The School of Music and Fine Art is pleased to announce the opening of The Inflatable Archive, an exhibition at Rochester Art Gallery by two recent graduates of the School of Music and Fine Art. Claire Orme and Drew York are the recipients of the first inaugural Recreate Bursary awarded in celebration of the University of Kent’s 50th Anniversary. As part of the award, Claire and Drew have been given studio space for 4 months during the run-up to the exhibition, together with professional mentorship and practical support.

You are invited to the open reception of The Inflatable Archive on Thursday 22 January 2015, 6.30-8.30pm. No need to book just come along. The exhibition runs from the 23rd January – 21st March 2015

                   Treasure Maps, tracing paper and light by Claire Orme

“Everything in the world has its own spirit which can be released by                                         setting it into vibration.” Oskar Fischinger

For The Inflatable Archive, Drew York aims to explore the relationship between sound and image in an immediate and visceral way. Centrally concerned with acoustic anthropology, York uses 3D printing technology as medium to the unseen dimension – bringing to light the forgotten sonic histories of our environment by realising sound as object. 

           Submarine Wreck by Claire Orme

Claire Orme presents works that playfully explore the unexpected associations between the history of Kent, Ancient Egypt and British Music Hall. Weaving together Kentish folklore and ancient rituals, ghost stories and archaeology, music hall and sonic arts, Orme constructs an unorthodox narrative that is somehow suspended between the real and the imagined. This narrative is created through research materials, sculpture, drawings and sound.

Taking over the gallery and transforming it into an archival grotto, the artists will fill the space with curious artefacts that they have excavated from the ether.  Dismantling local chronologies and assembling new narratives, Orme & York will entwine past and present in an imagined reality.

Visit the project blog theinflatablearchive.com

                                                                                                                       Shells by Claire Orme

The exhibition forms part of SMFA’s ongoing partnership with Medway Council Arts development team through the Recreate project. Funded by INTERREG, the project brings together Universities and local authorities from across the south of England and in France. Recreate involves SMFA staff and students, who work closely with the local authority and arts organisations to establish creative hubs and extend student activities and opportunities into the local area.

This exhibition is supported by the School of Music and Fine Art; University of Kent, the European Union Recreate Bursary and Medway Council with objects kindly loaned by the Guildhall Museum.

Workshops

Free Family Workshop – The Secret Museum Saturday, 28 February, 10.30am – 12.30pm or 1.30 – 3.30pm in the art gallery. Join Claire Orme and Drew York for an exploration of objects – discovering the secret stories and sounds within them. Create your own narratives, songs and artefacts and curate a mini museum of objects in the gallery. Places must be booked with the Arts Team. Suitable for all ages, ideal for accompanied children aged 7+.

Narrating the Archive Wednesday, 11 March, 7 – 9pm at The Guildhall Museum, Rochester. An experimentative workshop looking at the role of narrative in the archive. Suitable for students and adults. We regret this event is not accessible to wheelchair users. 

Free – just turn up.

Find us on facebook: Rochester Art Gallery & Craft Case

Rochester Art Gallery is situated within the Visitor Information Centre at 95 High St, Rochester Kent ME1 1LX. Open 10am-5pm Monday to Saturday and Sundays 10.30-5pm. Admission is free.

For more information about Rochester Art Gallery contact the arts team on 01634 338319 or email arts@medway.gov.uk or visit www.medway.gov.uk/arts or find us on facebook at Rochester Art Gallery & Craft Case.

Figure 2 : The vectorial channel of being.                                                    Courtesy of Tristan Garcia and Edinburgh                                                 University Press.

Symposium: Realisms and Object Orientations: Art, Politics and the Philosophy of Tristan Garcia

Fri 5 Dec, 11am
£5 / £3 Concessions

This multidisciplinary symposium seeks to interrogate philosophical realisms and object orientations within recent thought. The renowned philosopher Tristan Garcia will present, with his philosophical system providing the focus for a number of the papers. Artists’ contributions will explore this philosophical territory through performative practices.

Contributors: Tristan Garcia, Dr Iain MacKenzie, Dr Peter Wolfendale, Dr Maria Walsh, Dr Steve Klee, Ben Turner, Annie Davey, Matthew de Kersaint Giraudeau

In partnership with the University of Kent, Sound Image Space and Critical Thought research centres

Focusing on photography, film and video, Jananne Al-Ani’s recent work references the use of lens-based technologies in modern warfare and surveillance.

4th December, 2014

Clock Tower Building (formerly BridgeWardens College), Lecture Theatre
17.30-18.30
Free, everyone welcome!

Jananne Al-Ani’s solo exhibitions include Excavations, Hayward Gallery Project Space, London (2014); Groundwork, Beirut Art Center (2013) and Shadow Sites, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington DC (2012).  She participated in the 13th Istanbul Biennial (2013); Sharjah Biennial 11 (2013); 18th Biennale of Sydney (2012) and the 54th Venice Biennale (2011).  Her work is in the collections of the Tate, London, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo and Darat al Funun, Amman. She is currently Senior Research Fellow at the University of the Arts, London.

Kirsten Glass work has been exhibited regularly in group and solo shows, mainly in London’s commercial, public and project spaces such as the ICA, Barbican, V22 Projects and Hales gallery.

27th November, 2014

Clock Tower Building (formerly BridgeWardens College), Lecture Theatre
17.30-18.30
Free, everyone welcome!

Kirsten Glass was born in Belfast in 1975. She attended Chelsea College of Art then Goldsmiths College, graduating in 2000.

Kirsten will talk about developments in her painting practice over the last 15 years, focusing on the most recent body of work which is currently showing in London: Persephone, Queen of the Underworld, 14.11.14- 11.12.14. The Cock ‘n’ Bull Gallery, a project space below Tramshed Restaurant, 32, Rivington St, EC2A 3LX.
Kirsten writes of this recent body of work:

I don’t want to be entirely in control. I want to feed the paintings this ritual geometry until they begin to transform into something I didn’t design. I watch out for when the painting becomes present, when it seems to hold something within itself. It’s important not to reduce this to an explanation. I’m interested in feeling the pulse or vibration and atmosphere of a painting, and knowing it holds its story precisely but silently. I guess the desire to get closer to something beyond the language you’re using – to know something unknowable – is the same for every artist and it really is the nature of painting. It’s the seduction of ‘almost’ and why once is never enough. But yes, they are libidinal and female and made between something sexual and something metaphysical. In this way they are love paintings.

For more information about Glass, please see: http://www.kirstenglass.com/