Author: ch807

Where are you From, From? Black British Culture in Print: 1800s-now May 2023

 

 

The University of Kent’s Studio 3 Gallery held an exciting and nuanced exploration of black British culture through art: the exhibition Where are you From, From? Black British Culture in Print: 1800s-now (Kent Print Collection 10th Exhibition). It ran from 10 – 26 May 2023 with high attendance and extensive acclaim.

Curated by a dedicated team of 3rd year art history students and made possible by generous loans and volunteers from Canterbury, London and the surrounding area, the works present a range of influential Black British artists engaging with concepts such as: class, race, music, dress and religion in their work.

Artists in the exhibition include household names – such as Sonia Boyce and Tam Joseph with a print of his brilliant ‘Spirit of the Carnival’ on display- and emerging artists like Kamlah Kew and Yvadney Davis, pioneering Black representation in the art industry.  Alongside these contemporary artists and prints, we are pleased to unveil a range of archival pieces donated by Autograph Gallery charting the course of Black British history. The body of work displayed, uncovers how culture is reproduced, maintained and passed down through the generations.

The exhibition chronicles the changes and continuities of Black diasporic identities in Britain from the black Victorians of the 19th century to predictions on the future state of black culture and representation.

What does it mean to be ‘from’ somewhere, and how do answers to this question change and evolve as globalisation complicates and hybridises identity, belonging and origin? The name of the exhibition contemplates a common question many are familiar with. While seemingly innocuous, it reflects a microaggression that suggests a lack of belonging in this country. It simultaneously creates a personal debate for the person of which it is asked, usually a Black person or person of colour. The exhibition repurposes an interrogative statement, seeking instead to connect Black people both back to Caribbean and African ancestry, and common histories in Britain, as we examine the true multicultural nature of the nation.

The University of Kent’s Studio 3 Gallery is located in the School of Arts Jarman building, at the heart of the Canterbury campus. Join us as we reject simplistic and linear narratives, and navigate the treacherous scopes of self- expression and identity. Follow us on our social media pages and follow the link to our website to keep up to date with the exciting events and talks we are in the process of planning during the exhibition’s run!

Instagram: @/Whereareyoufromfrom_

John Wills GAmerica April 2023

How does America become a game? Come and find out at our wonderful interactive exhibition GAmerica – open until 27th April 11am to 3pm

Studio 3 Gallery, School of Arts, Jarman Building, University of Kent, Canterbury, CT2 7UG

Since the inception of the digital age, computer programmers have transformed the American experience into interactive entertainment, turning all kinds of U.S history, culture and politics into entertainment and play. Video games have collectively created a digital America for us to navigate and to explore. Featuring a mixture of curated posters, digital art, and playable machines, this exhibition catalogues America as depicted in modern video games. Come learn more about GAmerica and play some vintage titles. 

Exhibitor John Wills is a professor in US cultural history, film and game studies at the University of Kent, and the author of seven books, including Gamer Nation: Video Games and American Culture(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), and, with Esther Wright, Red Dead Redemption: History, Myth and Violence in the Video Game West (University of Oklahoma Press, 2023). He is currently a Leverhulme Research Fellow.

Sincere thanks and credit to The British Academy (London), Future Human (Kent), and the Institute of Cultural and Creative Industries (Kent).

We are grateful for MA Curating, who provided curatorial support for the exhibition.

Keith Robinson Younome August 2022

 

YouNome 

Your personalised genome in 25 portraits 

We were delighted to host Keith Robinson’s extraordinary exhibition YouNome: 4th July to 14th August 2022 Monday to Friday 10am-4.30pm.

Studio 3 Gallery, School of Arts, Jarman Building, University of Kent, Canterbury, CT2 7UG

Keith Robinson, a renowned portrait artist, has produced 25 portraits, each representing the 24 human chromosomes (plus mitochondria DNA) by altering his self-image.

