SMFA’s Shona Illingworth, Fine Art Reader and Director of Graduate Studies, has been commissioned for Random Acts, Channel 4’s provocative and boundary pushing short film strand dedicated to the worlds of art, music, dance, animation, spoken word, performance, and every uncategorisable combination in between.
Her film, Searching, which she directed, features in Series 4, Episode 5, from 7th December. For more information go to: http://randomacts.channel4.com/about
The widely exhibited Illingworth works across sound, film, video, photography, drawing and painting. Her work combines interdisciplinary research (particularly with emerging neuropsychological models of memory and critical approaches to memory studies) with publicly engaged practice. She was shortlisted for the prestigious 2016 Jarman Award.
SMFA’s Senior Lecturer in Fine Art and acclaimed award-wining contemporary visual artist, Adam Chodzko, is one of 8 artists featured in Slow Violence, an exhibition, symposium and events developed collaboratively by UHArts and the Contemporary Arts Practice Group, School of Creative Arts, University of Hertfordshire. The artists will reconsider the prevalent and far-reaching threat of climate change. The Symposium, which is free, is Wednesday 29th November, 10.30am – 4pm and brings together a diverse roster of speakers from the fields of environmental psychology, visual arts and business. The Exhibition Opening Reception is also Wed 29th November, and then runs until 20th January 2018.
For venue, opening hours and more info http://www.uharts.co.uk/whats-on/2017-autumn-and-winter/slow-violence
Exhibiting internationally since 1991, Adam Chodzko works across media, from video installation to subtle interventions, with a practice that is situated both within the gallery and the wider public realm. http://www.adamchodzko.com
Taking place from 5.15pm – 6.45pm in the Galvanising Shop Performance Space at the University of Kent’s campus on the Historic Dockyard Chatham, the next School of Music and Fine Art Visiting Artist talk in this prestigious series will be London based artist and author Samson Kambalu. Born in Malawi in 1975, Dr Kambalu studied at the University of Malawi (BA Fine Art and Ethnomusicology, 1995-99); Nottingham Trent University (MA Fine Art, 2002-03) and Chelsea College of Art and Design (PhD, 2011-15).
Working in a variety of media, including site-specific installation, video, performance and literature, he has shown his work around the world, including Dakar Biennale (2014, 2016), Tokyo International Art Festival (2009) and the Liverpool Biennial (2004, 2016), won research fellowships with Yale University and Smithsonian Institution, and is Associate Professor of Fine Art at Ruskin College and fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford University.
His recent solo exhibition is at the newly inaugurated Zeitz Mocaa, Cape Town (2017).
The talk will focus on Cinema and Praxis – the artist’s occupation with the problematic of the gift (non linear time) and how it animates various aspects of his art practice/praxis around film, with regard to his background growing up in Africa and current forays around the world from Europe.
Tim Meacham, Lecturer in Fine Art and Partner College Liaison Officer in the School of Music and Fine Art, has his sound and light installation “It Was Dust” on the main stage of the Gulbenkian theatre, Canterbury on 11th December.
Tim works across media to explore space within the triangulated world of experience between seeing, hearing and touching. He explains, “It was dust explores the huge explosions and resulting shock waves that occurred at Uplees near Faversham in Kent in April 1916. The resulting work is an impression in real time, of what would have been felt and heard in the town on Sunday the 2nd April 1916 from 1.30 until around 2.30 pm. The work examines the notion of trauma remaining embedded in the landscape after violent events have occurred and the possibility of an “acoustic memory” allowing one to “hear the past” in the present through the sounds of surviving material and artefacts.
The sound is constructed from field recordings gathered in the present at the Uplees site, both natural; grass, trees etc. and human through touching or “playing” the remains of surfaces and structures. These collected sound fragments were then digitally layered and mixed to reconstruct the sound of the 1916 explosions based on contemporary accounts including the reported shock wave and deep echoing rumble which followed the initial blasts, which were felt as far away as Norwich. The movement of air (shock wave) created by large explosions and the point at which distant sound vibration, when no longer audible becomes felt rather than heard and its manifestation in physical form is referenced through a series of dust cascades electronically triggered as the sound of the blasts dips below human hearing.”
Liz Moran, the University’s Director of Arts and Culture said, “Gulbenkian is pleased to support Tim Meacham’s highly innovative and inspirational installation It was Dust, reflecting our commitment to working with original and ground breaking artists.”
Opening and viewing times will be on the SMFA Events page.
2017 Event and Experience Design graduate Elise Berdah from the School of Music and Fine Art has been commissioned by Clara Lee, Vice President (Welfare) of Kent Union to re-make her EED Independent Realised Project.
Fight, Flight or Freeze is a touring awareness raising experience of sexual harassment, particularly in the University environment – it was originally presented in the Drill Hall Library during the Student Wellbeing Festival last May. It will be presented again in the Student Hub at Medway from the 24th November – 4th December , and from 4th– 8th December in Canterbury. It may tour to other Universities and Colleges.
