Tony's tour IV:No boundaries in the design field!

The day started with a visit to DKUK, a unique exhibition space-cum-hair salon founded by Camberwell graduate Daniel Kelly.Daniel told us the story behind DKUK and I was impressed by this innovative model of combining art exhibitions with hair salon services. This cross-border collaborative business model not only provides a new platform for artists to showcase their work, but also offers the public the opportunity to experience art in a non-traditional environment.

Next, we visited m2 Gallery in Peckham, a small gallery founded in 2003 by artists/curators Ken Taylor and Julia Manheim. The gallery is unique in that its exhibition space is only one square meter, open to the street public, and showcases artwork 24 hours a day. It is currently showing Henry Ward's 'Engine Room'. Through the curator Penny Skerret's introduction, we learned that this gallery showcases the works of several artists and is a non-profit organization that provides a platform for emerging artists to showcase their work.

The afternoon included a tour of the Center for Contemporary Art (CCA) in Goldsmiths, where we viewed two exhibitions. The first was Matt Connors' In Search of Assistance, his first institutional exhibition in the UK, which created a spatial expression through dialog with the work of other artists and designers. The second exhibition was We Speak Chicken, curated by Mark Corfield-Moore, whose painting practice centers on hand-woven textiles. Both exhibitions demonstrate how art intersects with other fields such as design and textiles.

Afterwards, we visited Sage Flowers, an innovative studio that combines floral art with design and subculture.Sage not only serves corporate and private clients, but is also dedicated to promoting female entrepreneurship, diversity and decolonizing the floral industry. From Sage's work, I have learned how to push traditional floral design into new creative and artistic directions.

We ended the day at the Hannah Barry Gallery in Peckham. We enjoyed Shaun McDowell's Nine Tracks of Opera exhibition, McDowell's work is dynamic and dramatic, showcasing abstract paintings that draw inspiration from the world of perception. His paintings express the tension between inner emotions and the visual overload of the external world.

Today's trip gave me a deep appreciation for the unbounded and cross-collaborative possibilities of the art and design fields. From traditional galleries to innovative forms of art display, each stop gave me a new understanding of how art expresses itself and functions. This trip has not only increased my knowledge, but also inspired me to explore new ways of combining art and design.