MA Illustration: Authorial Practice – Exhibition Next Week!

We are excited to announce an exhibition taking place next week as part of the Cornwall Contemporary Poetry Festival.  Seeing Voices is an exhibition of illustration and poetry, celebrating recent work by students, alumni and staff of Falmouth University’s MA Illustration: Authorial Practice course.

The exhibition will open Tuesday 20 November – Saturday 24 November in the Upper Gallery of The Poly, Falmouth

All welcome to the private view which is taking place between 5.30pm – 7.30pm on Thursday 22 November, followed by Poetry Slam from 8.00pm.

The Venice Fellowships – Falmouth Partnership with the British Council

Venice Art Biennale 2017, Alicja Kwade – photo: Richard Christensen

Falmouth School of Art at Falmouth University is delighted for the third year to be a partner in the British Council’s Venice Fellowships. The programme is a unique opportunity for students, graduates and researchers to spend a month in Venice during the world’s most important art and architecture biennales. Working with others on invigilation and developing their own study and research, graduates receive an excellent grounding in engaging a professional, public and international audience with the British Pavilion, and develop teamwork, leadership and networking skills.

We will shortly be inviting our final year BA(Hons) Fine Art and BA(Hons) Drawing students to apply for a funded month-long Fellowship at the 2019 Art Biennale. Meanwhile, 2018 BA(Hons) Drawing graduate Hannah Berrisford has recently arrived at the Architecture Biennale for her month-long Fellowship, alongside others from disciplines including fine art, architecture, design, curation and anthropology. We look forward to hearing more about Hannah’s experience on her return, and asked her about applying and preparing for this opportunity…

“The Venice Fellowship is an opportunity to live in Venice for a month, working alongside the British Council, invigilating at “la biennale de venezia” and spending free time exploring the city, developing your practice within your own personal project.

The application asked questions about why you felt you were suitable for the event, and how your personal experiences would aid you in your time out there. I was also asked what sort of work I wanted to produce in my own time, following their theme of “freespace”. I was a student of the Drawing degree, and had chosen watercolour as a medium to specialise in. I wanted to continue developing my skills as a painter in Venice, so I interpreted freespace as an investigation of the relationships between the buildings of Venice and light, and how that would translate in my watercolour paintings.  

Architecture Biennale 2018, British Pavilion, (c) British Council

Two of us on the Drawing degree were selected for an interview – there was no competitive atmosphere, only genuine “good luck”s. Because I am living in the South West of England, and the interviews were being hosted in London, the British Council were excellent and offered me a Skype interview. I had done quite a bit of research about past Biennales just in case they wanted to test if I had done any background research, but they themselves explained a brief history of the biennale, which was nice. It felt like they were wanting me to succeed in the interview and were very open. I responded to all their questions with similar answers to what I had included in my first application. I also mentioned how the themes I wanted to explore in Venice tied into my dissertation topic.

A mandatory induction involved two days in London, meeting other fellows and the groups we would be travelling with. I was placed in the final group to go to Venice – October 24th to November 26th. There are 10 of us in this group, and a significant age range and a diversity of artistic backgrounds. Even though we were all from an academic institute, everyone seemed to be studying a different branch of art varying from architecture to interpretive dance.

The weekend was centred around seminars that discussed the exhibition we would be invigilating. We were offered advice about finding accommodation and about interacting with the public. The groups got into teams and we met one another properly; it was during this time that people began sparking ideas about flat sharing/renting, as well as discussing individual research projects and when it might be appropriate to help one another. Another teammate and I have decided to flat share whilst we’re in Venice, staying close to another two teammates also flat sharing. This way, friendships will get a chance to grow, and as we’re all artists, we will have opportunities to bounce ideas off one another, helping our own projects develop.  

Even though I’m entering a biennale centred on Architecture, drawing and painting buildings is actually one of my weakest skills. I threw myself in at the deep end, to force myself to address this problem. I didn’t want to arrive in Venice and begin the project with zero architectural experience so, over the last month, I have been engaged with the “Inktober” challenge. To merge this challenge and my own personal project, I decided to relate each day’s title to an architectural theme. Forcing myself to create works like this every day has helped me feel a little more prepared for the work I’ll be creating during my time in Venice”.

2017 Fine Art graduate Abbie Hunt wrote a piece for us about her experience spending a month as a Fellow at the 2017 Art Biennale.

Associate Lecturer Virginia Verran: Showing in London

Virginia Verran, Associate Lecturer on BA(Hons) Fine Art is showing two large paintings in Rules of Freedom, curated by Rosalind Davis, at Collyer Bristow gallery in Holborn, until 19 February 2019.

Virginia Verran’s paintings suggest other-worldly battlefields and virtual warzones that show the traces of action and process, of a personal world of invented motifs and symbols. Multiple perspectives, aerial scanning and surveillance, lines and motifs track back and forth between nodes. These paintings and drawings utilise signs and symbols that work at a percussive, graphic level, sitting on the surface of ungrounded spaces, adding celebratory, playful and dark undertones. Drawing has played an important role in this layering of information, bringing across to the paintings an intuitive language. Rhythm and gentle light, exuberance and complexity of information are necessary components, giving way, to darker elements of disruption. Impermanence is alluded to via ‘encampments’, equally working as lumps of colour, existing alongside more permanent structures. Striped ‘ladders’ pass through like conveyor belts and metaphorical ‘toy’ bombs are plugged in at the edges. All represent threats to general security and stability. Fluidity and control are Verran’s primary focus.

 

Virginia Verran was born in Falmouth and has taught Fine Art since 1990. She is an Associate Lecturer on Falmouth’s BA(Hons) Fine Art course, and also teaches at Chelsea College of Art and Design.

In 2010 she won the Jerwood Drawing Prize and this year her entry in the 2018 John Moores Painting Prize is titled ‘Black Star’; a large piece measuring 6ft x 5ft6ins.

She lives in London and works in her studio in Bethnal Green.

Visiting Professor Hew Locke exhibiting in New York and returning to Falmouth

Ahead of his forthcoming lecture at Falmouth, multimedia artist Hew Locke, has a solo exhibition opening at the PPOW Gallery,  New York, 11 October to 10 November. Patriots is the gallery’s first exhibition with Hew; they also showed works by him at their stand at Frieze London this month.

Serpent of the Nile, C-type photo 30” x 40”, from the series How Do You Want Me?

Detail of Golden Horde 2, mixed media sculpture, 273cm high

An alumnus of Fine Art at Falmouth, Hew returns to Falmouth School of Art on 14 November for the final visit of his Visiting Professor tenure. He will deliver his lecture titled ‘Identity and Autobiography’ and will also work with BA(Hons) Fine Art students.

Registration for Hew’s lecture is free, but required: Register here.

Locke’s investigation of the display of power includes areas such as royal and swagger portraiture, coats-of-arms, public statuary, trophies, financial documents, weaponry and costume. Maritime imagery and symbolism has been a constant in his work, along with reflections on his upbringing in Guyana.

Born in Edinburgh, Locke spent his formative years in Georgetown, Guyana, before returning to the UK to study. He received his BA(Hons) Fine Art in 1988 from Falmouth, then an MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art, London in 1994.

Locke has work in the collections including Tate, the British Museum, the V&A, Brooklyn Museum and the Perez Art Museum Miami. He has had solo shows in public galleries in the UK and the USA, and has taken part in Biennials in Hangzhou, China; Kochi, India; Prospect3, Miami; Guangzhou, China; Valencia, Spain and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Drawing staff and students present at Symposium

Artist, drawing researcher and lecturer in BA(Hons) Drawing Dr Joe Graham, and some of his Falmouth School of Art students and alumni,  presented papers and workshops at The Embodied Experience of Drawing event at The Drawing Symposium, Plymouth.

