As part of the forthcoming 2015 Canterbury Festival, award winning artist and senior lecturer in Fine Art at the School of Music and Fine Art, Adam Chodzko, who was recently shortlisted for the prestigious Jarman Award, will be in conversation with Dr. Andy Birtwistle, Director of The Centre for Practice-Based Research in the Arts at Canterbury Christ Church University on Thursday 15 October, 5.30 – 6.30pm, in the Sidney Cooper Gallery, St Peter’s Street, Canterbury. Book here for In Conversation: http://www.canterburyfestival.co.uk/whats-on/visual-arts/adam-chodzko-in-conversation.aspx
Adam’s exhibition, Design for a Fold, commissioned by Arts Council England and Elephant Trust, will be at the gallery from 20 – 31 October 2015.
Adam Chodzko uses his art to explore the interactions and possibilities of human behaviour. His work investigates and invents the possibilities of collective imagination. Design for a Fold is a new installation created through Chodzko’s continued engagement with Kent and the people who form its communities. Proposing a new understanding of Kent, the viewer is invited to revisit these communities, creating new connections between shared spaces, collective mythology and imagination.
The Canterbury Festival is Kent’s International Arts Festival, attracting an audience of 60,000 people of all ages to over 200 free and ticketed events, drawn from across Kent, London and the South East. Every year festival fortnight includes a wide range of events, including Music, Theatre & Dance, Comedy, Science, Exhibitions, Walks and Talks.
Opening hours: Tue – Fri 10.30am – 5pm, Sat 11.30am – 5pm Address:Sidney Cooper Gallery, St Peter’s Street, Canterbury, CT1 2BQ Website:www.canterbury.ac.uk/sidney-cooper
(Exhibition dates: private view 15 Oct opens 16 Oct – 21 Nov) Contact the gallery for further details on gallery@canterbury.ac.uk or 01227 453267
Village Bay from above, Shona Illingworth, Lesions in the Landscape, 2015.
Lesions in the Landscape by UK/Danish artist Shona Illingworth, a Reader in Fine Art at the School of Music and Fine Art, University of Kent, is a powerful new multi-screen installation, exploring the impact of amnesia and the erasure of individual and cultural memory. Opening at FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) in Liverpool on 18 September 2015, the work tours to Sydney Australia, the Outer Hebrides, Scotland and finally to London, where there will be an international symposium in October 2016.
Revealing the devastating effects of amnesia on one woman and the striking parallels with the sudden evacuation of the inhabitants of St. Kilda in the North Atlantic in 1930, Lesions in the Landscape examines the profound effect and wider implications of memory loss on identity, space and the capacity to imagine the future. The exhibition is produced by FACT and is supported by an Arts Award from the Wellcome Trust, with additional support from University of Kent. For more information click here: http://www.fact.co.uk/projects/lesions-in-the-landscape.aspx
In collaboration with neuropsychologists Martin A. Conway and Catherine Loveday, Shona Illingworth has worked with and filmed Claire, who, following a trauma to her brain can no longer remember most of her past, create new memories or recognise anyone – not even herself. However the new sensory operated camera technology worn around her neck can help reactivate access to some of her ‘forgotten’ memories, in rare bursts of intense recollection.
The sudden end to Claire’s access to her memories echoes the evacuation of the inhabitants of the remote Scottish archipelago of St. Kilda on 29 August 1930, ending over 2,000 years of continuous habitation. Both mark an abrupt and irreversible lesion in a cultural landscape. Accessing or reconstructing the past is a process fraught with difficulty and both share a sense of isolation. They are both now the subject of scientific inquiry, St. Kilda as an outdoor laboratory for scientific investigation, a carefully preserved heritage site and a radar tracking station for complex military weapons testing, and Claire as the subject of a major neuropsychological study. And in each case, the past is continually constructed by others.
Stac Lee with gannets, Shona Illingworth, Lesions in the Landscape, 2015.
For the project, Shona took Claire to St. Kilda, where she filmed her in this intense landscape. The installation presents three video projections and an array of up to twenty loud speakers to create a fully immersive sound environment of voice, engineered and ambient sounds. They form a richly layered composition where the sounds of thousands of calling gannets is underscored by intermittent sounds of EEG signals which capture the desolate internal landscape of Claire’s amnesia as she struggles to search for her own memory of this environment.
