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

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

Roma04 001

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.

Le Piazze [In]visibili – Invisible Squares

Roma04 001

 

Le Piazze [In]visibili – Invisible Squares

 

Curated by Marco Delogu

 

Studio 3 Gallery, Jarman Building, University of Kent

 

6 – 17 December 2021 and 17 January – 18 February, 10am – 5pm. Free entrance.

 

Private View: Friday 10th December 5-7pm.

 

When the first lockdown hit Italy in the Spring of 2020 the country’s famous piazze, the bustling squares at the heart of its civilisation, fell eerily silent. Empty of the usual crowds, the piazzas became – ‘perhaps for the first time in our lives’, writes curator Marco Delogu in the exhibition catalogue – ‘imaginary places “seen” like this previously only by the great artists and the minds who designed, planned, built and adorned them’. Delogu reacted to this extraordinary situation by coordinating a team of forty photographers and writers to document and respond to the nation’s temporarily unreal squares. The project involved a complex challenge as during lockdown the photographers could only go outside alone and ‘subject to explaining the reason to the relevant authorities’ while ‘for many writers it was difficult to achieve the necessary concentration’. The writers and photographers – ‘piazza partners’ – worked both in dialogue and independently of each other yet for each piazza ‘the results coincided surprisingly’.

 

The title of the exhibition Le Piazze [In]visibili (Invisible Squares) alludes to Italo Calvino’s famous novel Le città invisibili (Invisible Cities). While he was Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in London, Delogu had met the architectural historian Joseph Rykwert, visiting him in his house in Hampstead where he was shown a first edition of Calvino’s Invisible Cities (1972) with a dedication acknowledging the inspiration of Rykwert’s The Idea of a Town(1963). Rykwert has contributed an essay to the exhibition catalogue pointing out that while lockdown impoverished Italy’s piazzas it also provided a rare opportunity to ‘see their complex geometries, their bare bones, and therefore their very structure’.

 

The exhibition is an initiative of Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and is shown at the University of Kent thanks to the generosity of the Italian Cultural Institute in London. Luigi Di Maio, Italy’s Minster of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, writes of the subject of the exhibition that ‘we are aware that we are facing great challenges, but nonetheless believe that we have the ability to rise to them and draw the impetus needed to overcome them from our sights firmly set on the future’.

 

Students taking Kent’s MA Curating have worked to adapt the exhibition for installation in Studio 3 Gallery.

Fascinating Fears – virtual exhibition until 10 August 2021

 

An online exhibition of art prints curated by undergraduate art history students at the University of Kent’s School of Arts will take place from 10 May to 10 August 2021.

Entitled Fascinating Fears (trigger warning: some artworks display scenes of violence and sexual violence; we do not recommend the exhibition to children), the virtual exhibition will feature works by artists such as the Old Masters Albrecht Dürer, Salvator Rosa, and Francisco Goya; modern artists like Salvador Dali and Michael Ayrton; great Japanese masters like Katsushika Hokusai;
and the contemporary artists Ana Maria Pacheco, Marcelle Hanselaar, Marcus Rees Roberts, and Jake and Dinos Chapman.

The exhibition addresses four sub-themes:

‘Nightmares Creatures’, which explores how monsters have personified various fears, and induce the uncanny feeling of horror

‘Face of Fears’, which displays the facial and bodily expression of human fears and explores the various shades of this feeling, allowing for an audience to see fear expressed in others

‘Japanese horrors’, exhibiting the ghosts and natural forces that have haunted Japan for centuries, becoming an essential part of its cultural folklore.

‘Female Fears’, which explores violence against women and the fear of their sexuality in both historical and contemporary prints, allowing the viewer to reflect upon the differences provoked by gender and social inequalities and of who is afraid, and of what.

Fascinating Fears is the result of the ‘Print Collecting and Curating’ module in Art History. Introduced in 2006, this module gives students the opportunity both to curate a museum-quality exhibition of their design and to acquire prints for the Kent Print Exhibition. This is the 9th exhibition resulting from this course.

For the exhibition students interviewed leading contemporary artists Marcelle Hanselaar and Marcus Rees Roberts, whose works are included, and the expert on Japanese prints Ellis Tinios, who taught a class for the module.

Dr Ben Thomas, convenor of the module, said: ‘Fear is a feeling we all share and understand, perhaps particularly during the current pandemic. The students have curated an exhibition that explores this fundamental human emotion, and how it has been expressed through art in different times and cultures. They have adapted brilliantly to the constraints of lockdown in devising this online exhibition.’

You can follow Fascinating Fears on Instagram.