The event responded to the increasing proportion of artists in the South West working in performative drawing practice. It gathered contributors, to acknowledge and interrogate this movement and to discuss ideas around the future of drawing research, philosophy and practice.

Image: Aleksandr Chotilovskij

Image: Aleksandr Chotilovskij

Image: Aleksandr Chotilovskij

Image: Aleksandr Chotilovskij

Image: Aleksandr Chotilovskij

Image: Aleksandr Chotilovskij

Dr Joe Graham discussed his paper The Utility of Drawing: Drawn and Withdrawn.  “This paper sketches a nascent ontology of drawing, one that uses Heidegger to explore the idea that drawing is a fundamentally useful type of thing for those who draw. Within this understanding however, the utility of drawing appears withdrawn, so to speak. It requires being ‘drawn out’ (freed) when drawings are viewed for some purpose – as pictures, diagrams, maps, plans or other forms intended for use.”

Image: Aleksandr Chotilovskij

Image: Aleksandr Chotilovskij

Image: Aleksandr Chotilovskij

Kayleigh Jayne Harris, a recent graduate from BA(Hons) Drawing at Falmouth University, primarily focused on the identity of line within contemporary drawing practices. Her paper  Drawing line through performance: does the drawing live as an immaterial trace, a material document, or both, through the experience of line? explored whether performative acts be identified as a form of drawing, through the acknowledgement and experience of the lines generated during and by gesture.

Bhuvaneshvari Pinto a current student of BA(Hons) Drawing and Ralph Nel (Alumni) presented a joint workshop Drawing as a Tool in Cultivating Awareness – A Workshop in Observational Drawing.  The workshop explored the idea that observational drawing nurtures mental stillness and sharpens our awareness of ourselves and our surroundings.

Video with kind permission of Stuart Bewsey

Drawing and Fine Art alumni present new work

Alumni Theo Crutchley-Mack and Sam Wood have announced a joint exhibition showing new work based in and around Falmouth town.

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In recent months, both artists have been working on small en plein air paintings, used to develop more sustained works, all of which will be exhibited at The Poly, Falmouth, from Tuesday 24 July (including private view on 24th 6-9pm).

Theo graduated from BA(Hons) Drawing, and Sam from BA(Hons) Fine Art, in 2015. Both have since pursued their art full time, with exhibition, prize and residency success.

Theo is currently based in West Wales; he has this year undertaken a 6 week period as Artist in Residence at the abandoned whale station in Grytviken, for the South Georgia Heritage Trust. Sam now lives and exhibits in Newcastle, so it’s great to be able to see work from both artists in Falmouth once again.

• https://samwoodart.format.com/ 
• https://www.crutchley-mack.com/
• www.facebook.com/crutchleymack
• instagram @crutchleymack
• instagram @likessam

Fine Art Senior Lecturer Mercedes Kemp on 100:UnEarth by WildWorks

BA(Hons) Fine Art Senior Lecturer, Mercedes Kemp, is also Community and Research Director of international site-specific theatre company WildWorks. Here she talks about the company’s current production, at the Lost Gardens of Heligan – outdoor promenade performance 100:UnEarth – for which she is Lead Artist, Writer and Researcher…The acclaimed production is on until 22 July 2018, tickets from Hall For Cornwall…

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‘100:UnEarth tells the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. A tragic love story. Orpheus returns to his beloved wife Eurydice. On the day they are reunited she is killed in a tragic accident. Orpheus cannot accept her death and embarks on an audacious quest to pluck her out of the Underworld. Our telling of the story is set in the vast grounds of the Lost Gardens of Heligan, and is told in a grand scale.

In 100:UnEarth, WildWorks have set the myth against the background of the First World War and the catastrophic losses it produced. The war has ended. The men are coming home. Many are damaged, broken. They return to the families they left behind. Their women have learned to survive alone, to be self-reliant, work the land, feed themselves and their children. Nothing will ever be the same…

As we journey through the Underworld we encounter the souls of those who lost their lives in the Great War, but also of those who died in more recent conflicts. Hades, the great Lord of Death continues to reap his harvest.

The Lost Gardens of Heligan give us the perfect metaphor. A place where growth and decay co-exist. A place full of promise. A place that teaches us a valuable lesson. Death is inevitable. Gardens die out in the winter, but they return back to life in the spring. And love goes on, endlessly regenerating itself.

This multi-disciplinary promenade production uses every art form: stage design, installation, performance, music, soundscape, video projection. And its connections to Falmouth University are strong: students from AMATA have done an amazing job, alongside 200 community volunteers and a team of sixty professionals. Production Designer Myrddin Wannell and Community Projects and Underworld Designer Ellie Williams are both BA(Hons) Fine Art alumni and were my students twelve years ago. Undergraduates and graduates from the School of Film and Television have been capturing our every move. Associate Lecturer in Dance and Choreography, Emily Dobson, has given performers all their moves.

I am immensely proud to have led this project to completion. Catch it if you can. Until July 22^nd at the Lost Gardens of Heligan‘.

100: UnEarth is co-commissioned by 14-18 NOW and The Lost Gardens of Heligan

“Last night, some magic in the mist. 100: UnEarth a beautiful immersive experience, A love story inspired by Orpheus and Eurydice. See this if you can.” Falmouth University Chancellor Dawn French on Twitter

Circle Triangle Square presents ‘Remades and Readymades’

Bronwen Anwyl, Daniel Bethell and Edward May graduated from BA(Hons) Fine Art at Falmouth in 2017. Recent work by the three artists is being shown in Peckham, London, this July.

Remades and Readymades is presented by Circle Triangle Square, an art platform set up by Edward May following his degree. The exhibition explores the aesthetic and theoretical themes surrounding man-made objects and the natural environment (and the crossover between them), in the context of the art gallery.  

BA(Hons) Illustration Collaborative Project in Bristol

BA(Hons) Illustration Senior Lecturers Linda Scott and Natalie Hayes recently accompanied a group of second and third year students to Bristol, for a week-long trip focused on studio visits, professional practice talks and workshops, as well as an exhibition of work produced by them during their visit in response to a brief.

Dave Bain talking about his projects

Falmouth Alumni Dave Bain, who graduated in 2006, as established himself in Bristol as a lynchpin of the thriving Illustration scene. As well as being a successful Illustrator, Dave is responsible for setting up illustration studios in Hamilton House (in the Stokes Croft area of the city) and the Illustration Collective, ‘Drawn In Bristol‘.

A good number of Falmouth Illustration alumni have relocated to Bristol, as an alternative to London; many have studio space in Hamilton House, which Dave modeled on the Falmouth course’s studio set up. Our students were given a tour of Hamilton House, and also The Island, a converted police station on Nelson Street.

At Hamilton House, Illustrators Lara Hawthorne, Paula Bowles, Freya Hartas and others talked informally about their experiences as Illustrators since graduating; at The Island, collective Sad Ghost Club talked about collaboration, the merchandise they produce and what brought them together as a group.

Coordinating the visit for us, Dave Bain booked The Square Club as a meeting space for us, and as venue for speakers Lara Hawthorne, Joe Roberts and Laurie Stansfield, who are working together and have developed a mentoring scheme suitable for graduates who are unable to work in studio spaces and who might otherwise be subject to isolation. Joe and Laurie meet monthly to support one another with projects and business, holding one another accountable for developing projects and setting schedules. Dave talked about his experience setting up the studios and working collaboratively, and spoke about his role as a ‘connector’ of people, bringing them together to develop public realm projects which directly benefit the local community.

