Ed Ruscha project

First year graphic communication and illustration students are working on an exciting, collaborative project with Wolverhampton Art Gallery. Students shown here with gallery Arts Interpreter Dean, have enjoyed a thought provoking tour behind the scenes, viewing aspects of the galleries collection including Pop Art, the Northern Ireland Collection and other works that have a relevance in the context of their new project. The students task involves designing a series of typographic posters that discuss the cultural and social issues to be found in the greater Wolverhampton area. Student solutions are to be produced in response to the work of renowned, US artist Ed Ruscha.

During the early part 2011 Wolverhampton Art Gallery will be hosting a major exhibition of the work of Ed Ruscha (pronounced Roo shay). The display forms part of a relatively new public collection called Artist Rooms. Its core is made up of 725 works once owned by the art dealer Anthony d'Offay. They are now jointly owned by Tate Modern and the National Gallery of Scotland. d'Offay wants the pieces to be seen by as many people as possible, especially the young; he has also asked that each artist's work be shown together, rather than scattered through thematic displays.

Ed Ruscha is a Los Angeles based artist and has been one of the most consistently inventive American artists of the last 50 years. Ruscha’s work explores his fascination with power and, appropriately for the context of this student project, the enigma of language and culture. Many of his pieces display strong typographic messages derived from common-place objects and his life on the west coast of America. His art has many similarities with certain exhibits within the pop art collection of Wolverhampton Art Gallery, making this Artist Room exhibition, extremely well placed. The Art Gallery will be showing many of his early drawings and also some key paintings, resulting in a major retrospective of his work from the 1960’s to 2005. It is also hoped that Student designs will also find a display space alongside Ruscha's work next year. There are plans in preparation for a live web chat with the artist, in order to discuss students solutions.

Within this project students will be designing their own typographic poster that uses a carefully chosen statement to also reflect the common-place, culture and society, but this time of Wolverhampton!