An ongoing series of Amnesia Forums examine the politics of memory, amnesia and cultural erasure through discussion between invited artists, scientists, writers and researchers. This feeds directly into the Amnesia Museum, a growing body of works which map out the landscape of amnesia. It draws together film, photography, drawings and documents, and will be shown alongside the installation. Also included is a 32-speaker sonification of Claire’s EEG, as well as neuropsychological diagrams describing the impact of the lesion on her memory.
After premiering at FACT, Lesions in the Landscape will tour to the UNSW Galleries, Sydney, Australia, Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum and Art Gallery, Outer Hebrides and finally to Dilston Grove & CGP Gallery in London. An accompanying book will be published in autumn 2016.
On 6 November, 8am – 5.30pm, Shona will be a guest speaker at the Human Futures Forum: The Unchained Horizon: a day of interdisciplinary discussions, exploring the impact of technologies upon the changing contemporary understandings of place at FACT in Liverpool. See link for further details: http://www.fact.co.uk/whats-on/current/human-futures-forum-the-unchained-horizon.aspx
About Shona Illingworth
Born in Denmark in 1966, Shona Illingworth was brought up in the Highlands of Scotland. She trained at Goldsmith’s and is now based in London. She creates evocative video and sound installations that explore the experience of memory and the formation of identity in situations of social tension and trauma. Her work has been exhibited widely, including at the Museum of Modern Art, Bologna, the Wellcome Collection, London, the National Museum, Tirana and Interaccess Electronic Media Arts Centre, Toronto, screened at Whitechapel Gallery, London; Modern Art Oxford and Museum of Fine Art Lausanne and she has received commissions from Film and Video Umbrella, the Hayward Gallery, London and Channel 4 Television.
About FACT
FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) is the UK’s leading media arts centre, based in Liverpool and is focused on bringing people, art and technology together. FACT’s award-winning building houses three galleries, a café, bar and four cinema screens. Since the organisation was founded in 1988 (previously called Moviola), it has commissioned and presented over 250 new media and digital artworks from artists including Pipilotti Rist, Nam June Paik, Bill Viola, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Isaac Julien.
Previously featured in The Guardian as their Exhibition of the Week, Great Expectations, by international artist, Adam Chodzko, will be at the Guildhall Museum, Rochester High Street, until September 11th. Whitstable based Chodzko, whose work is exhibited extensively, and who was recently shortlisted for the prestigious Jarman Award, lectures at the School of Music and Fine Art. (Find out more here: https://www.kent.ac.uk/smfa/news.html?view=1486 )
The work was inspired by a series of enigmas surrounding the world’s most complete collection of 18th century tools. Revered by trade researchers and historians, the Seaton Tool Chest is considered by curators to be one of the Guildhall Museum’s most important artefacts. The large wooden cabinet houses the 200 tools that were a gift from cabinetmaker Joseph Seaton to his son Benjamin in 1796, who used the tools to make a beautiful cabinet to store them in, but never used them again. For artist Chodzko, this is the perfect symbol of acceptance and rejection between child and parent. His response, Great Expectations, re-imagines the chest as a conceptual art object transformed into a virtual entity or spaceship in a revolution instigated by the tools, weaving together past, present and future in a video (combining animation and documentary) and sculpture.
Now living in digital form, the tools narrate their history, a story of familial, social and cosmic joinery. They also claim to have made Ark Eye, a wooden sculptural object that has crash-landed from their digital universe into ours, to become a sci-fi museum curiosity.
Over a 6 month period, the work has also appeared in a DIY store, on a massive screen overlooking a busy bus station and car park, in the home of a traditional sign-writer, and within a school community, connecting public spaces in the Medway towns of Gillingham, Rochester and Chatham with the private interiors of home and school.