Before their trip, students had been given a brief, focusing on themes of Regeneration and Collaboration. The culmination of their research was the formulation of visual outputs for exhibition in the Space Gallery, in the Old Market area of Bristol. Student exhibits ranged from 3D objects to customised shirts, a video and a 3D mobile.

Limbic Cinema workshop

A private view of the exhibition followed a final day of workshops, from Tom Newell of Limbic Cinema. Tom digitised drawings from students’ sketchbooks and mapped and projected these onto plinths and walls; he taught students how to do the same, with the outcome being several visual collages projected onto 2D and 3D spaces.

We commend our students for their high level of engagement throughout this intensive professional practice study visit, and for their participation even when treacherous weather threatened to impact heavily their activities.

 

Andrew Mania, BA(Hons) Fine Art Alumni – Exhibition at Spike Island starts 05 May 2018

Andrew Mania, who studied BA(Hons) Fine Art here at Falmouth between 1994 and 1997 has an exhibition Snapshot of a Collection at Spike Island, opening on 05 May until 08 July 2018.

Andrew Mania (2018) Collage featuring Carl Van Vechten 1940s portraits of Marlon Brando and Sidney Lumet

“Andrew Mania explores identity, sexuality and nostalgia through portraiture drawing.

His works have been described with the Portuguese term saudade: a word with no English equivalent, meaning a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone beloved.

Mania develops these drawings within assemblages set on decorative backgrounds such as hanging printed fabrics. A voracious collector, he here creates a dialogue between a series of early vintage photographs selected for their aesthetic or mystery, and his own drawings that capture a state of mischief and yearning” (Spike Island).

MA Illustration: Authorial practice graduates win Laydeez do Comics Graphic Novel Prizes

The Laydeez do Comics Prize exists to provide “recognition and celebration of the wealth of comics work currently being produced by female-identifying people based in the UK”.

 

Emma Burleigh, a recent graduate of MA Illustration: Authorial Practice has won the first £2K Laydeez do Comics; Women’s Prize for Unpublished Graphic Novels in Progress for her graphic novel My Other Mother, My Other Self .

Emma is an artist and art teacher who is passionate about the vibrant, glowing and mercurial qualities of water-colour and mixed media. ” I’m interested in everyday life, the inner life and the layers of life in between.”  In 2015, she completed an MA in ‘Authorial Illustration’ at Falmouth University, with Distinction and My Other Mother, My Other Self is a development of her MA graphic novel, Birth Mother.

Birth Mother was an exploration in words and painting about her journey … Emma says ” It’s about tracing my birth mother who I traced about ten years ago, and it’s really just the story of how I found her and how our relationship unfolded. It actually becomes more about my relationship with myself.”

Emma was thrilled to be shortlisted for the prize as she has been working on her book for many years.

 

Rebecca Jones, a 2012 graduate also from MA Illustration: Authorial Practice, came fourth.

She said about her entry into the competition… “I’ve been making comics properly for about five years – cat zines that are a little bit fantastical and a bit silly. I’ve been trying to make something new by moving into social issues and doing something that’s a bit more personal. It’s called Boomerang and it’s about an unemployed psychology graduate who’s moved back home after graduation and it’s an exploration of issues around the 2008 recession and the following economic crash. It’s about a rite of passage of a few months of not knowing what to do and what it means to be an adult.”

Fine Art Alumni showing at Belgrave, St Ives. Exhibition runs 2 to 23 April.

Recent Fine Art Alumni Sarah Woods and Jack Paffett are showing their work at the Belgrave St Ives from 2 to 23 April 2018. The exhibition is entitled Artscape: New Contemporary Painters and Sarah and Jack will be exhibiting alongside Jack Watson.

Sarah Woods: FSA Alumni BA(Hons) Fine Art

Jack Paffett: FSA Alumni BA Fine Art

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The New Contemporary Painters will be shown in conjunction with the key St Ives Modernist W.Barns-Graham: A Unique Collection of Works on Paper.  This is an exciting exhibition of previously unseen wave/line works by the artist, that have been held in a private collection since the 1970’s.

W. Barns-Graham

Congratulations Tacita Dean

Congratulations Tacita Dean!

This spring artist Tacita Dean, one of our most celebrated alumna who studied BA(Hons) Fine Art here between 1985 and 1988, has been given the unprecedented accolade of three major museum exhibitions running concurrently in London. Over the last 30 years in different ways – though primarily through the medium of analogue film – she has imaginatively explored and reinvented the genres of Still life Portraiture and Landscape. These aspects of  her work are now the focus of dedicated solo exhibitions at three of London’s most prestigious venues, the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery and the Royal Academy of Arts, running from March to August 2018. Don’t miss it!

For information and a review see: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/mar/18/tacita-dean-portrait-still-life-national-portrait-gallery-review

We are delighted that there’s also an opportunity to see her work in Cornwall this May as her 2015 film Event for a Stage will be presented for four days at Falmouth University’s performing arts centre, AMATA. Originally commissioned as a live performance over four consecutive nights for the 2014 Sydney Biennial, it became her first foray into theatre and her first experience of working with an actor. This screening is part of the ambitious international art project Groundwork, organised by CAST (the Cornubian Arts and Science Trust, based not far from Falmouth in Helston). Groundwork – featuring many other internationally celebrated artists, such as Steve McQueen, Janet Cardiff and Francis Alys – launches over the May Bank holiday and runs to September in venues across Cornwall For information see: http://c-a-s-t.org.uk/projects

Tacita Dean has been the recipient of various awards including the Kurt Schwitters Prize in and the Hugo Boss Prize and a nominee of the Turner Prize. Other recent exhibitions include a major solo presentation at Museo Tamayo in Mexico City in 2018; JG at Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, Utah, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and Arcadia University Art Gallery, Pennsylvania; Tacita Dean: The Measure of Things, Instituto Moreira Salles, Rio de Janeiro; Tacita Dean, De Mar en Mar, Botin Foundation, Santander, Spain; and Tacita Dean: The Studio of Giorgio Morandi, Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna.

Catching up with Kate Holford, Falmouth Fine Art alumna

Kate Holford is an artist based in South East London.  Kate graduated from BA(Hons) Fine Art at Falmouth in 2013 and has since been involved in numerous curatorial projects, including group shows, Now Falmouth (2013) Shoreditch, and Doppelgangers (2015) at The Strand Gallery.  Kate’s personal practice, having strong foundations in Drawing, has included video installation, sculpture and writing, and most recently the incorporation of oil painting.  Conceptual drives have included the critical approach to culturally inherited narratives, the translation of mediated information, and embodiments of power.  Kate has been working as a manager at Stillpoint Spaces London since 2017 and here Kate tells us about her upcoming exhibition and life since graduation:

Cadences/An Affray, or , “The mobs don’t like their gods to be human”, Falmouth Fine Art Degree Show, 2013

On 15^th April, I will be exhibiting In the Stories There is an Abundance at Stillpoint Spaces London in Clerkenwell, which will include pop-up installations to mark the opening of a solo exhibition. A new body of work combining drawing, painting, writing, and sculpture, this exhibition will conjure themes of homemaking, reimagined stories of religiosity, the suggestion of journeys taken through ‘carceral’ landscapes, and the ultimate search for ‘Home’. In the Stories… further explores a personal relationship with universal narratives of pilgrimage, the myth of the ‘Promised Land’, and the archetype of the Western frontier, ideas which first became clear preoccupations for me when creating my Fine Art degree show at Falmouth School of Art in 2013.