YouNome is a unique science-art collaboration designed to engage, educate and inspire the general public about ‘personalised genomics’. Collaborating with Darren Griffin (Professor of Genetics at the University of Kent), Dr Gary Robinson (Kent Innovation and Enterprise) and Robbie Sutton (Professor of Social Psychology, Kent), Keith aimed to facilitate genetic understanding and reference art history, popular culture and effects on the viewer.

The portraits each represent a human chromosome. Each depict an aspect of genetics (e.g. disease, variation, evolution, gene-environment interaction) and reflect certain artistic style (e.g. Van Gogh, Hieronymus Bosch, Cindy Sherman, Fernando Botero, watercolour, hand touched photograph.

Students, school children and the public loved this thought provoking show.

A massive thank you to all those involved.

https://keithrobinsonpainting.com/Younome

If you have queries, please contact Dr Catherine Hahn c-hahn@kent.ac.uk

Moyra Derby room plan April 2022

 

Moyra Derby’s room plan April-May 2022

The works installed at Studio 3 Gallery were in progress.

A series of painting based components configure as a room plan, actualising and imagining space for both a painter and a mathematician. Wall and floor based structures, and space responsive wall works have a shared set of measurements, ratios and compositional strategies. Their status as paintings is interchangeable with their potential as tables, shelves, screens and storage, or their readability as a number system or mathematical diagrams.

The component based nature of the work allows it to adapt to the space and also make space, and in its pictorial qualities to be space depictive. Some elements can be moved and repositioned by visitors, sharing compositional discovery and adjustment, and moving the work between process, display and storage.

As a visualisation and a proposition, ‘room plan’ confers with the history of painting and its pictorial and diagrammatic potentials. Picture and diagram both indicate forms of image that are derived from or overlaid onto another, or that prescribe or prompt a set of actions or associations. In this sense ‘room plan’ both pictures and proposes an approach to painting that is provisional and interdependent. The components operate within the idea of an open work, with indecision and incompleteness offered as an expansively generative space for thinking and making.

Virginia Woolf described the need for a room of one’s own, and here that room is understood as a cognitive space as much as a physical space. The fluctuating and episodic experiences of attention are called upon, inviting attentional attachments that are externally reactive and internally reflective. From moments of extreme focus to the pulls of distraction and the scattering of dispersed attention. The components of ‘room plan’ are approached as attentional co-ordinates that anticipate and reciprocate the spatial and imaginative participation of the gallery visitor.

Le Piazze [In]visibili – Invisible Squares- November 2021-March 2022

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The story of twenty-one Italian squares, told in words and photographs by Italian authors.

Olivo Barbieri, Piazza del Popolo, Rome, February 3, 2004

Creator and Curator, Marco Delogu

Studio 3 Gallery, Jarman Building, University of Kent.

Invisible Squares features photographs of twenty Italian piazzas, taken between the end of March and the beginning of May, when Italy, like much of the rest of the world, found itself in the difficult confinement phase. These photographs [along with Barbieri’s above] are accompanied by short original texts by Italian writers connected to those places and piazzas by memories, experiences and literary references.

Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Luigi Di Maio

The “state of exceptionality” that was initiated in the spring of 2020 has resulted in a series of upheavals in practically every aspect of everyday life.
We have suddenly found ourselves shrouded in a sense of expectation and suspension, which has engulfed the very places that we formerly inhabited and filled. Joseph Rykwert states that “Italy is the land of a hundred piazzas”. These piazzas, the symbol of Italy’s widespread beauty, now return to being – perhaps for the first time in our lives – imaginary places “seen” like this only by the great artists and the minds who designed, planned, built and adorned them.

Xenas-Zaftig August 2021

This experimental installation rewrites the mythology of the feminine divine. Words are woven through object, projection and print in order to enact the physical experience of womanhood.

Touching upon sexuality, gender and maternity, Xenas-Zaftig is a bold collection of work that speaks directly to the poets’ experiences whilst confronting the difficult narratives surrounding the feminine body throughout western culture.

 

Using materials such as crystal, velvet, moss, seaweed and clay, the poet externalises trauma from the body and gives access to the softest recesses of reproductive organs.