Wednesday 5th December
7.30pm
The Royal Dockyard Church, Historic Dockyard Chatham
The SMFA Christmas concert returns this December and we couldn’t be more excited! Join us, to celebrate the University of Kent Medway’s vast array of talented music students.
Photo by Stacey Cooper, 2018.
Uniting our two schools of music, a diverse programme awaits; featuring music that spans centuries, crosses continents and unites a multitude of genres. Our students will showcase their work from across the Autumn Term.
This event is FREE but please book via Eventbrite.
‘Pay Gaps and Thigh Gaps’ art exhibition: Rachael Willis, Ayesha Chouglay, Deborah Abbott, Amanda Nsubuga, Angel Obi and Alexandra Aldham (left to right)
Between 6th – 10th July, Pay Gaps and Thigh Gaps, an exhibition by a group of graduating SMFA Fine Art students was on at Old Truman’s Brewery in Brick Lane, London, as part of Free Range – A season of Graduate Art & Design Exhibitions.
Established in 2001 to showcase the work of emerging creatives, thousands of students have exhibited at the shows, taking over Old Truman Brewery spaces each summer and connecting with a London audience. It aims to celebrate talent and provide a platform for UK artists beyond education. The show was extremely successful, with an amazing turn out.
SMFA Students featured were:
BA (Hon) Fine Art
Amanda Nsubuga, Alexandra Aldham, Ayesha Chouglay, Angel Obi and Rachael Willis
MA Fine Art
Deborah Abbott
About Pay Gaps and Thigh Gaps
There seems to be a growing precedent that in order to be recognised as a female artist you must limit your practice to being ‘feminist’. But why can’t a woman speak beyond her gender to gain recognition? We are a group of proud feminists who would like to share varying concerns beyond our genitalia (and possibly surrounding our genitalia- we would like the option). From, childhood imagination, to personal illness, we come together with uniquely different practices, to support each other as artists… who happen to be female.
SMFA BA (Hons) Event and Experience Design (2010) alumnus Chris Carr’s design, fabrication and production company, Lucid Illusions, were chosen to create an amazing new area for the recent 2018 Parklife Festival called The Valley, which took place on 9-10 June at Heaton Park. They designed an enormous immersive stage set, influenced by brutalist architecture, dystopian film and Carnival, with integrated video and lighting. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqeGwRn3ubo&feature=youtu.be
Based in Kent near Sittingbourne, Lucid Illusions are making some groundbreaking projects, with clients who include Adidas, Austrian Tourist Board, Oxford Street Christmas Lights and Max Factor.
SMFA’s Dr Ruth Herbert and Dr Rich Perks have been awarded a first prize of £3000 Humanities Faculty Teaching Prize 2018 for their innovations regarding music performance teaching at Kent. The award will constitute extra budget for the teaching on the programmes at SMFA.
The Panel considering the applications comprised Dr Simon Kirchin (Dean), Dr Montserrat Roser-i-Puig (Associate Dean, Education), Fran Beaton (UELT), Dr Vybarr Cregan-Reid (previous prize winner) and Rebecca Bailey (student representative).
In their feedback, the Panel referred to, “Sound pedagogical grounding and evidence of student improvement and engagement” with a “strong use of student feedback” and “particularly liked the reflective element of both the teaching strategy and the application”.
A music psychologist and performer, Dr Herbert is SMFA’s Lecturer in Contemporary and 20th Century Music Performance. Also a Lecturer in Music Performance at SMFA, Dr Perks has extensive live, studio and theatre experience in the commercial industry and has toured internationally with many accomplished artists.
A moving image installation about art and children called Because I am, written and directed by SMFA alumni Nadia Perrotta (BA, 2015, and MA Fine Art, 2017) and featuring Lalita Bailey, (BA Fine Art 2017) and the children of Squirrel Lodge and The Rabbit on the Moon nurseries, has been selected for a major UNESCO event in Italy about art and education.
Presented by Associazione Internazionale Arti Plastiche Italia, Spazio-Tempo Arte and Fondazione Opera Campana dei Caduti, Human Rights? #EDU 2018 is an International Exhibition of Contemporary Art from 23 June – 23 September at the Fondazione Opera Campana dei Caduti, Rovereto, Trento, Italy which features 161 artists from 37 countries defending the human right to education.
The event asks the artists to represent and tell, with their own artistic language, a personal vision of the problem of the right to education representing a story, a concept, a complaint, or showing a future perspective as message of hope or as a concrete proposal on the opportunities to be pursued to achieve this fundamental goal for the construction of a fair and right society.
Nadia’s film Because I Am was created during her artist residency since September 2016, at The Rabbit on The Moon Nursery in Sittingbourne, and there will be an exhibition – Because I am: A children’s journey across self recognition and discovery of the world around them through the arts – on Saturday 23rd June, 12-3pm at Kemsley Community Centre, The Square, Ridham Ave, Kemsley, Sittingbourne showing the works the children created with her throughout the past year.
Nadia is a film maker and visual artist with experience in exhibiting and organizing events, art writing and curating. She works mostly with time based, installations, digital work, creative writing and performances. An experienced curator and art director, she was Project Leader for Wetlands Medway. More info about Nadia here https://nadiaperrotta.jimdo.com/
SMFA alumni Nadia Perrotta (BA Fine Art, 2015, and MA Fine Art, 2017) and Fiona Townend (MA Fine Art, 2017) together created an art intervention involving photography and creative writing for Whitstable Biennale. The project, called Cuttlefish Bones, ran from 2-10 June, and was an artistic and poetic treasure trail winding through the streets of Whitstable suitable for adults and children alike, a fusion of poetic text, domestic mini tales and photographs of the unnoticed.