Recent paintings, soon to be exhibited as part of In the Stories…

Since graduating I have put on shows a few times, always as both artist and curator, and in many cases continuing to work on projects with fellow Falmouth alumni. As is natural in group endeavours, for each show we developed specific themes or currents between our work to pull the exhibitions together. For one, a large 45-artist strong show in Shoreditch called Now Falmouth, we operated on the premise that our collective would be giving London a snapshot of newly graduated artists from outside the capital – a “showcase”, not unlike the annual selected shows ran by the art school, but on a much larger scale. Another exhibition, co-curated with fellow alumni Julia White, focused on the output of artists living double lives in the city: the life of the “artist” and the life of the “young professional”. By starting with this binary outlook, we attempted to build a show that in fact challenged the assumed limitations of that paradox. I contributed to both of these shows by building installations as well as playing a central role in their organization. This upcoming exhibition In the Stories… then, is the first time I will be showing work as a solo artist (although I haven’t quite shrugged off the responsibilities of curating the show), and the first time I will be occupying a considerably-sized – if unconventional – exhibition space on my own.

Stillpoint Spaces – recent exhibition opening (Surasti Puri’s Ordinary Joys)

 

I started working as the Manager for Stillpoint Spaces London almost exactly a year ago, having left my previous job as a Bookshop Manager for Waterstones. I had, in the recess between employment, rediscovered a neglected arts practice, and for the first time took up oil paints as a way back into making work. I walked into Stillpoint then, this time last year, as an artist.

Stillpoint Spaces was created with the intention of exploring psychology in all aspects of culture, where we are building a community of psychotherapists, practitioners – artists – psychologists – activists – anyone interested in applying psychology to the everyday (and if art isn’t that, what is it?!), through events, coworking, and an onsite community of psychotherapists. Since I became involved with them I have been developing the inclusion of artists and the creative practices in that discourse; it has since become a key element in the way we develop our events programme. To play such a part in that process by having my own work included is a privilege.

 

It is also exciting that we will be marking this with a talk and reading from poet and professor Andrea Brady of Queen Mary University, titled Close Up is Far Away. Andrea will read from her poem The Blue Split Compartments, an extended work which incorporates found text from military manuals and the chatroom banter of drone pilots, along with myth, personal history, and writings on sculpture and psychoanalysis. She will also speak about the proliferation of artworks which have been inspired by drone surveillance.

 

Part of the exhibited installation Vanitas at The Strand Gallery, London 2015

If anyone would like to find out more about the exhibition on 15^th April, the accompanying event, or the exhibition space itself, they can visit the website page here: http://www.stillpoint-lab-london.com/event/openhouse/ and follow the links. Mostly though, I am always looking to make contact with artists who are interested in psychology – be it political, anthropological, or personal – and who think their work would be appropriate for Stillpoint’s programme. Do get in touch via email at kate@stillpointspaces.com if you want to pitch a project or start a conversation!

Simulacra/An Escape, or, “Leaving it all, like something dropped in the corner by the wind”, ‘Now Falmouth’ group show, Shoreditch Town Hall, 2013

Further Links:

https://blog.stillpointspaces.com/2017/12/kate-holford/

http://www.kateholford.com

http://instagram.com/kateholford

BA(Hons) Fine Art Second Year Exhibition

The Poly, Falmouth, is host again this year to the second year exhibition by BA(Hons) Fine Art students. The student curatorial committee worked with Falmouth alumni Cat Bagg and Rosie Thomson-Glover of Field Notes, to set up the show and make any necessary changes to the curation.

The student curatorial committee share their experience of putting up the first half of the show, as they prepare for the launch of the second half this evening:

‘Students found the Poly enormously supportive in allowing us to use space and their equipment; for example, allowing one of our artists to use the grand piano in the upper space, and giving us a library room we hadn’t seen before, adding a wonderful new dimension for us to work with in order to take advantage of the space’s antiquated atmosphere and natural light.

Transporting work from the university in the pouring rain didn’t particularly hinder the set-up, and by lunch time the following day the show was basically completed and preparations for the Private view began. By 5:30 we’d already had 100 people through the door, and there was a real buzz to the evening, with an estimated 250-300 who came along. The wine and nibbles were gone very quickly, but the Poly allowed us to work alongside them and use their bar to serve extra drinks.

We’re now preparing to do it all again for the second show, which will contain more work with sculpture and audio-visual content, so we’re excited to see how we can shape the show differently in order to accommodate this’.

 

The second half of the exhibition is open to the public 10-5 on Wednesday 14 and Thursday 15 March, and 10-1pm on Friday 16th, at The Poly, Church Street, Falmouth.

Last chance to see…at Imagine Falmouth

Beth Garnett, alumna of MA Illustration: Authorial Practice, is currently showing a collage – From the Headland at Mawnan I – as part of Falmouth Art Gallery’s Imagine Falmouth exhibition until this Saturday. The piece was produced during Beth’s participation in Falmouth School of Art’s Observational Drawing Intensive last July.

Beth Garnett, From The Headland At Mawnan I, 2017, Collage

After the success of Falmouth Art Gallery’s inaugural submissions show last year, ‘Imagine Falmouth’ has grown in scale, and is now a bi-annual exhibition and arts prize. The gallery invite emerging and established artists from across the county to submit their work. With no theme and no restriction on medium, the exhibition has reflected the very best of Cornish art today. The exhibition, which opened in November, closes on Saturday 20 January.

Falmouth School of Art Intensives offer a selection of 5-day courses for artists and art educators, all taking place in the studios and grounds of Falmouth Campus, and the surrounding area. Of her experience at last summer’s Intensive, Beth says, ‘The course was a really great timeout from real life to get back to drawing again, in beautiful surroundings. The tutors were supportive and offered really practical advice. The group size wasn’t too big and we had a lot of fun. I was able to find new directions for my work and new ideas for my process which has really refreshed my practice. I’m am sure will continue to impact on my drawing work for a long time to come’.

for 2018, Falmouth School of Art will run three Intensives; in Drawing, Abstract Painting and The Figure. Course descriptors will soon be available online, at www.falmouth.ac.uk/fsaintensives, where you can also find images from previous intensives, terms and conditions and a short application form.

Reflections on a Venice Research-Steward Fellowship…

Abbie Hunt, graduate of BA(Hons) Fine Art and recipient of a 2017 Venice Fellowship, funded by the British Council and Falmouth School of Art, reflects on her experience of one month living in Venice as part of the British Council’s Research Stewardship Programme at the 57th Biennale Arte…

 

‘I don’t think I knew what to expect until my first day on the job, but that was the exciting part. Stewarding is hard work; I never anticipated the endurance of standing in a corner of a room, observing the visitors, observing the work. It’s mentally draining to be with your thoughts for so long. I’m the kind of person who doesn’t stop, so for my job role to suddenly be so stationary was a shock.

Furthermore, I never realised how little the ideas surrounding art fell away when you become a Steward. You spend such an unnatural amount time with a piece of work that you have phrases of being grossly interested and unexpectedly numb towards it. I spent lull periods scribbling personal observations down, but when it came to discussing the artwork with a visitor, it was as if I was reciting a script. People wanted a 3-minute summary of the work before they moved onto the next pavilion, there was no time for contemplation and it was strange to be so detached.

 

Entwining my research project with my stewarding duties made my experience so insightful. I focused on observing visitors’ reactions and opinions surrounding Phyllida Barlow’s Folly. I was already well versed in Barlow’s career, therefore the experience contributed to my work as a form of practical research.

What I gained from the Venice Fellowship was an intense period of learning about myself. I have never traveled alone before and it completely changed my perspective on how I acted. I didn’t feel like a tourist but neither a local, and it was strange limbo I endured whilst discovering things about me as a person that I have never noticed before. It was an emotional roller-coaster, but I think I’ve gained a greater understanding of who I am.

