimate study to a transporting immersive experience, where visitors are invited to enter a wondrous environment of still and changing images and text. The original artefact sits at its centre.

Marsden Woo Project Space is curated by Tessa Peters


To view a full press release (pdf) please follow this link
For more information about Marsden Woo please visit www.marsdenwoo.com

Composite image by Alida Sayer using excerpts from the original book Baa
by Bryan Illsley and Christopher Reid, produced by Tatjana Marsden (2012)

12 April 2012

DESIGN WEEK AWARDS 2012

I have just been shortlisted for the Design Week 2012 'Rising Star' Award - brilliant! The winner will be announced at the awards ceremony in June...

18 March 2012

WORK FEATURED IN NEW BOOK BY ANDREW HASLAM

My work is featured in the new Laurence King book Lettering - A Reference Manual of Techniques by Andrew Haslam, a comprehensive reference tool for designers that work with type.

'Using a combination of explanatory text, step-by-step photographs and classic and contemporary examples, this unique survey brings together over 80 processes involved in creating lettering and applying it to surfaces... Lettering is an essential and exhaustive reference guide for any designer wishing either to create lettering themselves or to commission work from external sources.'

Link to Laurence King website

Spread from Lettering - A Reference Manual of Techniques
© A Haslam/Laurence King (2012)

5 March 2012

ALIDA ROSIE AT STUDIO MANIFOLD

For several days a week I can now be found working at Studio Manifold, both on my own projects and assisting the artist Zachary Eastwood-Bloom with several ongoing major commissions - including his Ex-Lab project at Durlston Country Park (part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad).

Manifold is a group of 9 artists and designers - 2010 MA graduates from the Royal College of Art - who have founded a studio in East London. Individual activities span sculpture, installation, digital art, process-driven product design, drawing, research, teaching, collaboration and progressive approaches to age-old crafts such as glass-blowing, hand-built ceramics and enamel painting.

I plan to develop some brand new animations, in addition to new three-dimensional work during my time in the studio... so watch this space!

www.studiomanifold.org
www.zacharyeastwood-bloom.co.uk


The 9 founding members of Studio Manifold
Image © Crafts magazine
Research sample from Zachary Eastwood-Bloom's Durlston Country Park
commission


9 February 2012

NEW WEBSITE FOR PHILIP SAYER

Last weekend finally saw the launch of a brand new website for the photographer Philip Sayer, which I designed and built. The site features an extensive archive of images dating from his professional beginnings in 1969 right through to his most recent work, including the new book to accompany Gordon Baldwin's solo ceramic exhibition at York Art Gallery, which opens this week.

With a wide-range of subject matter - from iconic portraits of literary, art and design masters such as Philip Larkin, David Hockney and Ettore Sottsass, to editorial spreads from 
Blueprint magazine (of which Sayer was a founding member) and his own personal compendium of beautifully atmospheric landscape images - this comprehensive site is a fitting testament to both the astounding technical skill and extraordinary creative talent of this most prolific of photographers.

www.philipsayerpartnership.com

Photo © Philip Sayer

www.philipsayerpartnership.com
Site designed by Alida Sayer, all images © Philip Sayer

Luck & Flaw
Photo © Philip Sayer

Spread from Blueprint magazine
Photo © Philip Sayer

25 January 2012

NEW WORK IN '2012 MIXED DISPLAY' AT MARSDEN WOO GALLERY

Until 11th February 2012 I will be showing my new moving image piece 'I woke up feeling strange' in the downstairs space at Marsden Woo Gallery as part of their 2012 Mixed Display exhibition.
Open Tuesday-Friday 11:00-18:00, Saturday 11:00-16:00
Marsden Woo Gallery, 17-18 Great Sutton Street, London, EC1V 0DN
www.marsdenwoo.com
Nearest tubes: Barbican, Farringdon, Old Street

Image © Alida Rosie Sayer

Installation view upstairs at Marsden Woo Gallery
Photo © Philip Sayer courtesy of Marsden Woo Gallery

27 December 2011

UPCOMING SHOW: 2012 MIXED DISPLAY AT MARSDEN WOO GALLERY

From 10 January to 11 February 2012 I will be presenting a brand new moving image piece in the Marsden Woo Gallery 2012 Mixed Display. Featuring contributions from 26 artists overall; all of Marsden Woo's gallery artists, alongside some specially invited guests, the exhibition promises to be a really exciting, eclectic mix of previously unseen work.

