Dazed Club Spotlight is our monthly series showcasing up-and-coming talent from the Dazed creative community. If you’d like to be featured, download the app HERE and join our community. You just have to post your best project(s) and the Dazed team will take a look – we select one person from the community to spotlight per week, which then end up in our monthly spotlight roundup.
Colette Slater Barrass Spotlight7 Images
“My name is Colette and I’m a London-based portrait and fashion photographer drawn to analogue techniques. I find film to be a magical process, allowing me and everyone involved in my shoots to slow down. My work blends contemporary visuals with a nostalgic colour palette. This series is inspired by memories of making cyanotypes with my dad and using makeshift drying racks in his boiler cupboard. Cyanotypes mark my introduction to photography and remain a significant part of my creative journey. The pieces feature angelic figures, symbolising my dad’s passing to another realm and becoming a spiritual being.
“The works were created by coating fabric with light-sensitive chemicals, then layering acetate negatives I made, along with flowers, twigs, and leaves collected from my walks around Shoreditch Church. I exposed the fabric squares to sunlight on my windowsill. After I overlaid the original acetate negatives and flowers on some squares to create a mixed-media collage with depth and texture.”
Omar Esaadi Spotlight12 Images
“I am a designer with a background in print design and knitwear and am interested in exploring the overlapping relationships between sportswear, club aesthetics and cultural identity, which I express through creating prints and clothing that reflects my own relationship with these spaces. My clothes aim to strike the balance between day and night; an everyday wardrobe with character and individuality morphed into the designs. I am also interested in how I fit into this narrative as a queer Palestinian, exploring modern and sleek approaches to historical and cultural designs to continue presenting a cause that is very important to me, asserting my cultural identity in these spaces.
“XXXtremesports started as my graduate project in my final year of University. The brand name is a play on words, highlighting my interest in extreme sports and the technical wardrobes that go into cycling, bouldering and other outdoor sports, with ‘xxx’ referencing the hedonistic and explicit references early on in my research process. Sportswear and textiles are a platform for me to tell a bigger story about being Arab in queer spaces, and how I make space and form community within each. When developing this collection, it was my first time making clothes myself and brand building, and my print designs and colour palettes came from instinct and my intuitive approach to colour theory, as well as the overall world I developed in my research.
“My creative process is inspired by community, space and the people around me in London. These days I am based in Hackney Wick, which has revived my interest in the brand and being creative. The club and being outside is a core component of building my creative scene, getting to meet interesting people and hear more about their work and what they do in a casual and open setting.”
Ellis Brown Spotlight6 Images
“I run an agency called BlackPepper Creative, which focuses on giving a platform, tools and opportunities to emerging creatives. I also act as the editor-in-chief of the linked publication, under the same name. The aim is for BlackPepper to be more than a simple brand or collective, I want it to become a hub with many branches, aiming to uplift and champion creativity.
“BlackPepper came about when I was in my second year of university. A lot of the projects we were doing were theoretical, and many classes were asking the tutors if we could cover a wider area of creative practices. I thought, why not give these creatives what they are craving: real projects and the ability to explore newer avenues and software that the uni hadn’t caught on to yet.
“The second issue of the magazine specifically had help from a number of amazing individuals who I cannot be more thankful for, including fellow clubbers, Elliot Dennison, who provided the incredible cover shot and photography editorial, and Sophie Richardson, who worked on some outstanding visuals for a section about housing demolitions.
– @madame3swords / @blackpepper.digital / @blackpepper.print
Corin Middleton Spotlight9 Images
“These images are from a few different projects, mostly publication-based. I like to create photo books from scratch – selecting and creating a sequence of images, editing the images, choosing paper, printing and binding by hand. My work always seems to loosely focus on how humans leave proof of their existence on the world around us, through a sardonic lens…
“The tangibility of work is very important to me, and makes up a big part of what I take into consideration when producing my own work. I try to source second-hand, vintage paper stocks to match the lo-fi quality of the imagery I create. Most of the time, I find it has a nicer texture and overall feel than modern, readily available paper. I also like to utilise older methods of printing, such as dishevelled photocopiers, screen printing, riso printing and stamps – the way ink is applied to paper can really affect how it looks. My creative process is heavily inspired by the steps taken to make an outcome to a piece of work… I am a printing nerd and love looking at old print media such as magazines and posters. At the moment, a big one is the 60s magazine Oz, with its super colourful and psychedelic offset printed pages.
“I live and work in Bristol; sharing a studio with a close group of mates and having friends who are immersed in a variety of practices – fine art, filmmaking, photography, design – which is really inspirational.”
– @ilktree
