Category Archives: fine art

Muster Station, The School of Beginnings at Tate Exchange, 3rd – 4th February

January 26, 2018 mem

SMFA Fine Art students are part of the new artists’ collective Muster Station, created in response to the University of Kent’s planned closure of the School of Music and Fine Art. As Muster Station, they have been invited by Whitstable Biennale, to take part in the 2018 Tate Modern Exchange projects, with a theme “Production”. It will involve current Fine Art BA and MA students (as well as recent Fine Art BA and MA alumni), is open to the public throughout, and free to attend. Through a programme of workshops, talks, interactions and interventions Muster Station will explore the means by which artists produce in response to constantly shifting conditions of space, time, audience and the ebb and flow of economic and political support.

The venue is Tate Exchange, Tate Modern, Bankside, London, SE1 9TG in the Blavatnik Building, Level 5.

For more info see http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/tate-exchange/workshop/muster-station-school-beginnings

Opening hours:
Saturday 3 – Sunday 4 February, 12:00 – 18:00
Performance:
Saturday 3 February, 18:00 – 20:00

Taking place intermittently throughout the weekend:

A data conservator will interpret the code of the Tate website through a translation
of digital coding into musical notation. The Gov.UK art-collection will also be dissected
and performed in sung and spoken live-burst performances.

Beyond Art Lectures, a ‘cultural telemarketing’ project with artists from Latin America that promotes the idea of outsourcing art lectures by taking advantage of unfair labour conditions.
Join in a Muster Drill, mixing yoga and semaphore signals for an invisible audience on the Thames, exploring care and communion.
A live action role play accompanied by musicians performing their interpretations of symbol-based graphic scores made in response to artworks in the permanent collection.
To close the day on Saturday, a one-off performance of Shears For Tears:’unrestrained screamers’, mixed into an audioscape, orchestrated by a video-chromatic score.

fine art, news

SMFA’s Tim Meacham has work Eye of the Needle in Turner Contemporary Exhibition at Hantverk & Found Gallery, Margate

January 25, 2018 mem

From 3^rd February until 18^th March, SMFA’s Fine Art Lecturer and artist Tim Meacham’s work Eye of the Needle is on show at the Hantverk & Found Gallery in Margate. This is part of the offsite programme for Turner Contemporary’s major exhibition Journeys with ‘The Waste Land’, which explores the significance of T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land through the visual arts.

Eye of the Needle, made with support from the University of Kent, explores TS Eliot’s relationship with the mechanical sound recording of the gramophone, making particular reference to its role in The Waste Land in providing the machine mediated sound track of modernity. The viewer accompanies the needle on its journey across the landscape of a gramophone record. The role of the needle is considered in first embedding sound, through creating the grooves of the record, and then as a “rider” travelling across the surface of the disc as it plays. 78-rpm records, made of shellac and slate dust, give something of themselves (dust) in order to release their sound, thus changing the landscape with each play.

Tim Meacham is an artist who works across media to explore space within the triangulated world of experience between seeing, hearing and touching. SMFA’s Partner and College Liaison Officer, he is currently undertaking a practice based PhD. More info: www.timmeacham.space

Hantverk & Found is a celebrated seafood café and commissioning art gallery in the heart of Margate Old Town committed to supporting artists to make art, with a small gallery space to exhibit works by local and emerging artists. As well as providing support to artists, they frequently commission new work.

The Preview is Saturday 3rd February, 6-8pm at Hantverk & Found, 18 King Street, Margate, CT9 1DA. The exhibition runs until 18^th March. Opening hours: Thursday-Sunday, 12pm-4pm, with viewing at other times by appointment. Contact: gallery@hantverk-found.co.uk and http://www.hantverk-found.co.uk/

fine art, news, research

SMFA’s Adam Chodzko has film About Knots at Whitechapel Gallery on February 8th

January 17, 2018 mem

Adam Chodzko, 2017. Photo by Clay Barnard Chodzko

SMFA Fine Art Senior Lecturer and acclaimed artist Adam Chodzko has a video work, About Knots, screened on February 8th at the Whitechapel Gallery in Refuge – an evening of films, sound-works and readings that mark Britain’s historic status as a place of sanctuary for threatened European artists.

