MEDIA RELEASE: GSA students create films to accompany "Slug: and other things I've been told to hate"

Six students have each made a film responding to a poem from Hollie McNish’s new collection

An intoxicating mixture of poetry and prose,

Hollie McNish’s latest book is a taboo-busting delight

Fiona Shepherd (The Scotsman)

Six 3rd and 4th year Communication Design (Illustration) students at The Glasgow School of Art have each made a short film to accompany the new collection Slug: and other things I’ve been told to hate by the acclaimed performance poet, Hollie McNish.

Working with Ross Hogg (BAFTA Award-winning Glasgow School of Art tutor) the students have each made a piece that responds to a different poem in the collection using a variety of techniques including animation and moving imagery combined with stills photography. Each film also includes a sound track of Hollie McNish reading the poem.

“The Glasgow School of Art has always held a kind of dreamy quality to me, since passing it with my mum as a little kid. So it has been an absolute treat to work with Ross Hogg, who I have greatly admired for a long time, and his amazing students.

“Each one of them has delivered an animation that completely surpassed my expectations. It is incredible to see the way they’ve interpreted these poems, added so much more to them, and just, frankly, created such beautiful, mesmerising work. The skill and precision and patience that must go into making these sorts of animations is really beyond me!”

“Hollie’s poem describing the anxiety and search for a missing piece after one loses their virginity interested me from the first moment I heard it, so I was really happy when this was the poem I was assigned to animate,” says, Ema Ferriera who made an animated film to accompany The Morning After Losing My Virginity. “The poem reflects an emotion many women have experienced and it was important that in the animation I carried the empowering nature from Hollie’s writing. The rhythm of an anxious enumeration of features inspired me to create an ever-morphing animated sequence. It was really exciting to create the transitions between each element and to keep the tempo of the expressive recorded reading.”

“I learned a lot from responding to a text someone else had written. It felt very different from the past animation projects I had done where I was in full control of all the artistic elements,” adds Ema.

“The approach of combining found images and footage with the experimental red textures came from me imagining that whenever Hollie’s grandad would leave the room it would make the TV static distort the image on the screen, further emphasising his – and much of society’s – distorted view on menstrual blood,” says Mourad Kourbaj whose film accompanies the poem Blood Grandad. “The energy and pacing of the poem was something I wanted to match with the visuals and show blood in different contexts, almost like switching between channels. I enjoy working with archive footage in my practice and felt it was especially relevant for this project as I wanted the black and white images to feel as if they had come from an old TV, making the shots of red even more striking.”

“Working on a live brief meant that I had to think much more about the way it was going to be seen, especially as it was dealing with a subject that is still considered taboo in society,” adds Mourad.

“I chose to use oil pastel relief as the medium for the animation, as the varied texture and occasional mistake-marks left by the pastels I felt created a more childlike quality,” says India Hogan, whose film accompanies Parent Bench. “I wanted to visually translate the humour in the poem, making obvious the awkwardness of the situation in the mannerisms I animated.”

“I was very grateful to work on this live brief and enjoyed working collaboratively with the client, my tutors and peers. The experience enabled me to gain valuable industry experience and come to understand more the professional standards required when working in industry.”

“A lot of my work pertains to natural history – more specifically the environment here in Scotland – and I think my expressive approach goes part and parcel with our backcountry’s rugged landscape and- abundance of wildlife,” says Mark Faulkner who made an animated film to accompany Like Otters. “Hollie’s poem was a great fit for my own practice, and I really wanted to capture the tenderness of her verses in the way I made the otters move and interact with the world around them.”

“This particular project has taught me a lot of technical skills, but has also taught me a lot about self-belief and perseverance,” adds Mark. “Animation is sometimes a very tedious process, but ultimately an extremely rewarding one.”

“Since this was a collaboration between the two of us, we wanted to find an approach that we both felt comfortable using,” say Agnes Xantippa Boman and Tintin Lindkvist Nielsen whose film accompanies Fifty Ways to Wank. “2D animation is a technique that we have some experience with, and we felt using this technique would help us make a cohesive-looking video. The poem that we got commissioned to make a video for is lively and exciting, and animation is the perfect medium to make anything happen on screen.”

“A difference that we noticed when working on this live brief was how fun it was to have a concrete audience in mind when making the film. We wanted to create something that could hopefully be well received by Hollie’s fans and go well alongside the rest of her work. It has been an enriching experience to do something grounded in the real world,”they add.

“It has been such a joy to have the opportunity to work with the students and Hollie McNish on this live brief. It’s been a really important learning experience for the students to be able to create work which will exist within a wider context beyond Art School, and hopefully draw the large audience their hard work merits” says Ross, the lead tutor on the project.

“There’s always an added pressure when it comes to working on a live brief within a strict deadline, whilst also juggling other on-going course work. All the students involved have excelled themselves and it’s led to a very exciting and varied collection of short films which effectively capture the spirit and energy of Hollie’s brilliant writing.”

The films will be released this week on Hollie McNish’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/holliemcnish

See work by Ema Ferriera and India Hogan on 2021 Graduate Showcase which launches at on 9 June 2021 #GSAShowcase2021

Ends

For further information contact:
Lesley Booth

07799414474

press@gsa.ac.uk

@GSofAMedia

Notes for Editors

4^th year students

Ema Ferriera: @ema_ferreira_art

India Hogan: @indiahogan_

3^rd year students