Launching at 6pm on Friday 6th May, visitors to The Historic Dockyard Chatham will see how emerging and professional artists have explored the controversial ‘freedom of the seas’ principle through a diverse range of artistic media as part of a new thought-provoking gallery show at No.1 Smithery. Of the Sea is a project in partnership with the University of Kent’s School of Music and Fine Art and is sponsored by Hatten Wyatt Solicitors and Advocates.  It represents the culmination of The Historic Dockyard’s biennial open art competition (Art in the Dockyard) which this year received a record number of submissions from across Europe. All works in the gallery show are competition finalists eligible for two prizes; The Dockyard Prize, sponsored by Hatten Wyatt Solicitors and Advocates, which will be judged on its contextual relevance to the Dockyard’s historical legacy; and The Curators’ Choice, which will be awarded to a work which expresses global, social and political significance. The winning artists in both of the categories will each receive a £750 cash prize.

The works were selected by a distinguished and specially invited judging panel comprising Adam Chodzko, international award winning artist and Senior Lecturer in Fine Art in the School of Music and Fine Art; Exhibition Curator Hannah Conroy from the Artist Pension Trust (formerly Folkestone Artworks Curator); Kathleen Palmer, Head of Art at Imperial War Museums; Victoria Pomery OBE, Director of Turner Contemporary, Margate; and artist Island Projects Director Nicole Mollet.

The variety of work includes lens based media, sculpture and performance art and explores powerful topics such as conflict, ecology, territory, migration, piracy, border disputes and the ebb and flow of oceans. Showing until 24 July.

For more info: http://www.thedockyard.co.uk/plan/events/art-dockyard/