Great Expectations is the final commission in Hoodwink’s three-year programme of site-specific projects in the everyday places of Kent and can be experienced at The Guildhall Museum, Rochester, which is open 10am to 5pm, Tuesdays to Sundays, plus Mondays during the summer holidays from 27 July to 31 August. Tel 01634 332900 or email: guildhall.museum@medway.gov.uk
Inspired by a recent residency in the former mining town of Lens, Northern France, Time Pressure Decay /La Mort de L’Arbre, an exhibition by 2014 BA (Hons) Fine Art graduate Sophie Dixon, will be at Turner Contemporary & Crate Project Space, Bilton Square in High Street, Margate on August 15th and16th and also at [Dis]place, Hart’s Lane, London from August 22nd-23rd. Exploring memories of the coal mining industry and the physical traces left upon the landscape, Sophie Dixon works across video, writing and sound, drawing connections between seemingly disparate fragments of experience to examine the unifying power of memory. Resonating with the story of the Kent coalfield, this two day exhibition takes place between the Turner Contemporary and Crate Project Space in Margate. La Mort de L’Arbre (running time 15 minutes) will be screened over the weekend at the Turner Contemporary, accompanied by Time Pressure Decay, an exhibition of photography, text and research on display at the Crate Project Space.
Sophie Dixon’s work is rooted in extensive historical, social and cultural research. Concerned with the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction, she deconstructs and expands narratives to explore the tenuous relationship between ourselves and the environments in which we live. Using personal research and writing as a narrative backbone, her work is less interested in portraying a historic truth than in exploring the connections between events across time – an attempt to open up the spaces between the experience of an event, and our later interpretations of it. In 2014 she was awarded the CVAN Platform graduate award and has recently undertaken residencies with Mission Louvre-Lens Tourisme in Northern France and the UK based artists group Blast Theory.
Selected works from the 2015 Kent Degree Shows, featuring graduates of Canterbury Christ Church, University of Kent, University of the Creative Arts, and West Kent College, will be on show from August 11th – September 3rd at The Kaleidoscope Gallery, a contemporary exhibition space run by Kent Arts & Culture to showcase new and experimental work from local, established and emerging artists. The Kaleidoscope Gallery sits alongside the library and museum within the Sevenoaks Kaleidoscope Building, Buckhurst Lane, Sevenoaks TN13 1LQ.
Artists featured are Samantha Bale, Sandra Boxall, Ida Cholewinska, Rachel Dodson, Layla Moore, Tracy O’Donnell, Max Sheppard with the School of Music and Fine Art represented by Clarinda Tseand Eleanor Maher.
Please join us at the artists’ reception from 6 – 8pm on Thursday August 13.
The exhibition is free to visitors and is open during normal library opening hours Monday to Saturday.
The School of Music and Fine Art is excited at embarking on a new partnership – as one of the main sponsors and education partners for the 2015 Rye International Jazz and Blues Festival.
“Creativity and passion is at the heart of music which has a very tangible association with our exciting partnership with the University. We are delighted to be collaborating with the University this year and into the future,” says Ian Bowden, Producer and Director of the Festival.
Now in its 4th year, the Rye International Jazz and Blues Festival is established as one of the leading intimate, high quality boutique music festivals in the UK.
The initial impetus for the partnership with the University of Kent School of Music and Fine Art came from Kyla Wight, a student on the BA (Hons) Event & Experience Design programme (the only degree of its kind in the UK) in the School of Music and Fine Art at the Chatham Historic Dockyard campus. Having just completed her first year of the programme, Kyla was appointed Creative Director for the Rye International Jazz & Blues Festival, with directorship of a section of the festival entitled Chapter & Lyric, a unique and inspirational live music performance and educational project that encompasses both live performances and educational music master classes, encompassing Jazz, Swing, Blues, Soul, Latin, Funk and World music.
“Kyla is the creative driving force behind Chapter & Lyric and I and my team supply the blank canvas for Kyla to apply the many colours that will become Chapter & Lyric,” says Ian Bowden, Festival Director.
This event will take place at the stunning and beautiful National Trust property Lamb House which is situated within the heart of Rye. Lamb House has strong literary connections with both writers Henry James and E. F. Benson residing at Lamb House. Kyla is developing this connection between literature and music to hold masterclasses in composition and song writing as part of the festival, with a mix of established and upcoming musicians. One of the festival’s core values is to provide the opportunity for new music talent from across the region to perform to a wider audience. Chapter & Lyric will provide musicians with the opportunity to both perform as part of the festival programme and to also gain invaluable experience through participation within the scheduled Masterclasses.