Overall, I think I gained confidence and independence. Talking to strangers on a daily basis and having the knowledge to pass on to others was a good feeling because I’ve never had the opportunity to do so before. Giving people an insight or starting point to lead them through the maze of art within the Biennale was satisfying. I’d see their face light up with understanding and know I’d made a difference to their experience.

Similarly, confidence fed into my research project. It was an opportunity to collate research and write about my findings without the baring of education. Research is a guilty pleasure and it was strange to realise I still had the motivation to learn without the bounds of getting a grade at the end of it.

The biennale has a hub of social activity on throughout the time it is open; other countries create events so stewards can mingle, and are very appreciative when you make the effort to join in. Reflecting on the experience would be incomplete without mentioning my extended family of my October Fellows. Our intense company definitely kept us all going and I honestly wouldn’t have been able to get through my experience without them. We’ve already met in London since being home before Christmas. Our unexpected bond of being in the same bizarre situation has gave us all such a strong friendship.

Of course the art was memorable; I’ve never been so immersed in an abundance of artwork to observe and it definitely made me speechless on many occasions. My favourite was the Intuition Exhibition at the Palazzo Fortuny. I also felt we were the luckiest of months out of the Fellowship scheme as I actually got to meet Phyllida Barlow herself! It was a huge moment for me. Just days before we were set to go back to reality, Barlow visited the Biennale with her family and hadn’t seen her own work since the opening in May. I fangirled hard and was pretty star struck. You read so much about an artist, they inspire your practice and you empathise with their work…I thought spending time with her sculptures was gratification enough but seeing her next to them in the flesh was the cherry on the top. It’s a moment I’ll never forget and just seemed like the perfect present, a personal nod to keep going after three years of my degree.

From my experience as a steward, I’ve realised that the public face of the artwork is not who I want to be; but the gallery still remains my focus. I am ideally looking towards a technical position within a gallery, since the install and de-install of Phyllida Barlow’s work was a continuous consideration. Being hands-on and retaining that essence of practice is my ideal route.’

Keiken Collective – a productive finish to 2017…

Keiken at FOMO

Keiken, a collective of artists comprised of alumni from Falmouth School of Art, co-founded by Tanya Cruz, Hana Omori and Isabel Ramos, have enjoyed success since graduation and regularly provide opportunities for recent graduates and current students to collaborate with them. Autumn and winter 2017 saw Keiken engaged in projects around the UK…  

Keiken performance and installation at Clinic //2

Keiken performance and installation at Clinic //2

Keiken’s performance and installation piece, Silicone_Animism | The Birth of Mother Digital, was presented at Clinic //2 at the Oxo Tower, London, as part of a group show for the London Design Festival. The piece included the collective’s virtual reality film @MotherDigital (Tanya Cruz, Hana Omori, Jess Pemberton, Isabel Ramos, video design by Keiken’s George Stone and sound by Oak Matthias), alongside durational performance accompanied by live sound; a truly visceral atmosphere was created by 700ok (current Falmouth School of Art students Jasper Golding, Auguste Oldham and Zac Pomphrey) using generative code, in conjunction with sound artist Nati Cerutti.

Performers occupied the installation wearing costumes designed by recent graduate, Nine Derricott. Clad in silicone pregnancy bellies and PVC and reflective 3M garments, performers, in reference to the revolution of AI, explored innate feelings of connection usually associated with mother and child, in a world where the human is intertwined with the digital. Current BA(Hons) Fine Art student Alberta Shearing wrote the score and with another student Haruka Fukao performed extraordinarily alongside other performers, Nine Derricott, Kat Cashman, Sian Fan, Monty Fitzgerald, Si Garner, Sam Hall, Coral Knights, Beth Mellet and Julia Mallaby. In November, the film @MotherDigital was transmitted into space by Jon Pettigrew as part of Planet3artnews.

Keiken at Disturbed, Hacked, Reassembled

A group show curated by Drive-Thru at Lewisham Arthouse featured an adaptation of Silicone_Animism | The Birth of Mother Digital, as part of ‘Disturbed, Hacked, Reassembled’, an event which explored how artists are employing technology to stage, interrogate and celebrate the digital female body. Keiken’s interactive installation, again with sound designed by 700ok, used VR, video and sound to trace the birth of the digital; a giant networked space fused with human interaction and technology.

The installation, representative of an office environment, featured a pregnant woman working in Silicon Valley, who has

Agatha Gothe-Snape, Every Artist Remembered with Keiken, 7 October 2017, Frieze London, Regent’s Park, London. Photo: Sofia Freeman/The Commercial, Image courtesy The Commercial, Sydney

relationships with the office furniture in an allegory of Late Capitalism and animism (video design Keiken and George Stone, sound by Nati Cerutti). This adaptation was re-exhibited by Keiken as part of ‘Hervisions’ at Second Home, London.

In other recent projects, Keiken performed in Every Artist Remembered (2017) by Agatha Gothe-Snape at Frieze Art Fair, London; in November they led a performative workshop for Goldsmith University’s BSc Digital Arts Computing, and in a return to Falmouth, they performed at FOMO, the first Falmouth Art Publishing Fair.

In January 2018, Keiken will be hosting a workshop and event under keiken° mind u as part of Vorspiel transmediale, Berlin.

‘An Hour to Sing – A Journey of Following’

An Hour to Sing – A Journey of Following by Kym Martindale and Caroline Blythe, is a collaboration featuring drawing and writing, published in Edition Three of Elementum Journal.

Images of ‘An Hour to Sing – a Journey of Following’ by Kym Martindale and Caroline Blythe from Edition three of Elementum Journal

Caroline Blythe, a recent BA(Hons) Drawing graduate of Falmouth School of Art, and Dr. Kym Martindale, Senior Lecturer in Falmouth’s School of Writing and Journalism have, over the last three years, been collaborating on a project that has sought to explore and respond to Edward Thomas’s In Pursuit of Spring, an account of a bicycle ride from Guildford to Somerset in 1913.

Between 2012 and 2017, poet and cyclist Kym Martindale began the pursuit of Edward Thomas, riding and writing parts of Thomas’s journey from Winchester to the Quantocks in Somerset. In 2014, Caroline Blythe joined in, equipped with OS maps, and a copy of In Pursuit of Spring, and set off to explore and discover the landscape and locations described in poetry and prose by Martindale and Thomas.

For practical reasons both Kym and Caroline split Thomas’ journey into three distinct areas, visiting these when time allowed, following Thomas on bicycle, foot and at times by car. They recorded snippets of time and place ­– observing and notating the landscape as they travelled. The result is a collection of poems by Dr Kym Martindale and drawings by Caroline Blythe recently published in Edition Three of Elementum Journal.

Images of ‘An Hour to Sing – a Journey of Following’ by Kym Martindale and Caroline Blythe from Edition three of Elementum Journal

We talked with Caroline and Kym to find out more…

Caroline says, “It has been an absolute pleasure to discover and explore both the countryside in the south of England, described so beautifully by Edward Thomas, and also respond to and work with Kym’s wonderful poems, while at the same time recording my own visual observations. As I travelled through the locations described by Edward Thomas and Kym, capturing fleeting moments in sketchbooks, I kept thanking them for introducing me to these beautiful and interesting places. It was a privilege to experience the landscape through their eyes as well as observe for myself. It was a fascinating process. Perhaps the most exciting visual outcomes from this project evolved through this collaborative working process which led to the creation and compiling of palimpsests – an interleaving of tracings of drawings.”

Kym adds, “This research project combined two great passions of mine, poetry and cycling. In Pursuit of Spring describes a landscape on the brink of change, but it is the cradle too of so much of Thomas’s poetry, and an index to the man himself. The poems and drawings are ‘re/tracings’ of journeys made by Thomas, then myself, then Caroline, through a landscape that is constantly changing economically, politically, and aesthetically. And about halfway through the project, we suddenly realised that although we each travelled alone, we were also together in the journey we were making. I am sorry in some measure, that we have arrived.”