About Knots focuses on the relationship between artist Kurt Schwitters in the final years of his life in the late 1940’s, living in poverty, (and exile) in the Lake District, and J. Edgar Kaufmann, wealthy owner of the Kaufman Department Store in Pittsburgh, USA. The work combines text and moving image and creates a narrative about longing, creation and fragmentation, endings and beginnings.

Exhibiting internationally since 1991, Adam 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. http://www.adamchodzko.com

More info here:
http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/events/refuge/

fine art, news, research

New exhibition The Ash Archive features work by SMFA’s Adam Chodzko

January 15, 2018 mem

SMFA Fine Art Lecturer and acclaimed artist, Adam Chodzko, is featured in new exhibition, The Ash Archive, a collaboration between the University of Kent and The Ash Project which examines the human relationship with the ash tree and woodlands. Reflecting on the uncertain future of the ash tree, the exhibition brings together works by artists, designers and local makers which explore our dynamic and complex relationship with the life and death of the natural world. Artists featured include Ackroyd & Harvey, Colin Booth, ,Sebastian Cox, French & Mottershead, Magz Hall, Max Lamb, David Nash (in collaboration with Common Ground), Autumn Richardson & Richard Skelton and Sheaf + Barley, and there is a collection of objects made from ash wood from Rob Penn’s book The man who made things out of trees.

The Private View is on Thursday 18 January, 6-9pm, at Studio 3 Gallery, Jarman Building, School of Arts, Canterbury. The exhibition runs until 14 April.

The exhibition is curated by Madeleine Hodge and Rose Thompson for The Ash Project in partnership with the University of Kent, and will tour galleries across Kent in 2018, including Limbo Gallery in Margate, Nucleus Arts in Chatham, UCA Brewery Tap in Folkestone as part of the Salt Festival and at Kaleidoscope Gallery in Sevenoaks.

The Ash Archive will grow over the course of the exhibition and the public are invited to make contributions of ash objects to the archive. The Ash Project is an urgent cultural response to the devastating loss of one of our most important species of tree. For more information go to: www.facebook.com/events/202163857010683

fine art, news

SMFA Lecturer Andy Conio receives Above and Beyond Award

January 15, 2018 mem

SMFA Lecturer in Fine Art, Andy Conio, has received an Above and Beyond Award from Kent Union. Students commended him on his passion for the subject, inspirational teaching, support and motivation. His carefully structured, engaging classes create a non-judgemental atmosphere, and he also organised critical writing workshops, listened to student concerns and ensured these were reflected in a reorganised timetable, helping students to better manage workloads and planning.

The awards recognise tutors who have exceeded expectations and gone “above and beyond” to enhance the student experience.

More info on Andy here: https://www.kent.ac.uk/smfa/staff/staff-profiles/fineart/7Conio.html

creative events, fine art, news

Event and Experience Design student work a huge success at Eastgate House

December 18, 2017 mem

The historic Eastgate House in Rochester recently hosted Authenticate, an intervention with live multimedia installations and performances by Year 3 Event and Experience Design students which was so successful that Eastgate House want to keep part of one of the works by student Emma Greenwood – an installation of a jigsaw/drawing of a decorative plaster ceiling, on a viewing mirror. They also want to work with student Elle Mayne on a future video mapping commission.

Lisa Caleno, Visitor Development Officer, at Eastgate House commented: “We were so impressed with the students work at Eastgate House this week, not just in the creativity and understanding of the house shown in the installations but also their courtesy and professionalism. We were particularly impressed with Emma’s work in the mirror room and Elle’s projection in the Rochester Room. I would like to consider working with Elle when she has graduated on a potential installation at the house using projection. We would also be very interested in acquiring the jigsaw puzzle which Emma created to have as a feature of the mirror room.”

