AUTO FETISH

Auto Fetish was an exhibition held at the Newcastle Region Art Gallery that explored car culture and its representation in contemporary art. I was commissioned to design the identity and collateral for the show in addition to the postcards, billboard, advertising, catalogue, music cd, stickers and exhibition website. It was quite a large job but an immensely enjoyable and satisfying undertaking all the same.

The catalogue, in addition to containing the exhibition list of works and artist bios was also to be a showcase of the local car culture as portrayed by the photographs of local artist Linsey Gosper and writer Ingrid Woodrow. The catalogue also featured a specially commissioned cd by local band Ionic which I also designed.

This was the first job I've worked on where I got to explore Dye Cutting. I designed the cover so that the front would be a simple reflective metallic silver with pink love hearts suggesting reminiscent of the smoke left behind from a car burnout and into the cover I cut the shape of a car so that the car from the inside page underneath would be seen through the cut shape. The idea was that one would see their own reflection in the reflective mirror-like silver cover and also the automobile cutting into their reflection playing with the dual meaning of "auto" being of the self and the machine. Unfortunately (and much to my eternal dismay) the printers fiddled with the stock, changing it at the last minute so instead we were left with a "metallic grey" which was a far-cry from a reflective silver but still managed to look good despite its conceptual failings and my subsequent heartache.

The essay in the middle of the catalogue took the form of an "autophile's diary" so I was able to give that section a kind of more personal and private feel - recreating the thumbed through and spilt over pages of an auto-obsessive's private diary.