The School of Music & Fine Art was one of the 2015 sponsors of the annual John Downton Awards for Young Artists. Established in 2000, the awards commemorate John Downton, the celebrated Kent artist, poet and philosopher, who was born in Erith in 1906.
This annual exhibition encourages and celebrates the diverse talent of a new generation of artists. Each year, students from schools and colleges across Kent are invited to participate in the awards, giving young artists aged 11-18 the opportunity to exhibit their work, possibly for the first time in their careers. The 2015 John Downton Awards attracted record numbers of submissions which resulted in a stunning exhibition of artistic talent. Of the 376 students from 36 schools and colleges that entered the competition, 90 artworks were been selected for the exhibition.
Competition entries, including photographs, mixed media and paintings, are judged by a panel of artists and art educators to select winners in a number of categories according to age and media, and the John Downton Trophy was awarded for the best overall school submission, with the awards presented on Wednesday 11 November.
Admission is free to the exhibition, which runs until Wednesday 2 December, at the County Gallery, Sessions House, County Hall. The gallery is open Monday – Friday, 9am – 5pm.
Partners in the project included University of Kent, Kent County Council, UCA, and Turner Contemporary.
Acclaimed contemporary visual artist and Senior Lecturer in Fine Art in the School of Music and Fine Art, Adam Chodzko’s new film Deep Above will premiere at the Watershed Cinema, Bristol on Friday November 20 at 1pm, followed by a conversation with the artist and psychoanalyst and editor of Engaging With Climate Change, Sally Weintrobe. The film is commissioned by Invisible Dust and produced in association with Watershed and Shambala Festival and is funded by the Wellcome Trust
Adam Chodzo works across media, ranging from large-scale installations to de-materialised interventions. Whilst exploring the poetic spaces between documentary and fantasy, conceptualism and surrealism, public and private, Chodzko’s work provokes our collective imagination by wondering how, through the visual, we might best understand and re-form our encounters with the society and environment that surround us.
He has been exhibited extensively in international solo and group exhibitions including: Tate, Tate St. Ives; Museo d’Arte Moderna, Bologna (MAMBo); Istanbul Biennale; and Venice Biennale. He is recipient of awards from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and The Foundation for Contemporary Arts and is currently shortlisted for the Jarman Award.
In Deep Above, Chodzko uses moving image and sound to explore, short-circuit and abstract our slippery self-deceptions regarding climate change. What is the psychological gap where we understand that climate change occurs yet remain paralysed from taking action? With world focus on the imminent UN Climate Change Conference in Paris, Deep Above attempts, through art, to loosen our mental blocks about environmental catastrophe.
The University’s annual Teaching Prizes recognise the standard and levels of teaching for which it has an outstanding reputation. And for 2015 Staff from the faculties of Humanities, Sciences and Social Sciences received their prizes from Vice-Chancellor Professor Dame Julia Goodfellow. The ceremony in October was hosted by Professor John Baldock, Pro-Vice-Chancellor Teaching and Learning.
The recipients of the 2015Barbara Morris Prize for learning support, includeLauraGarcía RodríguezBlancas(Centre for Journalism)who was recognised for her outstanding work as a Graduate Teaching Assistant, particularly in relation to the provision of opportunities for students to experience authentic journalistic practice. The Medway-based interprofessional team consisting of Louise Frith (School of Music & Fine Art/SLAS), Frank Walker and MosesMalekia (School of Music & Fine Art), Gerard McGill and the Wellbeing Team, and Sally Apokis (Medway Chaplain) received the award for their collaborative project developing meditation resources and participative events to help students combat stress.
Tuesday 10th November, 2015 (6.15pm-8pm) Venue: The Church, The Historic Dockyard Chatham
TIFF Kaput Exhibition at QUAD July 2015, Photo Charlotte Jopling
The School of Music and Fine Art is proud to announce a programme of visiting artists, writers, filmmakers, curators and performers, each speaker renowned in their own field, who will pose distinct and searching questions to address the urgent concerns of our age. Our guests will provide a detailed presentation of their work, sharing their experiences of navigating the complex multifaceted art world. Previous speakers have included: Jananne Al-Ani, Sonia Boyce, Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, David Burrows, Ami Clark, Matthew Darbyshire, Jeremy Deller, Ruth Ewan, Kirsten Glass, Ope Lori, Goshka Macuga, Jeremy Millar, Hayley Newman, Sally O’Reilly, Hannah Rickards, Trish Scott, Lindsay Seers, Sally Tallant, Anne Tallentire and Carey Young.
Launching the programme is international Kent-based artist Benedict Drew, who works across video, sculpture, music and their associated technologies. Born in 1977, he graduated from Slade School of Fine Art in 2011 and was a LUX Associate Artist (2011/12). Drew’s often chaotic environments and installations feature screens, cables and small-scale anthropomorphised sculptures made from lo-fi materials such as tin foil and, occasionally, mud. Intended as a response to our ‘over-saturated digital realm’. Drew’s installations are attempts to ‘articulate the horror of the modern world.’