Are You Local? opening times

 

Are You Local? is now open to the public (under Covid restrictions). The opening times are:

 

Wednesday 16 June, 11am – 2pm

Friday 18 June, 11am – 2pm

Monday 21 June, 11am – 2pm

Wednesday 23 June, 11am – 2pm

Friday 25 June, 11am – 2pm

Monday 28 June, 11am – 2pm

Wednesday 30 June, 11am – 2pm

Friday 2 July, 11am – 2pm

 

Please pre-book your visit by emailing: ac2030@kent.ac.uk or mib23@kent.ac.uk

 

Access to the exhibition is via the double doors at the rear of Studio 3 Gallery. You must wear a mask, sanitise your hands, and scan the QR code on entry into the NHS track and trace app.

Once Upon a time, and Now!

Postgraduate students from the Curating MA at the School of Arts have launched a new virtual exhibition entitled ‘Once upon a time, and Now!’.

The exhibition was due to take place in the School’s Studio 3 Gallery but has moved online due to COVID-19. It can be viewed here until Thursday 18 June 2020.

Through the exhibition, curators Diletta D’Antoni, Inês Mourato and Junwei Chen invite viewers to rediscover the history of women with the influence of the goddess Isis, an Ancient Egyptian deity.

Featured artists include Nancy SperoDavid DeweerdtNooji StudioAlaa AwadJames PutnamAna Maria PachecoSilvia PaciClaudia Niarni, Bin Luo, Nicole WassallAlmagul Menlibayeva, Bin Zhao, Lu Han, Crisia Constantine and Mary Kelly.

Inês Mourato said: ‘Isis was an omniscient deity endowed with magical powers. Her supremacy over all the gods reflected the recognised status of Egyptian women. “Wiser than a million gods”, Isis had a complete knowledge of the heavens and the earth. Yet she also incorporated human qualities – a natural balance of good and evil – that ordinary women could relate to. This exhibition combines and juxtaposes different historical cultures and beliefs in order to rethink women’s liberation by listening to their glories and sufferings throughout history.’

The curators have also produced an exhibition catalogue, which can be viewed here:
www.onceuponatimeandnow.com/3d-flip-book/catalogue/

Hair: Textures of Belonging


With work by
Marina Abramović, Sonia Boyce, Sonya Clark, Monique Goossens, Yuni KIm Lang, Zhu Tian, and Jayoung Yoon.

Curated by Dr Eleen M Deprez and Dr Sweta Rajan-Rankin

Due to Covid-19 the exhibition had to close on 18th March 2020

In this exhibition, we engage with hair as a material as well as metaphorical space by which questions of gender and racialized belonging can be explored. It is a conversation between the artist and their use of hair as material and allegory, and the audience, who can become aware of their own entanglements with the art work, each other and the wider world.

Hair is not just hair. This exhibition reflects on the social, political and aesthetic significance of hair. With its different textures, grooming practices, interpretations, and symbolic values, hair provides a unique and timely entry point to understanding racialised and gendered belonging among different communities. Artists have long used hair as a material in art practice. Here, they explore hair as a material with affective potential and as a signifier of identity.

Hair can be a treasured and celebrated expression of personal identity. Grooming or presenting hair (shaving, styling, colouring, braiding, covering, curling, straightening, weaving, etc.) is a performative element in social enterprise and a visible, powerful marker of identity and belonging to one’s community.

But, hair as beauty practice can also be an instrument of social control. Eurocentric and sexist aesthetic beauty norms fuel an in industry that sees many people enduring painful, expensive, dangerous procedures to attain so-called ‘good hair’.

In Hair: Textures of Belonging, we explore hair as a material artefact but also a narrative tool to explore stories of belonging, exclusion and collective identity.

Supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

Leading Light: At the outer limits of photography

Leading Light:
At the outer limits of photography

27 sep – 12 nov
Mon – Fri: 10am – 5pm

Leading Light brings together recent works by international artists and photographers. The exhibition presents experimental ways of image-making and examines the exploitation and manipulation of the photographic process.

Artists:

David Claerbout
Elias Heuninck
Junko Theresa Mikuriya
Chloe Sells
Eva Stenram
Maarten Vanvolsem
Corinne Vionnet

Curator: Dr Eleen M Deprez

Supported by: Creative Campus and the School of Arts

 

 

Student Review: George Eksts: Casual Cursive

George Eksts: Casual Cursive

12 August 2015 – 3 October 2015 (Admission free)

Sidney Cooper Gallery, Canterbury

George Eksts (b.1978) is a British artist who lives and works in London. He works across a range of media from: drawing, printmaking, photography, installation, video, painting and sculpture exploring ideas and connections between progress, completion and the temporary passing of time.[1]

Having completed a BA in Photography at Falmouth College of Art, Eksts went on to the Royal College of Art, London, to study an MA in Printmaking. When he is not busy creating new artworks, Eksts works for the V & A, London as a photographer documenting the archives.[2]

Influences from Francis Alys (b. 1959, Belgium) can be seen in Eksts’ preoccupation with the flâneur’s element of chance from observing society, and the cyclical repetition in his video installations. Similarly, the wit in Eksts’ video loops can be seen to have inspirations from Marcel Broodthaers’ (1924-1976, Belgian poet and film maker) humorous approach to creating art works, as in Falsework, 2012 which documents scaffolders at work. Like Mike Kelley (1954-2012, American artist), Eksts is also drawn to working with found objects such as road signs he discovered taped up in the City of London for Don’t Stop 1 & 2, 2012 and the flagpoles he acquired from outside a town hall in Manchester in Three State Solution, 2012.