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Elementum, founded by Falmouth MA graduate Jay Armstrong, is a biannual publication of new writing and visual arts that explores the natural world and our role within it. Through folklore, literature, poetry, science and specially commissioned art and photography, Elementum quietly brings the reader back to what really matters by nurturing our connection to the natural world and the myths that surround it. The theme of the third edition is ‘roots’ and explores our origins and what sustains us.

If you would like to know more about Elementum journal or purchase a copy of the publication, you can do so by visiting their website: https://www.elementumjournal.com/

Tracing Granite – In Search of a White Cross

Beth Pinner graduated from BA(Hons) Fine Art in 2017. Toward the end of her studies, she applied for and was awarded the Groundwork Field Trip Residency; a five-day field trip visiting granite quarries in the south west as part of a team of academics and artists, led by Dr. David Paton. The residency was part of the Groundwork project and Beth’s place was funded by Falmouth School of Art. Beth shares her experience of the residency…

Image courtesy of Beth Pinner

‘The opportunity to take part in David Paton’s field trip, ‘Tracing Granite – In search of a White Cross’, arose when I was completing my studies of Fine Art at Falmouth University earlier this year.

Image courtesy of Beth Pinner

My art practice had developed alongside an interest and very basic knowledge on geology in Cornwall. Heavily influenced by the surrounding coastal landscape, I became fascinated by the dramatic textures and formations found in the open rock faces where the land met the sea. I was fixated on the notion of an entirely wild landscape, sculpted by nature, and made sculpture and print work surrounding these themes.

It was this (slightly obsessive) interest in rock that led me to gain a place on the 4-day residential field trip, alongside geologists, stone masons, archeologists, artists, writers – an eclectic mix of people from across the country who met, mostly for the first time, at a National Trust bunk house near Helston. With the bunk house as base for the next three nights we undertook a tour of granite quarries across Cornwall, moving to a second bunk house for the final two nights to extend the reach of the trip. Over the duration, our group fluctuated in size as people joined at various stages and quarries to share their own accounts of living and working with granite. Hearing their stories gave a more personal sense of place and insight into how granite in the south west has shaped and influenced individuals lives for generations.

Out of the eight that we visited, only two of the quarries were still in use. The six others were disused and at various stages of reclaim by nature, some so far overwhelmed that, to someone with little knowledge of quarrying like myself, any previous narrative of human interference was hard to comprehend at first. There weren’t any clear differences between the man-made rock face and the naturally formed rock face that I thought I might see. On reflection, however, the quarried sites have become increasingly obvious as man-made. If these rock faces were at the coast one wouldn’t think twice about them being naturally sculpted, but here, in land, they felt out of place, and purposeful.

Image courtesy of Beth Pinner

Having never visited a granite quarry (or any quarry) before becoming involved with this trip, I had no idea what to expect from the four days. Everybody’s enthusiasm to share knowledge fueled a want to learn more, and I have come away feeling truly inspired. Not only by the awe-inspiring places that we visited, but by all of the people that have been involved.

At the time of applying back in June, I hadn’t imagined how helpful this opportunity would prove to be in re-inspiring a desire to move forward with an art practice after university, and by connecting me to some amazing people who I now look forward to working with more in the near future. There are some great things to come from ‘Tracing Granite – In search of a white cross’ and I for one can’t wait to see them all unfold.’

Catching up with Katie Sims, Falmouth Fine Art alumna

Katie Sims graduated from BA(Hons) Fine Art at Falmouth in 2010. Since then she has pursued her art, enjoyed competition and exhibition success and had a spell teaching. She reflects on her time at Falmouth, and talks to us about her life as a professional artist…

Katie Sims

Describe your life since graduating back in 2010…

Things kicked off for me when I was selected for Saatchi’s New Sensations and the Midas Award, two competitions that afforded critical exposure and led to further opportunities to show and collaborate with curators and galleries. The Midas Award provided tremendous professional support during that daunting first year with the prize at that time including a solo exhibition, materials grant and yearlong mentorship programme through Falmouth University. None of this would have happened had I not entered those, proving it’s worth putting yourself forward for things.

Trinity After Ribera and Portal (Opening Gambit, Hoxton Art Gallery, London, 2010), Image courtesy of Hoxton Art Gallery

That led me to establish a working relationship with Hoxton Art Gallery (2011-13). At the time, Hoxton was a new venture and I made work for their launch show. We grew together; things went well and they asked me to be one of their represented artists. We were a good fit and shared a similar ethos so I accepted. The gallery acted as my agents, taking care of all sales, promoting my work, providing exhibiting opportunities and inclusion in key art fairs and events whilst I was able to concentrate solely on painting. For that privilege I promised exclusivity to them, and they would take a commission on all sales. One of the highlights was my solo show, Opening Gambit. I spent 9 months working toward this exhibition and to see the work in situ and how the public responded was moving. It completed the whole cycle for me.

One of the biggest challenges has been trying to create freely whilst feeling the pressure of deadlines and accountability.

I started teaching art to sixth form students in 2013 in order to have more social contact and a regular income alongside painting. Three years later, with a PGCE now done and a ton of experience and newfound knowledge about my work, and myself, I’m shifting the emphasis back to painting. My experience of teaching was brilliant, but I struggled to balance both careers with equal intensity. I still want to teach though; perhaps as an artist that delivers workshops in schools. I loved working with my students.

What are you working on now?

Fleeting Agony, oil on panel, 24x30cm (2010)

I’m working on a new body of paintings to exhibit. I’ve also been archiving my work and recently launched a new website – www.katiesims.co.uk. Revisiting ten years worth of work has been cathartic and essential, allowing me to notice which pictures resonate most with me now. For example, I made a painting whilst at Falmouth called Fleeting Agony, the first picture that was discovered through the process of painting. It remains a monument to what I’m trying to do now – taking on my historic influences, memories and experiences as they affect me now. Trying to fix the quiddity of that impression rather than objective reality.

Osmosis, oil on panel, 24x30cm (2017)

 

What is a typical day for you?

Studio, studio, studio. I need to be here and cut off from life outside in order to focus. Large parts of my day are spent thinking rather than physically painting. When I do pluck up the courage, I have a window of a few hours to get something down. It’s always been that way, even as a student. The process itself is full of risk and I’ve watched many paintings close down from overworking or overthinking them, but sometimes you have to sacrifice things in order to potentially realise something greater. I’m always learning and each painting proposes a new challenge, leading me on to the next. As I’ve matured I’ve learnt creative down time and play is as important as production, otherwise you burn out. You need to keep nourishing yourself as an artist to remain fresh and engaged. I love to walk and go off exploring new places. These trips feed my work and keep the days varied.

Trinity after Ribera, oil on panel, 30x24cm (2012) Image courtesy of Hoxton Art Gallery.

What’s next for you?

I’d like to kit out a van and create a portable studio to travel around Spain. I’ve returned to the country each year since winning The Ford Award in 2012 (a travel bursary to study at the Prado in Madrid) – it’s my second home.  As time goes on there is something about the landscape, the people, and the light that is of interest and speaks directly to me. I have a collection of drawings, some from life, some from memory which I intend to re-familiarise myself with and work into paintings too.

Why did you choose to study at Falmouth?

I needed a supportive environment where I could really focus on exploring my ideas with fewer distractions. Falmouth instantly felt right. As students we were spoilt – top facilities, resources and tutors available to us. Such accessibility and personal relationships with staff are rare to come by. It’s what makes it unique. I knew I would be a person here and not a statistic.