The artist says: ‘I make videos and music and exhibitions and picture and sculptures. I am interested in the potential of these combinations to create an ecstatic and sometimes abject alternative universe.’ A review from the current British Art Show observes: http://afternoondust.co.uk/blog/british-art-show-8#.VilIkxCrRR0
…Benedict Drew’s “Sequencer” is all about stuff: sticky, splodgy, gooey stuff, material through and through. His film presented across multiple screens is full of rough, ready landscapes of dirt and rock juxtaposed with paint erupting like volcanoes or oil burps. It’s also full of holes: holes that gape like ears, squish and stretch like mouths, or wobble like the cones of the speakers scattered prominently in front of the screens, spewing out squelchy psychedelic goop. Yep, it’s all about stuff, and that stuff is sound: gleefully trashing the painstaking refinement and posed ephemerality of much of contemporary sound art, Drew gives us an earful of messy, splurging sonic substance that injects the silent, airtight contemporary landscape with a gelatinous, technologically-mediated roar. The horror of the Real — the material encounter with a thingy world beyond the control of language — becomes the bass pulse you can feel.
Represented by Matts Gallery, London, Drew’s recent solo exhibitions include: Heads May Roll, Matt’s Gallery, London; The Persuaders, Adelaide Festival, SASA Gallery Adelaide, Australia; Zero Hour Petrified, Ilam Campus Gallery, School of Fine Arts University of Canterbury, New Zealand (all 2014); The Onesie Cycle, Rhubarba, Edinburgh; Now Thing, Whitstable Biennale; This Is Feedback, Outpost, Norwich; Gliss, Cell Project Space; and The Persuaders, Circa Site / AV Festival, Newcastle (2013).
“ They left behind monoliths as remote observers that were also capable of taking a variety of actions according to the wishes of their creators…. who had abandoned physical form, but their creations, the monoliths remained, and these continued to carry out their original assignments…” 2001 A Space Odyssey.
On loan to the School of Music and Fine Art until June 2016, ROOM is a converted 20ft shipping container designed by architect Simon Barker. Painted bright blue and fully fitted with power and light, ROOM functions as studio, gallery and public engagement space. Located outside the Pilkington Building on the University of Kent Medway campus at Pembroke, with the aim of extending student activities beyond the studio to encourage cross-disciplinary dialogue and exchange.
The shipping container or TEU (Twenty foot equivalent unit) with its promise of plenty has become a powerful symbol of standardisation and globalised trade. Sixty percent of the goods arriving in containers at the port of Naples escape official customs inspection and go unchecked, begging the question; what is really inside?
To keep ROOM activated, and to shape its new ‘assignment’ The School of Music and Fine Art invites any department in the Universities of Kent, Greenwich or Canterbury Christ Church to contribute artworks, ideas, knowledge or processes to ROOM.
ROOM is ideal for experimental use of sound and video projection and performance but also includes wall space and vitrine space for 2D and 3D objects.
ROOM can be booked for a maximum of 5 days. Whilst its use can be for wondering, experimentation and research, rather than exhibition, it is essential that you allow an open door policy for the passerby; ROOM is a transmitter of new and developing forms of knowledge so it is important that this signal is maintained. You will need to produce a brief proposal and sign a ROOM use agreement which includes health and safety guidance and a risk assessment.
To book ROOM please first contact ROOM’s curatorial team made up of SMFA students and staff, who will help facilitate, promote and archive your project, via Emma Murton; E.V.Murton@kent.ac.uk
For information on upcoming events at ROOM please see the news-feed on the SMFA webpage and Facebook page.
Nadia Perotta and Georgina Wilcox – Wetlands Project, 2015 Medway Culture Design & Tourism Awards. Photo by Dave Thomas
Wetlands, an innovative participatory community arts project from 2015 School of Music & Fine Art graduates Ben Crawford, Clarinda Tse, Nadia Perotta, Aggela Ioannidou and Georgia Wilcox was shortlisted for the 2015 Medway Culture, Design and Tourism Awards.
The awards celebrate the outstanding achievements of groups, individuals, projects and people and their contributions to the area’s cultural vitality, in arts, design, heritage and tourism. Wetlands was shortlisted for the highly competitive Visual Arts category along with artist and SMFA lecturer Adam Chodzka’s work Great Expectations; Rochester Kino; Nucleus Arts and the winner, The IN-SITE project – a series of public realm art works at changing regeneration sites in Rochester and Chatham aimed at supporting local artists and increasing participation in the arts.
SMFA Delta Project Officer Alan Mash was shortlisted in the Music category and SMFA Music Technician Charlie Fleming was nominated as part of the Fort Amherst team who put together a visitor audio app.
The 14 winners of the 2015 awards were announced at a gala presentation evening on Thursday, 22 October at MidKent College, Gillingham.
Saturday 21st November 2015, 10am-3pm – Clocktower Building, School of Music & Fine Art, University of Kent, Chatham Historic Dockyard.
