Look Hear Newcastle! Week 1 Review: The Loop, High Tea With Mrs Woo & Beastman

by Laure De Vaugelas on August 9, 2011

Last night, three (or five, actually) distinctive speakers took to the stage of the Newcastle Region Art Gallery for the first night of the Look Hear talk series, bringing artists and designers together throughout the month of August. Pip Jamieson, co-founder of professional networking site The Loop, local fashion designers High Tea With Mrs Woo, and Sydney-based artist Beastman, all spoke of ideas and inspirations, challenges and perseverance, but above all the strength to be found in collaboration, whether it is by sharing a wall, online or in your parents’ rumpus room turned sewing workshop.

Pip Jamieson - The Loop

Designers, by nature, need to reinvent, improve, transform and create systems which are a reflection of our time (and look beautiful) so it is not surprising that a couple of quick thinking designers jumped in and created a professional networking site which actually looks good.

The Loop has identified today’s designer: connected, fluid and multi-faceted, and has cleverly adopted these attributes as its own. Representing 45 creative professions, it is attracting designers like moths to a flame.

Focusing on the essentials (CV, Portfolio) and a few clever touches (the handshake, follow button), the site offers a way for designers to “put themselves in front of the right people” in what feels like a level transparent playing field where the brightest stars will shine and the others can learn from it.

The keywords here are: Connect, Collaborate and be Inspired. If it sounds like another design event, it’s because, essentially it is but the best bit about this party, you can do it all from your Aeron chair and your Mac Book Pro.

High Tea With Mrs Woo

It seems that in Newcastle, everyone is on a first name basis with Rowena, Juliana and Angela, the three sisters behind local fashion brand High Tea With Mrs Woo and so they should because they make the town proud.

Self-made and self-taught, the sisters who have remained faithful to the city of their childhood, are a bit of an inspiration for anyone who might consider jumping into the big wide world with both feet. Their story is one of perseverance and dedication. It also features its fair share of rejection and sweat, blood and tears. Above all, it talks about a bond between sisters that no amount of fighting and long nights can shake.

This enduring trust is reflected in the garments that High Tea With Mrs Woo so distinctively creates. Somewhere between here and the Orient, nostalgic and contemporary, bold and classic, the clothes are devoid of gimmicks or artifice and the natural materials, clean cuts and juxtapositions can express themselves for what they are, “thoughtful and everlasting.”

Beastman

How do you turn a scribble on a napkin into a four storey high mural? 20 minutes and 100 cans of spray paint. Well, that and years of practice.

Beastman is today’s answer to a renaissance man. From photography to graphic design, drawing, filmmaking and graffiti, this Sydney based artist will try just about anything visual and “do it heaps” in a variety of mediums (spraypaint, acrylic, illustrator) and scales (napkin, plywood, buildings).

Sometimes illegally but more and more often commissioned, Beastman’s psychedelic creatures have graced many walls, often shared with other artists and have evolved each step of the way whilst still retaining the recurrent imagery of strange deities, all eyes and mouths.

You can stay up to date with all the latest announcement by checking the Look Hear & Look See websites.