 

What is your favourite memory from studying at Falmouth?

There are so many, and the most precious for me seem to be in the everyday stuff. I remember walking the tree-lined passage to the Falmouth Campus at Woodlane from my home in Falmouth each day. The light present in my studio building, the buzz surrounding the campus, everyone doing something different – it was a remarkable, concentrated moment in my life. I look back with fondness. They all stay with me.

How did Falmouth influence your career?

Falmouth gave me the space required to find my own language. Its strength as a university is in encouraging each student to have the confidence to do this. I left with a definite sense of who I am and the type of work I want to make.

I also gained a remarkable set of friends, which continues to stand the test of time. Anyone that studies here is part of something bigger, akin to family. When you meet a former Falmouth student, regardless of age or course, you share an instant connection.

If you had to give one piece of advice to a new Falmouth student, what would it be?

Studying at Falmouth is a brilliant opportunity in a truly inspiring place, make every moment count and experience it to the fullest.

 

First look at this autumn’s Guest Speaker programme…

This autumn we welcome five outstanding Guest Speakers to deliver lectures to students of Falmouth School of Art. Speakers include return visits from our two Visiting Professors, and an exciting event in association with the Groundwork project. Places are available at each for members of the public, our arts partners across the region and our alumni.

Places limited, registration required. Click here for more details and links to registration.

New digital artwork from Rosie McGinn, on AVD

…“Tonight you’re mine, completely…”, the lyrics from a Shirelles’ classic play out to a pumped up Prince Naseem Hamed staring down his opponent Kevin Kelley

…The scene features in new artwork from British artist and 2015 BA(Hons) Fine Art alumna Rosie McGinn. Boxing Series 1  is released on AVD, a digital art platform designed for mobile consumption. Artists provide the art, and AVD provides the coding. Not only offering an alternative to the white gallery space, the technology reduces work to the width of a mobile screen, allowing the viewer to determine their journey through the artwork by finger swipes, rather than having it curated for their physicality.

McGinn’s video pieces are embedded within a stream of fake adverts, porn, betting deals and forums, in the midst of which is the video piece ready to be played. McGinn brings the ever-popular, often controversial sport of boxing to the art world for evaluation, juxtaposing animalistic pre-fight stare-downs with love songs.

The first of the series of four Boxing Stare Downs was released on 17 September, with the next being released at three-day intervals. To view, go to a-v-d.xyz on your mobile.

 

Exhibition featuring Fine Art students following Summer CAST residencies | Falmouth 28-30 September

This Summer, an opportunity arose for four BA(Hons) Fine Art students to apply for a studio residency at CAST (the Cornubian Arts & Science Trust) in Helston.  The Residency, funded by the Falmouth School of Art in partnership with CAST, offered each artist a one month studio space in the summer months.

The successful artists chosen were Amy McMillan – painting & Drawing, Jasmin Mills – painting, Alberta Shearing – video, installation & performance and Ella Squirrell – painting, cyanotypes and oil pastilles.

Following their time at CAST the artists have now put together an exhibition of their work, ‘Interior | Shift’, which will take place at the old Stones Bakery on Falmouth’s High Street from 28 to 30 September.

Speaking about their Summer at Cast, they described their experience: ‘…The space became the stimulus for exploration. Light. Colour. The suggestions to memory of the architecture, for the building is a Victorian school and remembers it’s old activity in its fixtures, fittings and plasterwork. The interior’s progression to exterior also inspired thought, the location leading to the historical and modern society of Helston, the view from its windows, the sills purposefully too high for a seated pupil to see out off.  The same interior shifts through the subjective view of the artists, filtered, compared to and merging with their interests and practice. The interior of the artists shifts from a myriad of busy stimuli to the starting point of a single bare room.’

The artists would like to thank Josie, Elsa and Teresa at CAST, the Falmouth School of Art and Olly at Stones Bakery.

FSA Visiting Professor, Hew Locke, exhibiting in Bremen and Miami

Hew Locke, our Visiting Professor of Fine Art, has two new projects; ‘Cui Bono’ in Bremen, and ‘Reversal of Fortune’ in Miami.

Cui Bono installed at Bremen Rathaus. Photo ©Indra Khanna 2017

‘Cui Bono’ is a 4 metre long ship that Hew has created.  The work was commissioned by Kunsthalle Bremen and installed at Rathaus Bremen, Germany, as part of the exhibition ‘The Blind Spot: Bremen and Art in the Colonial Era’.  A video on the installation can be found here.

Detail of Cui Bono ©Hew Locke & DACS

The installation in the Town Hall’s upper gallery is an invitation to grapple with Bremen’s maritime commercial and colonial history.  The exhibition takes place in Bremen Town Hall, Germany, from 5 August to 19 November 2017.  For more information on the project click here.

 

‘Reversal of Fortune’ is a new commission for Fringe Projects Miami, in an empty jewellery store in downtown Miami’s historic Art Deco Moderne DuPont Building.  The exterior of the installation is viewable from SE 2nd Ave, 24 hours a day, from 8 September 2017 to 31 January 2018.

Chinese Imperil Gold Loan 10 ©Hew Locke & Hales Gallery

Since the financial crash of 2008 Hew Locke has been buying original antique share certificates from old companies, and painting directly on them.  In ‘Reversal of Fortune’ fifteen have been selected and printed up to create an installation on the facade, and inside the vault, of an empty store.  He has chosen these defunct shares sometimes for their interesting history, and sometimes for their beauty.  He highlights historical and economic cycles. Commerce has its’ ups and downs, yet it is human nature to be optimistic, to continue to trade.  New-born companies garland their shares with confident typography and classical motifs implying stability and worth.  Figures representative of the local population in the areas in which the companies operated are sometimes seen breaking-through.  These are silent witnesses, those who paid the most to create the wealth without receiving the benefit.  Locke’s series of shares is also a wry acknowledgement of the commodity value of contemporary art.

Falmouth’s Visiting Professor programme brings international speakers of the highest calibre to the university to share their knowledge, insights and experiences with students, staff and wider public.  Visiting Professors are appointed for three years, delivering both public lectures and working with our students during their annual visit.

 

Sophie Wright, BA(Hons) Fine Art student – new exhibition

Final year BA(Hons) Fine Art student Sophie Wright, has and exhibition opening in Penryn on 5 August, with fellow artist and student Rebecca Pearce-Davies. Heretics of the Mundane runs until 26 August, and all are welcome to the Private View from 6pm on 4 August.

https://www.facebook.com/HereticsoftheMundane/ 

‘f u t u r e – o r e’ Private View on Friday 30 June

Future-ore resides in the cortex of Redruth and is powered by their profitable history in copper and tin mining. The success is now grounded into a state of absence. A memory awaiting rejuvenation. The streets appear empty as imagery of the past paints a distance between the present. The community is tethered to the past without any direction of the future. Whilst the location is scattered with engine houses and chimney stacks all overgrown with nature, they stand as monuments. This architectural heritage is stamped with high street branding to regenerate the area but transcends into a pit of sameness. These issues point towards a new mineral.

Daniell Bethel and Sonja Johansson present ‘f u t u r e – o r e’ at Back Lane West on Friday 30 June 5 – 9pm and Saturday 1 July 10am – 4pm.  A ‘Transitions’ graduate residency supported by Falmouth University.  Daniell and Sonja have just completed their final year at Falmouth School of Art, studying BA(Hons) Fine Art.

 

 

Images from Falmouth Fine Art London 2017 Private View

The Private View for Falmouth Fine Art London took place on the evening of Thursday 8 June at South Kiosk Gallery, Peckham.  The Private View was attended by Falmouth School of Art Visiting Professor, Hew Locke, and artists Mark Francis and Lisa Wright, amongst many others.