The School of Music and Fine Art at the University of Kent are holding taster sessions for all of our undergraduate degree programmes on Saturday 21 November 2015, 10am 3pm. These sessions are free of charge and are aimed at Year 12 and 13 students (or mature applicants) who are considering applying to university to study in a related area.
The sessions provide a great opportunity to see and use our award winning facilities on the Historic Dockyard, to meet and work with some of our academic staff and students, and to gain first-hand experience of the courses and opportunities we offer.
There will also be seminars, workshops, subject talks and guidance on writing your personal statement and what to prepare for interview/audition.
We are offering taster sessions in the following subject areas:
Book Online
If you would like to attend please book a place via the Online Booking Form confirming any accessibility requirements. For any additional enquiries please email MFAadmissions@kent.ac.uk
Connect with us via Social Media
In advance of the day, feel welcome to connect with us on social media to help you find out more about life as a student at Kent:
How to find us
For details of how to travel to the Historic Dockyard, Medway Campus by road, sea, air, channel tunnel, rail, bus and foot, please see Direction for Travel.
Campus Maps are also available online to help you find your way to the Clocktower Building.
Artist and Reader in Fine Art at the School of Music and Fine Art, Shona Illingworth is on the Judging Panel for FACT and Channels: The Australian Video Art Festival 2015 Artist Bursary. Her fellow judges are Soda Jerk, an art collective working with video installations and experimental film, currently in residence at FACT, Rory MacBeth, Practicing artist and Head of Fine Art at Liverpool John Moores University and Sarah Tutton, Senior Curator, at Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI).
Channels is an international biennial based in Melbourne, that showcases contemporary video practice from around the world. Provoking curiosities and critical dialogues around video art and its digital future, Channels will present a 10-day festival in September 2015. FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, based in Liverpool, UK) and Channels Festival, as part of an international competition to support video artists and filmmakers, are looking for artists to submit innovative moving image work which explores contemporary issues around Memory, Time, Space and Identity.
The overall winner will have their work showcased simultaneously at the Human Futures Forum – an international symposium on Place hosted at FACT Liverpool in November 2015, and MPavillion, part of the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia. The winner will also receive a bursary of £2,000 to support the production of a new piece of work that will be showcased on National Media Arts Player and UK multi channel network for the arts Canvas and be put forward for exhibition in Hong Kong as part of ISEA 2016 . The winner will also be invited to join the selection panel for the following year’s competition.
Shona’s exhibition Lesions in the Landscape will be on display at FACT during the Human Futures Forum.
The next School of Music and Fine Art Cargo Music gig will be at the end of the Christmas term on Thursday 17th December, 8pm until late at Cargo, Liberty Quays, our award winning bar and bistro, in a stunning nautical and industrial-style venue and the perfect place to sample some of the best live music acts the area has to offer.
These gigs offer a platform for the numerous wonderful bands that have formed amongst SMFA students. The gigs, which have a fantastic atmosphere and always draw a crowd, are free to attend.
For details for bands wanting to perform, either email Alan Mash or go along to the Bands Forum with Rich Perks on a Tuesday at 5pm, where you can receive coaching. Individuals who wish to join a band are also encouraged to attend Bands Forum to meet and play with other musicians.
The Easter SMFA gig at Cargo was a huge success, with three fantastic bands from across the stages of the School of Music and Fine Art giving powerful and exciting performances.
The bands included: Wondermoth (headline act) Beat the Devil’s Tattoo The Outcome
Acclaimed contemporary visual artist and Senior Lecturer in Fine Art in the School of Music and Fine Art, Adam Chodzko, is preparing to open Design for a Fold at the Sidney Cooper Gallery. Funded by the Arts Council England and The Elephant Trust, it is a new installation incorporating many of Chodzko’s works made locally since his move to Kent in 2001.
Mapping his particular engagement with places, times and communities around where he lives and works in Whitstable, the exhibition seeks to root, or fold, the idea of the local within another, apparently remote, alien and distant place; Beppu, Japan. It will expand, compress and twist an understanding of Kent into a new form, questioning who, what, when and where we might be within its landscape and communities.
Chodzko’s art explores the interactions and possibilities of human behaviour. Exhibiting internationally since 1991, 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.
After studying the History of Art at the University of Manchester and Fine Art as a Masters at Goldsmiths College London, Chodzko has exhibited at numerous venues around the world. These include the Tate Britain, Venice Biennale, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Istanbul Biennial and locally at the Folkestone Triennial.
Adam Chodzko has been shortlisted for the prestigious Jarman Award.
Design for a Fold opens at the Sidney Cooper Gallery on Thursday 15 October with an exclusive evening with Adam Chodzko and Dr. Andy Birtwistle, Director of The Centre for Practice-Based Research in the Arts at Canterbury Christ Church University, from 5.30-6.30pm. Please contact the gallery for further details and to book a place.
The exhibition will run until Saturday 21 November and admission is free.