2012 Mixed Display
Marsden Woo Gallery
17-18 Great Sutton Street
London EC1V 0DN

Tues-Fri 11:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-16:00

Nearest tube stations: Farringdon, Barbican, Old Street
Buses: 243, 55, 153, 4

To download a press release (PDF, 1.2 MB) please follow this link: 2012 Mixed Display press release


21 December 2011

MARSDEN WOO GALLERY GREETINGS CARD 2011

A "Seasonal Greetings" card that I designed this week for Marsden Woo Gallery, a contemporary art gallery in Clerkenwell, London.

3 December 2011

ARTWORK FOR NEW BAND WHITE VINYL COLLECTIVE

I recently designed an identity and accompanying graphic artwork for new Scottish band White Vinyl Collective and their debut single 'Smile' (released 12/12/2011)


image © Alida Rosie Sayer (2011)




Promotional flyer
image © Alida Rosie Sayer (2011)



image © Alida Rosie Sayer (2011)



Detail from logo
image © Alida Rosie Sayer (2011)

1 November 2011

TALK AT GLASGOW SCHOOL OF ART, OCTOBER 2011

On 10th October 2011 I gave a talk to the current students of my former university course, Visual Communication at The Glasgow School of Art. The department has just moved to a temporary new location at SkyPark in Finnieston whilst the first phase of the new art school transformation goes underway. It was great to meet such enthusiasm from everyone, despite the massive upheaval, and also a relief to see that most departments of the Design school are still in close proximity (Textiles and Jewellery are both also now at SkyPark) which goes some way to maintaining one of the most memorable features of GSA for me - its sense of community. Also no mean feat to move an entire letterpress studio across town, which even involved the knocking of enormous holes in the sides of buildings, so a huge amount of respect from me to everyone involved in making that happen!

Despite my initial trepidations about the potentially 'corporate' nature of the SkyPark complex, I came away feeling excited. There was a palpable buzz about the place, which to me actually felt more like a blank canvas than a faceless shell (as long as someone can persuade the SkyPark bosses to drop the 'no pictures on the corridor walls unless in frames' rule - how utterly ludicrous), and an underlying sense that this really is the beginning of something new and different. In the face of adversity, the whole thing seems to have brought the department closer together. Everybody really cares about this course, is very proud of what it has achieved and is keen to make sure these changes don't just preserve this superb reputation, but are a continuation of it, if not an improvement. I'm really looking forward to finding out how all of this may manifest itself in the work that comes out of the course over the next few years. I bet the students can't wait to get creative all over those fresh white walls...!

http://gsavis.com/blog/

31 October 2011

STUDIO SHOT FOR 'STUDIO' MAGAZINE

An image of 'me' in my studio, shot October 2011, for Studio magazine (New Zealand)...

Alida Rosie Sayer Studio October 2010
photo © Alida Sayer



27 August 2011

UPCOMING GROUP SHOW 23/9/11 AT LONDON DESIGN FESTIVAL: WITH 'BIRDWATCHING'


On 23rd September 2011 I will be exhibiting some typographic work alongside several well-respected female graphic designers at the base camp of the 'Birdwatching' Graphic Design Walk through various design studios in East London. The event is in association with London Design Festival and fellow participants include Marion Deuchars, Rachel Thomas, Coralie Bickford-Smith and Sophie Celements.

For more information please visit the graphicdesignwalk website

'What I saw II' detail, photo © Philip Sayer 2011

19 July 2011

'FORM' MAGAZINE FEATURE

My work is featured in the current issue of Form magazine (Germany, July/August 2011 issue).







Feature © Form magazine 2011

15 July 2011

IdN MAGAZINE FEATURE: 'EXPRESSING _ VISUALLY _ WHAT _ WORDS _ CAN'T _ CONVEY'

My work is featured in the current issue of Idn magazine (Volume18 No.3, Glitch Issue, p.99).


13 July 2011

NEW WEBSITE CONTENT

I have just added a substantial amount of new content to the W O R K pages of my website. This includes the projects What I saw and A vanishing point, both of which were shown at my recent exhibition 'Presence-Absence' at Kingsland Road Studio (London) this June.

Please click here to have a look!


Photo taken at 'Presence-Absence' exhibition, © Philip Sayer (2011) 

REVIEW OF 'PRESENCE-ABSENCE' BY LYDIA PANG

A great piece of writing by Lydia Pang about my most recent major body of work for the exhibition 'Presence-Absence', which has been posted on the blog Aching for Everything. To read the full article please click here.

