Category Archives: news

creative events, fine art, news, research

Award-winning art installation to be recreated at Canterbury campus

November 6, 2013

Fine Art graduate and winner of the University of Kent’s Vice Chancellor 2013 Prize, Natasha Pocock, will have her award-winning work recreated the University of Kent’s Rutherford Dining Hall on the Canterbury campus from 11-15 November, 2013. Visitors are welcome and encouraged to come along and view Natasha’s progress throughout the week.

Natasha was a Fine Art postgraduate student at the School of Music and Fine Art and her performance installation follows the same ethos of her work which featured in the Fine Art Degree show exhibition ‘Joining the Docks’, which took place at the Chatham Historic Dockyard earlier this year. Her previous piece explored issues of identity and passage of time through textiles, sculpture and performance with a focus on Dockyard-specific history. It will be based on garment construction and crochet to recreate the passage of time through textiles.

Natasha said: ‘I have been seduced by the Chatham Dockyards historical content, feeling compelled to respond to Kent’s archives concerning the haunting aspects of the female workers lives on site. Specifically [for this piece] I have responded to an article found in the ‘Black & White Magazine’ calling for Victorian women to apply their skills to the Sail and Colour Loft based at the Historical Chatham Dockyard. The work described to be ‘delicate, clean and light work, ideally suited to women.

As well as visiting the installation, visitors are encouraged to submit questions to Natasha, via Tasha.Pocock@live.co.uk. Questions will be answered each day during a 1-2pm interlude.

‘I am looking forward to creating a new piece for visitors at the Canterbury campus I will be in performance installation should anyone like to attend from 10am until 5pm and on the Thursday until 9pm. It is an extension of ‘Master in Command’ developed at Chatham” says Natasha.

Since graduating, Natasha work has been on display at the Galvanize exhibition at the London Barbican. She is also exhibiting at the Horsebridge Gallery in Whitstable throughout November and December, with the sculptural work on display for this exhibition developed from her London Barbican experience.

creative events, music, news, research

Kents first Symposium on Acoustic Ecology November 8- 9, 2013

November 6, 2013

A new symposium to celebrate the sounds and experiences of Acoustic Ecology is set to take place in Medway Friday 8th and Saturday 9th November.

There are still a few places available for this event.

The Symposium on Acoustic Ecology investigates soundscapes as complex sounding systems that change in space and time, and shape our understanding of the surrounding world. The event is proud to be endorsed by the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE).

The event, taking place this coming Friday and Saturday daytime and evenings on 8-9th November, will be held at various locations around the University’s Medway campus and the Historic Dockyard, and consist of talks by keynote speakers, including a special guest speaker all experts in their field, 2 concerts, an array of installations and Listening Rooms, culminating in a finale concert held at the stunning Slip 3, Mezzanine building at the Historic Dockyard Chatham.

There will be a full programme during the two days of:
Papers
Concerts
Listening Rooms
Installations
Posters
View the full programme here

Acoustic Ecology is a discipline studying the relationship mediated through sound, between living beings and their environment and the Symposium is first of its kind in Medway hosted by the School of Music and Fine Art, University of Kent.

Follow the event on Twitter ( @UniKentMFA ) #SOAE – if you are coming along, please join in!

Booking and Registration:
Online Registration is open now and available through the University of Kent web-store Register Now to secure your place.
Tickets:
Students of University of Kent – £10
Goldsmiths College -£10
Students – £20
Non-students – £40

For more information visit:
http://acousticecology.org.uk
School of Music and Fine Art, Symposium on Acoustic Ecology

Contact:
info@AcousticEcology.org.uk Tel: 01634 888 980

music, news

Kerry Andrew shortlisted for 2013 British Composer Awards

November 5, 2013

School of Music and Fine Art Lecturer’s composition is selected as one of the 39 works shortlisted for the 2013 British Composer Awards, set to take place in December at Goldsmiths’ Hall, London.

BASCA, the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, is the professional association for music writers in the UK. The single voice for British music creators announced Kerry Andrew among the 39 works shortlisted for the 2013 British Composer Awards to be presented across 13 categories and the winners will be unveiled at a ceremony at Goldsmiths’ Hall on Tuesday 3 December.

