Rob Forbes - Ways of Seeing
Rob Forbes was originally a ceramics designer who leant towards utilitarian forms, enjoying simple shapes that are functional also.
After setting up a business selling works created by multiple designers, he started to become aware that it was increasingly hard to discover design work that reflected individual cultures, due to globalization.
A trip to Amsterdam was revelatory because it is such a protected design space full of pedestrian areas, bicycle routes, history and character. Further travel in Italy led him to a theory about how these public highways with pedestrian traffic were in some way protected, because they serve a social purpose.
He draws huge influence from his street walking habit. He documents his walks through urban areas across the globe heavily, taking about 4000 photographs per year.
He is clearly an active viewer. He shared multiple photos of accidental design that he had captured, be it industrial scaffolding that created a pleasing symmetry, or the flooring seen above from a space in Brazil. This encouragement to see feels like such an important lesson. If my language is visual, then my eyes must be open and receptive to the visual coding all around me.
His talk left me reflecting on my own cultural identity and how I incorporate that in my work. I feel drawn to include certain colours as a part of my work, and for different reasons. I apparently cannot shake Baker-Miller pink because it's coding fits so well with the concepts and the paradoxes that I am currently exploring. Red has similarly been frequent in my work, but that is more pragmatic, a choice born out of having invested in a large amount of red florists acetate that I enjoyed exploring the properties of. The investment wasn't an intentional choice. I could only buy it on a huge roll and wanted it as a surface for my bull screen prints. But its been valuable to continue to push the limits of that material, seeing how I can include it in my work ongoingly.
I find the idea of going on walks, documenting my experience and then generating work in response to those images interesting. I am so often heavily concept led, and this approach invites chaos and visual purity. I might try it over the summer.