'...Alida Sayer’s work stood out as it really embodied, rather than merely evoked, the tension between permanence and intangibility. Her dynamic typographic works demonstrated a sense of delicacy in time, fragility and relevance. She provides a visual representation of individual encounters with states of reality. Her pieces have a sense of permanence; delicate yet bold stacks of complex sheeting are sliced and seemingly placed in bulk and stunning exactitude. They connote a tone of eerie precision, obsession and physicality. We feel we are viewing the hands of the author on the pages, their physical presence is mirrored on a table reflecting the object whilst the text, which explores narratives of trauma, stains the pages with its repetition.'

Words © Lydia Pang/Aching for Everything (2011)


19 June 2011

'FUNDAMENTAL STAGES OF BEING' - AESTHETICA NAGAZINE REVIEWS 'PRESENCE-ABSENCE' EXHIBITION

Aesthetica magazine has published an online review, written by Alex Tieghi-Walker, of the recent exhibition that I was involved in, 'Presence-Absence' at Kingsland Road Studio. To read the full article please click here

'With absence and presence expressing fundamental stages of being, the title suggests something either very, very literal, or, as it turns out, a much more complex exploration of the everyday and the intangible....

...Swapping geometric panoramas for typography, Alida Sayer manipulates text by cutting, printing and projecting to explore the way the viewer looks at 3D objects. The largest installation at the Kingsland Studios and Alida’s first large-scale work, There Is No Beginning, which she describes as three dimensional stilled animations, shows letters and words trembling inside a large frame where the letters have been cut on to acetate many, many layers deep...

...Four artists couldn’t have combined so effortlessly: their medium and method all very individual yet somehow united in their geometry and the idea of tampering with the norm. The preoccupation with technology, communication, perception and memory is evident, and one supposes that the exhibition naming alludes to the way that the artists seem to really explore the simplicity of the everyday and the ways to reveal its possible forms.'

Extracts from the review written by Alex Tieghi-Walker, published online by Aesthetica magazine 18 June 2011

'Presence-Absence' installation shot June 2011, photo © Philip Sayer

11 June 2011

NEW EXHIBITION NOW OPEN: 'PRESENCE-ABSENCE'

The latest exhibition of my new work 'Presence - Absence' opened on Thursday 9th June, but only runs until Monday 13th June! The show is open daily from 11am - 5pm at: 


Kingsland Road Studio
Haggerston Studios basement
284-288 Kingsland Road
London E8 4DN
www.kinglandroadstudio.com
0207 254 9900


The show is currently an It's Nice That studio pick (see below) and has been featured in Design Week


Image from It's Nice That    www.itsnicethat.com


Image from It's Nice That    www.itsnicethat.com




Image from It's Nice That    www.itsnicethat.com

6 June 2011

'PRESENCE - ABSENCE' OPENS THIS WEEK

My next exhibition, 'PRESENCE - ABSENCE', a group show with the talented artists Zachary Eastwood-Bloom, James Irwin and Brendan Olley, opens this Thursday 9th June from 6-9pm. I will then be open 11am - 5pm from 10th - 13th June. To view a press release please follow this link.


Kingsland Road Studio
Haggerston Studios Basement
284-288 Kingsland Road
London E8 4DN


www.kingslandroadstudio.com


Alida Rosie Sayer Studio, May 2011


Kingsland Road Studio

1 June 2011

'PHOTO STORIES' TYPOGRAPHS ON DISPLAY AT SAATCHI & SAATCHI

I was recently commissioned by Notes From The Underground to design a couple of typographs using images and stories submitted by a variety of photographers and writers for a project called 'Photo Stories'. The finished A0 typographs are currently on display at the Saatchi & Saatchi office on Charlotte Street in West Central London. One of them 'We Watched Him On Our Screens' is facing out onto the street from the window so if you happen to be passing by between now and the end of June please do have a little look.

'Alev'
story by Claire Wigfall
photo by Gilles Roudiere

'We Watched Him On Our Screens'
story by Tania Hershman
photo by Leigh Davis

PROFILE FEATURED ON MARSDEN WOO GALLERY WEBSITE

In a new section on the website for Marsden Woo Gallery, the venue for my debut solo show 'There is no why' (June - July 2010), there is now a profile about me and my work. Please click here to view the pages...


© Marsden Woo Gallery



© Marsden Woo Gallery

28 May 2011

PRESENCE-ABSENCE: FULL PAGE REVIEW IN DESIGN WEEK

The back cover of last week's issue of Design Week (Vol. 26 / No. 20 / 19 May 2011) was filled with a full page feature about the upcoming show I am taking part in titled 'Presence-Absence' (10th-13th June 2011, please click here for more details about the show). 