The Associate Lecturer at the School of Music and Fine Art for Music and Audio Arts has previously won British Composer Award in 2010 under the Making Music category for her work ‘Fall’ and was shortlisted in 2012 for ‘A Lock is a Gate’ in the Community or Educational category. Delighted to be once again shortlisted for her work ‘Screech’ in the Making Music Award category. Kerry Andrew’s work forms the last part of a three-movement flexible work for contemporary recorder quintet Consortium 5, Badluck Birds, which is inspired by regional lore of three different British birds. It was commissioned by the Handel House Museum and had its world premiere on the 11 October 2012 at the Handel House Museum performed by Consortium 5.

You can read more about the Award and listen to an extract of ‘Screech’ on the British Composer Award website.

The British Composer Awards are presented by BASCA and sponsored by PRS for Music. In association with BBC Radio 3 providing exclusive broadcast coverage of the Awards on Saturday 7th December.

creative events, news

Kate joins the 24 hour ‘Hackathon’ at the NEM Summit, France

November 5, 2013

Kate Halsall, Lecturer in Music Performance, Music and Audio Arts took part as one of a number of artists and technologists at the NEM (Networked and Electronic Media) Summit 2013 in Nantes, France during October 28-30.

Based at La Cité conference and exhibition centre in Nantes, France, developers from the NEM (Networked and Electronic Media) constituency and from the creative industries were invited to take part in a 24-hour “hackathon”, with challenges proposed by leading companies, including the ones involved in the FI-Content project.

The ‘hackathon’ is organized by “ICT & Art Connect”, an initiative supported by the European Commission through the FP7 FET-ART project and devoted to connect the European ICT and Art communities, and to foster productive dialogue and collaborative work between them. The annual NEM Summit attracts and involves artists representing the creative industries.

The NEM Summit 2013 included a major “Creative@NEM” aspect, comprising several events and aimed at facilitating an even stronger connection between NEM and the creative industries.

fine art, news, research

Visiting Artists Talk – Tom Woolner

November 4, 2013

The School of Music and Fine Art are delighted to welcome artist Tom Woolner this coming Thursday, in the next of our series of Visiting Artists Talks.

28^th November, 6-8pm
Chatham Historic Dockyard
BridgeWardens College, Lecture Theatre

Tom Woolner is an artist based in London, working predominately in sculpture and performance. His cartoon-dumb installations are often made on-site for particular spaces, while the makeshift and often shambolic performances borrow freely from genres of both theatre and comedy.

In 2014 he will be making a new commission for the Olympic Park, London and a new performance at Modern Art, Oxford and Spike Island, Bristol.

Tom Woolner’s recent exhibitions include:
FOLD, London
Site Gallery, Sheffield
Gallery Jecza, Romania

Tom has also made performances at the Barbican; ANDOR, London and V22, London. We are delighted to welcome Tom to the next Artist Talk event this week.

View Events Calendar

news

Turner Contemporary Platform Graduate Award finalists announced.

October 31, 2013

We are delighted to announce that Charlotte Smith, School of Music and Fine Art graduate has been selected as one out of two graduates shortlisted for the Turner Contemporary’s Platform Graduate Award.

Charlotte has been selected alongside one other finalist, Hannah Allison-Finucane of Canterbury Christchurch University up for the Award and the winner will be announced November 7th. Turner Contemporary Curator, Lauren Wright told our graduate artists “this was a very difficult decision for the team as you’ve all made very strong work and we’ve so enjoyed working with you”. The Turner Contemporary are very keen to continue working with and supporting our graduates through their developing careers in the next few months.

Turner Contemporary invites you to celebrate the announcement of the Platform Graduate Award winner 2013, and for a discussion about the opportunities and challenges facing emerging artists.

Panel Discussion and Winner Announcement:
Thursday 7 November 2013, 3 – 6pm, Turner Contemporary

3pm – Panel discussion and Q&A
What are the challenges and opportunities artists face when embarking upon a career? What support can they expect from galleries, dealers and other artists? How do they make sure they keep up their momentum after graduation? We will be delving into these and other questions from the audience at this special event, part of the Platform programme of support for graduates and artists, with our panel of experts:
Adam Chodzko,artist
Jonathan Viner, Director, Jonathan Viner Gallery, London and Margate
Matthew de Pulford, Limbo studios and project space, Margate
Lauren Wright, Curator, Turner Contemporary
Joella Wheatley, Platform Award winner 2012

4.15pm – Exhibition viewing
5pm – Winner announced by artist Adam Chodzko, followed by drinks and networking opportunities.

If you would like to attend, please contact the Turner Contemporary as numbers are limited Email: rsvp@turnercontemporary.org

Everyone at the School would like to wish Charlotte good luck and fingers crossed!