Since September 2016, SMFA alumna Nadia Perrotta (BA, 2015, and MA Fine Art, 2017) has been artist in residence at The Rabbit on The Moon Nursery in Sittingbourne, and there will be an exhibition showing the works the children created with her throughout the past year.
Because I am: A children’s journey across self recognition and discovery of the world around them through the arts takes place on Saturday 23rd June, 12-3pm at Kemsley Community Centre, The Square, Ridham Ave, Kemsley, Sittingbourne.
Nadia is a film maker, visual artist, art writer and event organiser who works mostly with time based, installations, digital work, creative writing and performances. An experienced curator and art director, she was Project Leader for Wetlands Medway.
The SMFA students from the remaining two undergraduate years and the final MA year worked collaboratively as a group together with students and staff at the Paris Centre to make and exhibit new work in response to theme and site. This has included a performance involving cheese and a derivé exploring the city around the centre.
Peter Brown commented: “It has all been going exceptionally well. There was an excellent turn-out for the Menteur launch and Medway students did the event proud with their own ‘set’ that was very well received. Thank you for enhancing our activities with your excellent students! “
Commented Year 2 BA Fine Art student Kevin Hadimadja: “The Paris trip was an amazing and enjoyable experience! Thank you very much for giving this opportunity to present my artwork as well as surrounding myself with great people. It has opened my eyes in the sense of interaction and collaborative thinking into not just the art but the journey through it.”
On Saturday 2nd June, SMFA students featured in a large-scale, outdoor screening of artists’ films and video projected on the exterior wall of The Old Neptune Pub, Marine Terrace, Whitstable, facing the seafront. Presented by 51zero/voyager at Whitstable Biennale as part of the Decreation international festival of moving image and digital arts Touring Programme. The event ran from 9.30pm – 11.30pm.
Many of the participating artists have taken part in international art Biennials, and were showcased alongside emerging talent selected from open calls and SMFA Fine Art students, including graduates Rose Sizer and Nicola Baxter, and Alfie Killick (Little-Blood) (3rd Year), Jordan Colbert (3rd Year), Constanza Marques Guedes (3rd Year), Olu Taiwo (MA)
Drawing in the snow at dockyard during MA. Photo by Gaz Bray
Matt Bray is a practising artist, freelance curator and arts consultant, who graduated from SMFA in 2012 with an MA Fine Art. He co-founded the Medway Print Festival, which is running until 24th June at present, and multimedia group exhibition Sick! More at www.mattbrayarts.com
Studio shot with work from ’Sick!’ exhibition. Photo by Rikard Österlund.
Matt kindly took time out from his busy schedule to chat with SMFA’s Marketing & Communications Officer, Jane Seaman.
How did your time at Kent prepare or equip you for the role you have now?
My time at Kent equipped me with a far richer understanding of contemporary art and its relationship to the longer stream of art history. That has afforded me a more nuanced understanding of both my own work and the work of others, allowing me to curate more mature and interesting shows, and I’ve developed confidence in my abilities as an artist and curator as a result.
What does your job involve? Is there a typical day?
There are no typical days. Networking is key though, so I can often be spotted having coffee with artists and gallerists (tough life I know). Funding is the least glamorous and most important element of putting exhibitions and festivals together, so that is something I have had to learn on the job – how is the project going to be funded? Arts Council? Local council? Paid by the artists? Somehow it needs to be paid for and that requires good clear ideas and being able to articulate those ideas well. Once funding is secured the rest of the project is normally plain sailing to a large degree.
What kind of opportunities offered at Kent were especially beneficial for your career development?
Putting on the degree show was obviously a pretty important experience, and it was such a great place to host an exhibition.
What have you been doing since graduating?
Since graduating I have been in the studio whenever possible, I have also been running several key projects like ‘Sick!’ and ‘Medway Print Festival’, both of which have been very successful and I have been lucky enough that the people I run those with are very good friends, so although it can be very hard work sometimes, it is always super fun.
What would you recommend to anyone wanting to follow in your footsteps?
If anyone wants to get involved in curation, then the only real advice I can offer is to put shows on. My first exhibition was in a bookshop with my buddy. You can start small if need be, but just put shows on, as often as possible, of your own work or other people’s, it doesn’t matter. You will learn so much from every show – like anything else, the more you do it, the more you will learn. Before you know it, the shows will have become quite sophisticated and you will have made all the obvious mistakes which you can then learn to avoid.
What is your favourite memory of studying at Kent?
Probably my favourite memory of my time at Kent was meeting my mate Billy Childish, who had a studio in the dockyard too and taught me a lot about being a painter.
What are your plans for the future?
I’d like to create the Medway Biennial.
Who or what inspires you?
My parents.
Thanks, Matt.
You can catch the Medway Print Festival until 24th June. Now in its 3rd year, the festival celebrates printmaking and fine art in Medway, with over 40 events and activities to showcase some of the best printmaking being created today as well as highlighting the fascinating local history of the medium. More http://medwayprintfestival.com/