Typography is transformed into art by Alida Sayer, who manipulates type to create works that resemble stills from 3D animations. Her latest creations, produced for the upcoming show Presence - Absence, take printed passages from stories of encounters with altered states, including Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse V and Haruki Murakami's The Mirror, which are then painted and projected onto layers of acetate...
© Emily Pacey/Design Week 2011 

Many thanks to Emily Pacey who wrote the piece. To view a larger version of the article please click here.


Feature © Emily Pacey/Design Week.
Images clockwise from top left: A Sayer, A Sayer, Z Eastwood-Bloom, A Sayer

2 May 2011

NEW IDENTITY FOR KATIE LEES JEWELLERY

I have just completed a visual re-brand, including the logo design below, for designer maker Katie Lees who creates jewellery inspired by the industrial landscape of Scotland. 

17 April 2011

UPCOMING SHOW: 'PRESENCE-ABSENCE' AT KINGSLAND ROAD STUDIO

From June 10th - 13th I will be exhibiting new three-dimensional typographic works  in a group show titled 'Presence - Absence' at Kingsland Road Studio, East London. The other artists in the show are Zachary Eastwood Bloom, James Irwin and Brendan Olley. Please click here to view a press release.








'Kingsland Road Studio would like to present Presence - Absence, the first exhibition in this uniquely versatile and exciting new space. New works by up and coming artists Zachary Eastwood Bloom, James Irwin, Brendan Olley and Alida Sayer will explore aspects of society that are that are lived with everyday, yet are intangible, forgotten or ignored. Different approaches are taken to investigating their preoccupations with technology, communication, memory and perception.'

26 March 2011

INTERVIEW WITH MASAYO FUKAYA FROM +81 MAGAZINE

There is a four page feature and interview by Masayo Fukaya about my work in the current issue of +81 magazine (Japan). The fantastic layout was designed by Yoshinori Hozumi. To read the full article please click here

'Viewing the work of Alida Rosie Sayer with her many layers of composition makes it feel almost as if we are being drawn into an interior world by a mysterious magnetic force. Taking novels as her source of inspiration, Sayer's complex three-dimensional creations are challenging works of art depicting the vision lying deep within her through typography and multiple layers as well as difficult themes such as visualizing time. One can only guess what frontiers her imagination and it's expansive view towards the potential of 3D typography is going to open up next...'
© Masayo Fukaya


(+81 Magazine / Vol. 51 / Spring 2011 / Inspirational Typography issue)

20 March 2011

14 March 2011

SEE ME SPEAKING KOREAN! FONT CLUB KOREA INTERVIEW NOW ONLINE



Font Club Korea have just published an interview with me on their website. Unfortunately it is in Korean, but a quick once over with Google Translate produced some rather fantastic results...


'When first reading this book (Slaughterhouse Five), guess which way the gut contents of the novel was trying to shove in the heads of readers imagination was captured by transcending time and space configuration and unrealistic concept of the novel, the characters' bizarre visual depiction of my own feeling for such novels as a 3D visualization as the workpiece is.'


...couldn't have put it better myself!


Click here to see the interview in full

1 March 2011

IT'S NICE THAT...

The lovely people at It's Nice That have just posted an interview with me on their blog.



Alida Rosie Sayer graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 2009 with a D&AD Best New Blood award to her name and, in the following year, a solo exhibition of her work. There’s a pleasing broadness to what she does, each design discipline often overlapping and finding form in each other, like Slaughterhouse Five, a series of static animations of sculptural type. “I think it’s about testing how many different directions I can push my ideas in – trying to find out what they, and I, might be capable of.



20 February 2011

WEBSITE NOW LIVE


I have finally managed to go live with my new website.
Please have a look at www.alidarosie.co.uk

3 January 2011

알리다로지소이어 FONTCLUB KOREA PROFILE NOW ONLINE


I was recently invited to submit work for inclusion on the new online Korean typography resource FontClub. You can view my profile here. There will be an interview to follow soon.

10 December 2010

MARSDEN WOO PAPER TIMELINE


Marsden Woo Gallery christmas card. Constructed using private view cards from Marsden Woo Gallery's programme of exhibitions throughout 2010.

21 November 2010

'FUSE' for the VICTORIA & ALBERT MUSEUM


Commission for the V&A Museum, London, exploring the theme of 'Two's a Pair' for their Friday Late event (September 2010).