Reflecting on his work Eksts explains: ‘I’ve always been fascinated by placeholders, variables, lacunae, support structures, anything that is not an end in itself but suggests interchangeable and unknown possibilities. The grey silk of Three State Solution seems to absorb colour and light from its surroundings.’[3]

Casual Cursive is a selection of pre-existing works such as Three State Solution, 2012 and the 5 channel video installation, Roman Holiday, 2012. Sitting comfortably alongside these earlier works are four new works such as mixed media diptych, Wandering by Night, 2015 and the 3 channel video installation, Well, 2015, commissioned for exhibition during a month’s studio residency. Eksts’ new works link to previous works through their structures even though they look quite different on the surface. For example, the text paintings seen in Wandering by Night, 2015 are of palindromes which read the same forwards and backwards, like some of the videos which loop by going forwards and backwards in time, back to the beginning point.

Speaking about his studio residency Eksts reveals his intentions, ‘I wanted to make temporary work (mostly directly on the wall) and document the process through photography, which would then hopefully feed into other forms, like animation. I tried to work quite quickly and not be too precious about the results. By photographing every stage, I’m able to make decisions later through an editing process.’[4]

To make the wall drawings, Eksts connected a projector to a drawing tablet. He then drew/wrote while looking at the wall where it was being projected, in order to get an idea of how the architecture of the studio interacted with the drawing. The drawing part is very gestural with a quick and loose hand movement, to produce a dynamic and unpredictable line. He repeated this process over and over again, deleting it until he was happy with the form. Then, he carefully traced a pencil line around the projection, turned off the projector and painted inside the outline. This process was utilised for the panel drawing, Wandering by Night, 2015.[5]

The title refers to cursive handwriting where not all of the letters are joined up. Eksts sees his practice as a language, where each of the individual pieces is like a letter which can be joined together in varying sequences to produce meaning. In this sense, Casual Cursive is about making those connections between the pieces of work, and sometimes breaking the connections too. In many ways, it’s the connections and sequences that are as important as the individual works themselves.

Upon entering the gallery, these connections and breaks can best be seen in Wandering by Night, 2015. This mixed media piece was created through experimentation by creating a large cursive palindrome in paint. This was then transferred onto wooden sections that were broken up and moved around to create the blue-edged diptych. On closer inspection, light pencil lines can be seen breaking the cursive flow of the paint. This is followed by one of his previous works, ink jet prints, Don’t Stop, 2012 (inkjet prints). The contrast with Duchampian found objects (road signs) followed by newly produced mixed media is a good balance.

A hexagonal wooden structure situated in the centre of the gallery screens five video loops of Roman Holiday, 2012. Here, viewers can stand and become mesmerized by the repetitive looping present in each non-narrative video whilst searching for the similar time structures within each one.

Sidney Cooper Gallery’s curator, Hazel Stone, describes Eksts’ work: ‘There is a wonderful sense of play in George’s work. The fluidity and fabric of the everyday re-presented, edited, looped or reversed into a new state of being. The gallery has been delighted to host George as artist in residence and to be able to showcase new works produced during the residency to the public. The mix of existing and new works gives the viewer insight into the interplay between concept and fabrication and the constant drive to create works which side step preconceived endpoints whilst maintaining the ongoing possibility for revision, refabrication and endless outputs.’[6]

This show sheds light on the creative thought processes that Eksts has followed to produce the variety of artworks on display. Seemingly simplistic, yet deeply thought-provoking his work will provoke visitors to search for how these works are linked, possibly deciding to look for different perspectives and connections of the everyday.

Frances Chiverton, Curating MA Student

 

 

[1] www.tintypegallery.com/artists/george-eksts – accessed 11 August 2015

[2] 1st interview with artist George Eksts 15 July 2015.

[3] Correspondence with Sarah Grant for Ornament prints and Contemporary Art, V & A blog, London 12 March 2012

[4] 2nd interview with artist George Eksts, 12 August 2015

[5] 2nd interview with artist George Eksts, 12 August 2015

[6] Interview with Sidney Cooper Gallery curator, Hazel Stone, 11 August 2015