IMAG0243

Charlotte’s work, called Ephemeral Rays, consists of hundreds of light bulbs, dust and fishing line. It seeks to reflect the way in which light rests within a space, settling like dust even if just momentarily. Adapted for the Turner specifically, the installation evolves into a new form drawing on the stunning expanse of sea and sky, with the

infinite horizon line as the focal point of the composition.
“The relationship between place and space is of huge interest. I enjoy the ephemeral characteristic of site-specific working, the work becomes more experiential, similar to the wonder of light and the art lives on in the memories of those who experienced it” explains Smith about Ephemeral Rays.

About the Platform Graduate Award

Devised through the CVAN South East network and now in its second year, the Platform programme aims to support graduate professional development and nurture new talent, and is supported by a coalition of visual arts organisations in the South East: Aspex, Portsmouth; Modern Art Oxford; MK Gallery, Milton Keynes and Turner Contemporary, Margate.

Turner Contemporary is delighted to showcase the work of seven BA Fine Art graduates from universities in Kent who have been selected to participate in the Platform Graduate Award, on display at the gallery until Sunday 10 November.

Hannah Allison-Finucane Canterbury Christ Church University (shortlisted for award)Charlotte Smith University of Kent (shortlisted for award)

Daniella Turbin University of Kent
Rachel Johnston Canterbury Christ Church University
Louisa Love University for the Creative Arts
Linda Simon University for the Creative Arts
Harry Tompkins University for the Creative Arts

creative events, fine art, music, news

Tate Modern commissioned Sonic Trail ‘From Surface to Surface’ launches this month

October 22, 2013

New Tate Modern commissioned work launches this month.

The School of Music and Fine Art would like to congratulate music lecturer, Duncan Macleod on his work responding to the artwork ‘From Surface to Surface’ by Susumu Koshimizu.

‘The Sonic Trail; From Surface to Surface’ commissioned by Tate, was launched this month as part of Tate Modern’s Sonic Trails collection. This represents an exciting contribution to the School’s research culture and is now available to listen to online.

The electronic work, written for headphones, features 14 miniature audio tracks which correspond to individual pieces of the artwork.

Gallery visitors can either download or stream and listen to the work on an mp3 player – visit https://soundcloud.com/sonictrails/ or, on some listening devices that can be signed-out from the Tate Modern Clore Centre. There will also be some activities for younger audiences.

View more on the Tate website

news

Treaty Canoe comes to the Dockyard

October 18, 2013

Treaty Canoe Transcription Event at School of Music and Fine Art

On Wednesday 16th October Artist Alex McKay and Dr David Stirrup Senior Lecturer in American Literature visited the School of Music and Fine Art at the Dockyard campus, as part of Alex’s residency with the School of American studies making a UK edition of a work of his titled ‘Treaty Canoe’.

David came to Bridge Wardens College and set up a small desk for the afternoon in the foyer area of where volunteers were invited to contribute to the project, through making short transcriptions.

‘To say that Chatham made a contribution to Empire would be to make a massive understatement’ says McKay.

Coinciding with the 250th anniversary of the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which established the nature of treaty relations in British North America from that point, Alex has come to Kent to make a second edition of Treaty Canoe. We invited volunteers, many of them students, to assist in the artwork by reading, reflecting on, and transcribing a portion of one of the traditional treaties. With ‘Indigenous Rights’ being a prominent aspect of the work of the UN in the last 15 or so years, and with recent Indigenous activism movements in Canada and the USA, Treaty Canoe is timely and significant.

We hope that by engaging with the project, participants will not only have the opportunity to contribute to the artwork, but will also come away with a better understanding of Indigenous issues in North America.

The construction of the canoe itself will have a performative dimension – not least because Alex is going to set up camp in the Keynes building atrium at the Canterbury campus- and it is hoped that students and members of the public will feel free to approach him to learn more.
Do pop along and find out more.

Useful links
www.treatycanoe.ca
www.alexmckay.ca

music, news

Northern Loop – a CD and iTunes release from Paul Fretwell and Ambrose Field

October 18, 2013

Senior lecturer, Dr Paul Fretwell concludes his five-year collaborative project with Dr Ambrose Field. Their CD, ‘Northern Loop’ is now available.

Northern Loop is the final product of Paul Fretwell and Ambrose Field’s collaborative composition project, spanning five years of live performances at venues ranging from King’s Place in London, to churches in downtown New Orleans.