Racheal Lawrence, 2015 graduate from BMus Music in the School of Music and Fine Art, will be one of the one of the headline performers, and 3 more BA (Hons) Event & Experience Design graduates are also working on the event – Beth Tabeartas Event Manager and Ross Martin & Sophie Sprowellas designers. The stage is being designed as a stack of books, with open books providing the proscenium arch, with Lamb House as backdrop.
The festival, which runs from 27 – 31 August, will create an-going legacy of education, inspiration, immersive and transferable work experience, International bonds, nurturing of talent and create the opportunity to be part of the on-going development of the annual festival.
The School of Music and Fine Art is delighted to announce that Ben Crawford, Evdokia Georgiou and Nadia Perrotta, three recently graduated BA (Hons) Fine Art students, have all been selected for the prestigious 2015 Platform Graduate Award. Their work will be exhibited at Turner Contemporary, Margate, in September, after which the final winner from the region will be chosen.
‘Waiting for the Tide’ by Nadia Perrotta Photo by Panayota Koushiappa, 2015.
Now in it’s third year, the Platform Graduate Award aims to support graduate professional development and nurture emerging talent from universities and colleges in the South East region.
Last year’s winner, Sophie Dixon, was also from the BA (Hons) Fine Art in the School of Music and Fine Art, for which she received a £2500 bursary from Platform and a year of mentoring from an experienced art professional.
The Platform programme is a coalition of visual arts organisations in the South East: Turner Contemporary, Margate; Aspex; Portsmouth; De La Warr Pavilion; Bexhill; MK Gallery; Milton Keynes and Modern Art Oxford, and has been initiated by CVAN (Contemporary Visual Art Network South East).
a short section of sound and moving image comprising the artwork
“symptoms of the world”
will appear and disappear
What do you do when the archive, the official record or one’s own family legends do not match your own memories or contradict your sense of self? And where do you keep the things that you are tacitly but firmly invited not to talk about?
Symptoms of the World is a new online sound and image work by Harriet Gifford, an MA Sound and Image student at the School of Music and Fine Art, University of Kent, which addresses these issues through layers of time, progressively deteriorating sound cues, visual mementos and in-built ephemerality.
Over the course of 22 days in August, starting on 3rd at midnight (b.s.t.) each day a new one-minute segment will be posted on http://www.involuntarymemory.agency/ then exchanged with the next day’s piece 24 hours later. Each minute long segment being available for one day only.
Constructed around a 22 minute sound work, the sections of published imagery layer meaning and memory cues of landscape and family memorabilia against the sound environment. The imagery, the collection will be lost to view, in the way of all web content, after its allotted time. The sound piece will, in opposition to the normal nature of sound, endure.
This work emerges from a practice that is deeply engaged with the landscape as a site of memory. Landscape is understood here as a palimpsest of human endeavor that forms the background through which personal and cultural identities are developed. Having collected the landscape and the world photographically and through film and sound samples throughout her practice this work finally unites these several strands that have run in parallel for years.
“This work engages the listener with memories and forgetfulness, archive and deletion. Layers of sound, moving and still images disrupt smooth viewing and develop the haptic properties of near indecipherability, evoking places, events and memories not quite captured or complete,” says Harriet.
5-8PM FRI 7 AUG 2015 CHATHAM HISTORIC DOCKYARD, ENGINEERS WORKSHOP AND OUTDOOR SITES, PICK-UP A MAP FROM EITHER ENTRANCE
DIJ-I-TL-EK-SPER-UH-MENTS bring together works by MA Sound and Image students from the School of Music and Fine Art at the University of Kent, Amie Rai and Angela McArthur. Their work explores issues of technology’s symbiotic influence on us, the changing status of reading and our relationship to the spectacle created by novelty and immersion.
Amie Rai’s practice investigates our bodily relationship with technology and the way in which the fleshly and organic negotiate and interface with the technological. Her current work explores reading and narrative structures in the digital age and proposes ways in which reading can become a more embodied and material act. She uses existing books to reformulate new narratives through sound, image and material interventions.
Angela McArthur’s work meanwhile exposes the allure of novelty in technology, questing our notions of control, and the corporeal contract we enter into, via immersive experience – an eternal present which is sensorially active yet reflexively mediated. She questions ‘memorabilia as a substitute for historical memory, resisting binary oppositions in trying to understand our “pleasure in playing with the undecidable’ (Ranciere, c 2009).