Peter Hatton, Programmes Director for Event and Experience Design, Event and Experience Management and Fine Art, and Deputy Head of School, added: “Both outcomes are very good for the students in terms of their confidence, portfolio

fine art, news, research

Tim Meacham features at LOMA and Turner Contemporary

December 18, 2017 mem

On the 8th January 2018, Tim Meacham, Lecturer in Fine Art and Partner College Liaison Officer in the School of Music and Fine Art, is delivering a paper with a video & sound piece as part of the Large Objects Moving Air conference (LOMA) with CRISAP (Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice at UAL , London College of Communication http://www.crisap.org/research/projects/loma-18/

And in February 2018, in conjunction with the Turner Contemporary Margate, Tim has been asked to make a piece of work as part of the Journeys with the Wasteland exhibition which explores the significance of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land through visual arts. The work – Eye of the needle – will be exhibited in the Hantverk & Found gallery in Margate http://www.hantverk-found.co.uk/

Of the work Tim explains: “The viewer accompanies the needle on its journey across the landscape of a gramophone record. The role of the needle is considered in first embedding sound, through creating the grooves of the record, and then as a “rider” travelling across the surface of the disc as it plays. 78-rpm records, made of shellac and slate dust, give something of themselves (dust) in order to release their sound, thus changing the landscape with each play”.

The work explores T.S. Eliot’s relationship with the mechanical sound recording of the gramophone, making particular reference to its role in The Waste Land in providing the machine mediated sound track of modernity.

“She smoothes her hair with automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone.” The Waste Land 254-56

For more info go to: https://www.timmeacham.space/

https://www.turnercontemporary.org/exhibitions/journeys-with-the-waste-land

fine art, news, research

Adam Chodzko, Senior Lecturer in Fine Art joins faculty of British School at Rome’s Council

December 18, 2017 mem

Adam Chodzko, Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, has been asked by the British School at Rome’s Council to become a member of the Faculty of the Fine Arts from 1 January 2018, until December 2022. He joins a faculty that includes the Director of the National Portrait Gallery, the Director of the Government Art Collection, and Senior Curator of Contemporary British Art, Tate. More here: http://www.bsr.ac.uk/about/governance

fine art, news, research

Shona Illingworth’s short film Searching in Channel 4 series Random Acts

November 30, 2017 mem

SMFA’s Shona Illingworth, Fine Art Reader and Director of Graduate Studies, has been commissioned for Random Acts, Channel 4’s provocative and boundary pushing short film strand dedicated to the worlds of art, music, dance, animation, spoken word, performance, and every uncategorisable combination in between.

Her film, Searching, which she directed, features in Series 4, Episode 5, from 7^th December. For more information go to: http://randomacts.channel4.com/about

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. She was shortlisted for the prestigious 2016 Jarman Award.

fine art, news, research

SMFA’s Adam Chodzko featured in Slow Violence exhibition and symposium from 29th November at University of Hertfordshire

November 20, 2017 mem

Adam Chozko, 2017. Photo by Clay Barnard Chodzko

SMFA’s Senior Lecturer in Fine Art and acclaimed award-wining contemporary visual artist, Adam Chodzko, is one of 8 artists featured in Slow Violence, an exhibition, symposium and events developed collaboratively by UHArts and the Contemporary Arts Practice Group, School of Creative Arts, University of Hertfordshire. The artists will reconsider the prevalent and far-reaching threat of climate change. The Symposium, which is free, is Wednesday 29th November, 10.30am – 4pm and brings together a diverse roster of speakers from the fields of environmental psychology, visual arts and business. The Exhibition Opening Reception is also Wed 29th November, and then runs until 20^th January 2018.
For venue, opening hours and more info http://www.uharts.co.uk/whats-on/2017-autumn-and-winter/slow-violence

Venue: Art and Design Gallery, College Lane, Hatfield, AL10 9AB
+44 (0) 1707 285395 | uharts@herts.ac.uk | www.uharts.co.uk

Opening Hours:
Monday to Friday 9:30am – 5:30pm. Saturday 9:30am – 3:30pm
Admission free