Field and Fretwell first started collaborating in 2004. ‘Jack Chorale’, their first piece together, is an electroacoustic work that plays with genre and expectation, bringing in regular beats, fragmented rhythms, spectral sound transformations, harmony and noise. This piece triggered a long period of exploration where they began to focus on the very small details within sounds.

Northern Loop plays out over a continuous 80 minutes, working tiny loops of audio material into a spectral tapestry where small details are brought to the fore, revealing different facets of the evolving sound textures. The work has seven movements, although these flow into one another. The component sounds were generated from studio recordings of source materials using techniques of time stretching, convolution and mutation. These processes typically result in long, continuously evolving sounds. The composers then extracted short clips from these longer files to create their loops, finding interesting timbres and melodic fragments from within the larger whole. This magnification of small spectral details forms the central technique of Northern Loop, which charts a journey from darkness to light over a carefully-planned harmonic structure.

Fretwell and Field’s describe their motivation: “We decided to pick a single structural constraint – one that is common to a variety of genres and well known – the loop. The loop, historically, has been a tool for innovation, particularly in its use by pioneering minimal composers as Steve Reich in the 1960s. The ubiquity of the loop today however is unquestionable, but we feel that its widespread use in popular culture is often unchallenged. We would like to rescue the loop from entertainment-level apps, musical “textural backgrounds” and “library background pads”, and provide, through use of that structure, a listening experience of subtlety and delicacy. The result is a kind of “self-similar”, thoroughly stripped-down minimal music, but importantly our type of structure is not algorithmically generated: this is intuitive music, assembled through aural judgment and collaborative discussion.”

Fretwell and Field’s CD Northern Loop can be heard and purchased on the Sargasso website.
Also available for download on iTunes.

Northern Loop Track List:

1. Dark Water 14:41
2. Labyrinth 06:48
3. Plants and Pistons 05:00
4. Tidal Life 14:39
5. Expectation 09:47
6. Renaissance Pulse 09:03
7. Glass Machine 19:23

creative events, fine art, music, news

School of Music and Fine Art’s Barbara Morris Teaching Prize Success

October 18, 2013

Barbara Morris Prize benefits students in ‘Skills Enhancement Week’ – Learning Support 2013.

Congratulations go to Dr Paul Fretwell, Director of Learning and Teaching and Employability and Events Coordinator, Ann Howe, the School’s joint winners of the Barbara Morris Prize for Learning Support 2013, along with the Student Support Team at the School of Arts at Canterbury, for their dedication and input into the ‘Skills Enhancement Week’ in February, 2013.

Thirteen Kent academics were recognised for their teaching excellence at a ceremony at the University’s Canterbury campus on 3 October presented by Professor Dame Julia Goodfellow, University Vice-Chancellor. ‘Teaching excellence is vitally important for all students. These annual awards recognise this. I congratulate all those who have received awards this year. The projects are first rate.’

The School of Music and Fine Art’s Skills Enhancement Week took place between Monday 18^th and Friday 22^nd February, which replaced ‘Reading Week’, provided an invigorated forum and a focussed few days of informative and inspirational events for students to be able to enhance their skills leading to improved employability. Students were able to earn University ‘Employability Points’ by attending these events and prizes were on offer to the student who attended the most sessions and the event went on to lead to a number of student placements and internships with organisations such as Microsoft Computer Games, Zealous, Earcom Ltd and other work experience opportunities.

The team were dedicated to securing an array of industry-recognised guest speakers who provided lively talks, along with a week’s schedule of mixed study skills and employability-related workshops. Activities such as workshops on self-employment, entrepreneurship, developing partnerships and networking spanned the five days and there were personal and professional development workshops too, where students could learn about how to build and develop their online presence and how to ‘market’ themselves, hone their CV writing skills and learn about the Year Abroad possibilities.

The judging panel were impressed with the team’s employment-focussed student support, as the Skills Enhancement Week clearly enriched the student’s experiences and provided a model which could be emulated across other the other Schools. It was also deemed an excellent example of external engagement, benefiting both students and the University through collaboration.

‘The week proved to be a great success and was even opened up to other University students to attend’ said prize winner Ann Howe. ‘It provided a great opportunity for career networking for students with external industry employers and gave students a chance to think holistically about their education, develop an awareness of skills needed for future employment and to actively build their own employability’

For full details on all the 2013 University of Kent Teaching Prize Award winners and see for more images: http://www.kent.ac.uk/teaching/news.html?view=568

Image caption:
Winners of the Barbara Morris Prize for Learning Support 2013 (SMFA’s Paul Fretwell 2nd right, Ann Howe 3^rd right)