All posts by mem

SMFA is partner in international festival of moving image and digital art in Medway

October 12, 2017 mem

The 51zero Festival takes as its theme Decreation: Establishing new coordinates, and runs from 27th October – 2nd November in Rochester and Chatham.

51zero, which takes its name from the geographical coordinates of Medway, focuses international collaboration, artistic production and exhibition of film, video and digital art. Working from within the region of Medway as the project’s base, 51zero partner with cultural organisations in the UK and overseas to commission, curate and present contemporary moving image work. The programme features contemporary artists and established musicians, alongside emerging practitioners and students from SMFA.

The festival opens on Friday 27th October with an eclectic evening of silent short films, animations and heritage moving-image, screened alongside live music performances at Rochester Cathedral.

Events continue at the Cathedral Crypt until Wednesday and Guildhall Museum presents exhibitions, installations, participatory performances and a strand curated by students of the University of Kent, until the following Thursday.

On Thursday 2^nd November, a final showcase of films by emerging artists, as part of Open Projector, will be hosted by the University of Kent, as well as a final discussion forum, bringing together a mix of international and emerging artists, local students and graduates, curators, critics and musicians. Open Projector takes place in The Royal Dockyard Church, 5pm – 6:30pm, providing an important opportunity for emerging artists, graduates, and students to screen and discuss their work in a peer group environment. The public is invited to participate to Decreation New Coordinates, this closing strand of the festival, which will precede the closing discussion forum, accompanied by a communal supper from 6:30pm – 9:30pm.

All events are FREE and open to all. Further information at www.51zero.org

The festival was made possible by lottery fund from Arts Council England Grants for the Arts, Kent County Council’s Arts Investment Fund and University of Kent – Student Experience Fund. With special thanks to Rochester Cathedral, the Guildhall Museum, Kent School of Music and Fine Art, Screen South and Rochester Film Society.

creative events, news

EED Live Event Tuesday 12th December in Rochester

October 11, 2017 mem

Eastgate House interior. Photo by Peter Hatton

Year 3 SMFA Event & Experience Design students present a live event from 11am-4pm with multimedia installations and performances in an explorative response to the physical, historical and social contexts of one of Medway’s historic sites – Eastgate House, High Street, Rochester.

This innovative event produces an interpretive and immersive tour of the buildings.

To enter Eastgate House, there is an admission charge to the public.
Prices:
Adults: £5.50
Concessions (inc. Friends Group): £4
Under 5s: free
Family Ticket: £15
Groups of 10 or more: 15% discount
School groups: 15% discount on concession price

More info about opening times and charges here: http://www.medway.gov.uk/leisu…

“It is a great privilege and pleasure to work again with the officers at Medway Council’s Sports, Leisure Tourism and Heritage Department and a wonderful opportunity for the students to work with a client in a real-world environment,” says Programmes Director for Event and Experience Design, Event and Experience Management, and Fine Art, and Deputy Head of School, Peter Hatton.

fine art, news

BA (Hons) Fine Art 3rd year interim show in Rochester during December

October 11, 2017 mem

From 8^th December – 13^th December, BA (Hons) Fine Art 3^rd year students will again be holding their annual interim show in the historic Chatham house on Rochester high street. The building, a Georgian brewery in the process of being restored, offers a series of extraordinary spaces over 3 floors, some undisturbed for decades. They include an intact 18^th century wine cellar, a family chapel and grand formal staircase.

Working with the project manager, students apply their practice to propose, create and install work in response to the unique environment of the building, with work ranging from performance, sound and projection to installation and painting.

Last year’s show attracted over 200 visitors to the private view alone and grants 3^rd year students a valuable opportunity to take their work into the “real” world beyond their studios. Working as a group, students curate, manage the budget and publicise the show gaining experience of a public audience and of working together in preparation for their final exhibition and degree show in May.

This year’s show opens on Friday 8^th December running until Wednesday 13^th December open to the public 11am to 4pm.

Venue: Chatham House, High Street, Rochester, Kent ME1 1DA

music, news

SMFA concert series launches Tuesday 24 October

October 6, 2017 mem

The new SMFA concert series, featuring talented students performing a range of musical styles, starts on Tuesday 24 October at 3pm with the SMFA Ensembles. Taking place in the Galvanising Shop Performance space at the Historic Dockyard Chatham, all these concerts are free to attend and usually last for 2 hours.

You can find out more about all these events online here in our What’s On: https://issuu.com/musicfineartkent/docs/lr_university_of_kent_-_what_s_on_a

The next concerts are:
Weds 29th November and 6^th December, 11am-2pm, Undergraduate Lunchtime Concert

Tues 12^th December, SMFA Ensembles, 3-5pm

And don’t miss the Popular Music Gig at Cargo Bar, Liberty Quays on Thursday 14^th December, 8pm until late.

fine art, news, research

SMFA’s Sarah Turner in panel discussion at Nottingham Contemporary 12th October

October 4, 2017 mem

Sarah Turner, Director of Research and Reader in Fine Art in the School of Music and Fine Art, is at the Nottingham Contemporary, Weekday Cross, Nottingham, NG1 2GB participating in a panel discussion on 12^th October, 6.30-8.30pm as part of the tour for her acclaimed film Public House, which is screening there 13-15th October.

More info:
http://nottinghamcontemporary.org/event/sarah-turner-public-house-discussion

http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/event/sarah-turner-public-house-screening

Alumni, fine art, news

Two SMFA Fine Art students in first stage of 2017 Platform Awards

October 3, 2017 mem

The School of Music and Fine Art again has 2 Fine Art graduates through to the first stage of the Platform graduate award exhibition at the Turner Contemporary gallery in Margate. This year Luiza Jordan and Tayler Goatier have been selected and their work is exhibited at the Turner from Fri 15 September – Sun 5 November
https://www.turnercontemporary.org/exhibitions/platform

The winners of the first round going through to the final will be announced at a special event on Tuesday 24th October at the Gallery. In the 5 year existence of the Platform Graduate Award, fine art students from SMFA have won the final award twice, in 2015 and 2017. The award includes all the major fine art art degree courses in the South East of England outside London. This is a spectacular achievement!

Further Information
Platform 2017 media release
Platform 2017 artists information
Platform 2017 story in a-n

Luiza Jordan
Luiza works with space and architecture and explores the uses of material in relation to gender. Large immersive clusters of material evolve in raw, organic processes as her interventions attempt to find hidden connections between materials, spaces, buildings and architecture. By using places of transition, and situating her work in spaces with industrial and institutional sensibilities, she injects a sense of new, feminine, unbound and constantly mutating life.

You can follow Luiza on Instagram here. And see her portfolio on her website.

Tayler Goatier
“Delicacy. A fragile object or an expensive cuisine. Both spheres colliding, creating both the beautiful and the brittle.”

Tayler works primarily in sculpture and installation. Being diagnosed with Osteogenesis Imperfecta (Brittle Bones Disease) at the age of 1, Goatier spent the majority of her childhood in hospital making art. Her current practice explores disability. Using herself as her main source of research, she explains the physicality of her condition by using meringues as a metaphor for her fragility and constant reconstruction to her own skeleton.

Tayler is also a food blogger. Her recent exhibitions include Reverberate, The University of Kent, 2017 and WE ARE HUMAN-ISH, Canterbury, 2017.

Alumni, music, news

Workshop with two of the hottest young names on the British jazz scene

September 28, 2017 mem

On Wednesday 25th October, 9.30am-1.30pm, in the Galvanising Shop Performance Space, SMFA is thrilled to present a workshop with two incredibly versatile award-winning young artists – trumpeter Laura Jurd and pianist Elliot Galvin.

This workshop is packed with improvisation, composition and creative music making.

Described by Lira Music Magazine as “two of the British jazz scene’s hottest young names … together a super unit that bubbles with musical and personal understanding”, both are prize-winning performers and prolific composers whose music crosses style boundaries. BBC New Generation Artist (2015-17) and Parliamentary Jazz Instrumentalist of the Year (2015), Laura has released two albums (the most recent Together as One, with her band Dinosaur (of which Elliott is a member), was nominated for the 2017 Mercury Prize). She recently joined the faculty at Trinity Laban Conservatoire as a composition teacher.

Elliot’s main artistic vehicle is the Elliot Galvin Trio, winners of the European Jazz Artist of the Year Award. The group have also recorded two albums, including Punch, their debut for the prestigious Edition Records label. Elliot’s commissions include works for the Ligeti Quartet, London Sinfonietta, RESOLUTION dance festival and the Theatre Company Cut Tongues. His music draws on a wide range of influences from Keith Jarrett to Stravinsky, Ligeti, Deerhoof and the Beatles as well as the films of David Lynch, the Dada movement and the literature of James Joyce. He was a founding member of the Chaos Collective.

FREE! to attend but booking via https://www.kent.ac.uk/smfa/events.html

More info:
Laura Jurd (trumpet) https://laurajurd.com/about/ and Elliot Galvin (piano/keys) http://www.elliotgalvin.com.

fine art, news, research

SMFA’s Sarah Turner on ASFF 2017 Northern Film School Best Screenplay Jury

September 28, 2017 mem

Sarah Turner, Director of Research and Reader in Fine Art in the School of Music and Fine Art, is on the jury for the 2017 Aesthetica Short Film Festival Northern Film School Best Screenplay.

Founded in 2011, ASFF is an international film festival which takes place annually in York at the beginning of November. It a celebration of independent film from around the world, and an outlet for supporting and championing filmmaking.

The awards recognise outstanding talent in filmmaking practice, and are a prestigious accolade. The winning films are selected by a jury of industry experts, and are presented at the Closing Night Awards Ceremony. Previous winners at ASFF have gone on to achieve further award success, including wins at the Oscars (Stutterer, Benjamin Cleary, in 2016) and BAFTAs (The Bigger Picture, Daisy Jacobs, in 2015) and have broadened their audience beyond the film festival circuit. More info here http://www.asff.co.uk/asff2017/jury/

Sarah trained at St Martin’s School of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art. She is an artist, filmmaker, writer, curator and academic. Her feature films include Ecology, 97mins, 2007, Perestroika, 118mins, 2009, (which featured in Tate Britain’s major survey: Assembly), and Perestroika:Reconstructed, conceived and executed as a gallery work (Carroll Fletcher Gallery, London, May 2013). Her latest feature, Public House, 96 mins, premiered in the Documentary competition, LFF 2015, nominated for the Grierson Award. Public House was re-mastered for wider audiences in 2016 and had is touring throughout 2017.

music, news

Bhangra and Bollywood Live!

September 21, 2017 mem

On Tuesday 3rd October, SMFA presents a major Bhangra and Bollywood Event at The Deep End, Chatham Maritime, which features top UK Bhangra star, the multi award winning Kuljit Bhamra, described by London Asian Guardian as “One of the most prolific and dedicated Asian music producers to come out of Britain”

Kuljit Bhamra is one of the most inspiring and influential musicians, composers and record producers on the British Asian music scene. He has recently been appointed Artistic Director for the Society Of The Promotion Of New Music (SPNM) and is responsible for programming events during their upcoming season (www.spnm.org.uk)

The event also features Kaykay Chauhan (keyboard) and vocalists Shahid Khan, Rekha Sawhney and Bindi Sagoo (dholak/perc) from the stage musical Bend it Like Beckham. SMFA’s Lecturer in Popular Music, Richard Lightman will be joining them on guitar.

There will be a 4.30pm drumming workshop, 5.15 – 6pm Bhangra dance workshop.

Doors open 7pm. Performance 8.30pm Bollywood Band, 9.30pm – Vasda Punjab Bhangra Dancers

Tickets (includes food) from the Gulbenkian: https://thegulbenkian.co.uk/event/bhangra-bollywood-live-with-workshops/

https://thegulbenkian.co.uk/event/bhangra-bollywood-live/

fine art, news, research

Shona Illingworth on Judging Panel of 2017 Film London Jarman Award

September 15, 2017 mem

Fine Art Reader and Director of Graduate Studies in the School of Music and Fine Art, Shona Illingworth, is on the Judging Panel of the prestigious Film London Jarman Award. This annual prize recognises and supports the most innovative UK-based artists working with moving image. Shortlisted for the prestigious Jarman Award herself in 2016, 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.

The winner of the 2017 Film London Jarman Award will be announced on 20 November 2017 at a celebratory event at the Whitechapel Gallery.

More info: http://flamin.filmlondon.org.uk/jarman_home/jarman-2017