 

 

 

HOW TO SWIM Exhibit B: Treading Water

HOW TO SWIM – a series of six contemporary art events in different spaces across Manchester’s Victoria Baths site.

Over the six events artists will react to the site, installing sculptures, paintings and video as well as performing live movement and spoken word pieces, holding workshops and giving talks.

Exhibit B: Treading Water is the second event of the series, and includes work by recent BA(Hons) Fine Art graduates Tanya Cruz and Jess Russell, and Mercedes Kemp, Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Falmouth School of Art.

These events are organised and curated by recent Falmouth Fine Art graduates Polly Maxwell and Lulu Richards aka WHATCHAMACALLIT collective.

http://www.whatchamacallitcollective.com/the-collective.html

The events take place at the historic Victoria Baths in Manchester a listed Edwardian swimming pool and Turkish Baths complex.

BA(Hons) Fine Art alumni Polly Maxwell and Lulu Richards Cottell curate contemporary art events across Manchester’s Victoria Baths site.

14 May 2017 11:00 –  12 Nov 2017 16:00

HOW TO SWIM is an exciting series of six contemporary art events in different spaces across the Victoria Baths site in Manchester, featuring a number of other Falmouth alumni. Over six events, all taking place in conjunction with Victoria Baths Open Days, artists will react to the site, installing sculptures, paintings and video as well as performing live movement and spoken word pieces, holding workshops and giving talks.

The project is curated by 2016 BA(Hons) Fine Art alumni Polly Maxwell and Lulu Richards  Cottell,  who go by the name of WHATCHAMACALLIT collective.

‘Trying to Float’, is the first exhibit in the HOW TO SWIM series of exhibitions and artists events at Victoria Baths Open Days in Manchester.

Opens: 14 May 2017 11:00 -16:00

‘Trying to Float’ explores collective and social memory.

Artist Maddie Broad invites group reminiscence on the theme of swimming in her interactive workshop Standing together in an empty pool.

Video and sculptural works address collective domestic experience in Ting Waterhouse’s piece, ‘Laundry’.

Polly Maxwell’s ‘Stairs’ is accompanied by interactive spoken word from poet ‘T.S Idiot’.

‘Trying to Float’ takes place alongside the Victoria Baths Open Day and public swimming event. Entry to the building allows people to view the art and view swimming.

Adults £4, (standard prices £3) FREE for under 16s and VB Friends

http://www.whatchamacallitcollective.com

http://www.victoriabaths.org.uk

Victoria Baths, Hathersage Road, Chorlton-on-Medlock,  Manchester, M13 0FE.  Tel: 0161 224 2020

 

 

 

Jessica Warboys, Falmouth alumna – talk at Falmouth and solo exhibition at Tate St. Ives

Hill of Dreams 2016, Performer Oliver Baggott, Video, High Definition, colour, sound; 11 minutes
© Jessica Warboys and 1857

Jessica Warboys,
Sea Painting, Dunwich, October, 2015
canvas, mineral pigments
Courtesy the artist & Gaudel de Stampa, Paris.

In association with Tate St. Ives, artist Jessica Warboys, who graduated from BA(Hons) Fine Art at Falmouth in 2001, joins us for a talk on 29 March, to mark her first solo show at a UK national gallery, at Tate St. Ives this Spring.

Warboys works across painting, performance, film and sculpture; her work is informed by personal or collective memories – historical, mythical or fictional. In her Sea Paintings, Warboys explores the connection between painting and performance, submerging damp, folded canvas scattered with coloured pigments into the sea, and allowing the movement of the waves to ‘paint’ the canvas.  The show at Tate St. Ives will feature films, sculptures and paintings, including two specially commissioned works:

Sea Painting, Zennor 2015, was made on the Zennor coast near St Ives.

Hill of Dreams 2016, is a new film that draws from Welsh fantasy writer Arthur Machen’s book of the same name, that relives his memories of rural Gwent, where Warboys was born a century later. Hill of Dreams has been commissioned by Tate St Ives, Casa Masaccio, San Giovanni Valdarno, Italy and Kunsthall Stavanger, Norway and will tour to each of these venues throughout 2016−17.

Warboys currently lives and works in Suffolk and Berlin and has enjoyed wide international exhibition success, including solo exhibitions. After graduating from Falmouth she completed a Masters of Fine Art at Slade School of Art in 2004. Her work was recently included in British Art Show 8.

Register Here for Jessica Warboys’ talk on 29 March, 6pm, Lecture Theatre 1, Falmouth Campus. Please note the later than usual start time.

Jessica Warboys at Tate St. Ives runs from 31 March to 3 September 2017.

Beatrice Brown – THE N0THING SERIES – 23 March–23 April 2017

Falmouth BA(Hons) Fine Art alumna Beatrice Brown is about to open her first solo exhibition in London. ‘THE N0THING SERIES’ is curated by James Birch and opens at Gallery 46 in Whitechapel on March 23, 2017 until 23 April. 

The works in this exhibition bear witness to inner visions that Brown has had from as early as six years old, when she transposed her inner turmoil and confusion onto seeing the ‘Fire Child’, a character that spoke to her from within the flames of a hearth. The sheer compressed power of the sculptural work is analogous to the potency of material transformation in alchemy, of the Jungian Nigredo, the black beginning – The Nothing Series.

Beatrice graduated from Fine Art in Falmouth in 2013, and was shortlisted for the Midas Award in that year, exhibiting that autumn at Millennium Gallery, St. Ives (now Anima-Mundi). Her solo exhibition features a new collection of drawings.

Gallery 46 is a new art-space from Martin J Tickner, Sean McLusky, Martin Bell and Wai Hung Young in Whitechapel, London’s long-standing centre of radicalism and independence, has developed from the non-conformist curatorial approach they deployed at Redchurch Street’s infamous MEN Gallery.

http://gallery46.co.uk/Exhibitions/beatrice-brown-the-nothing-series/

http://beatricebrown.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Installation by Fine Art graduate Sandi Carr in the Clearwell Caves, Royal Forest of Dean

Sandi Carr, 2016 graduate of BA(Hons) Fine Art at Falmouth, has installed 450 metres of cotton wick in her latest site responsive art work, which has opened at Clearwell Caves in the Royal Forest of Dean,
 Gloucestershire, where she has been undertaking a residency.

Founder of Flow Contemporary Arts, Carolyn Black, writes of the installation:

‘The forest has some fascinating places that many people consider to be merely tourist destinations. Yet some provide brilliant locations for contemporary art to be shown in, and Clearwell Caves is one of them. The exhibition by Sandi Carr that opened last night, is one worth seeing. If you take a peek at her website you will see she’s interested in visceral materials, and this new installation reflects that’.

Check out Sandi’s work here: http://sandijade.weebly.com

 

International awards for Falmouth Illustration alumni

Two of this year’s four winners of the BolognaRagazzi Award are alumni of Falmouth’s BA(Hons) Illustration. The BolognaRagazzi Award is one of the world’s most highly regarded international prizes in children’s publishing, giving winners extraordinary visibility, including through high profile recognition at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair.

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Emma Lewis won the Opera Prima category for The Museum of Me, by Tate Publishing. She said, ‘Winning the award was an amazing surprise, as I hadn’t even considered that I would be put forward. I’m also pleased because it reflects all the brilliant hard work put in by my publishers, Tate’.

2012 graduate William Grill won the Non-fiction category for his book The Wolves of Currumpaw, published by Flying Eye Books. Grill said ‘I am over the moon that Wolves was chosen for this year’s non-fiction category, I had never imagined that it would be so well received overseas. Since my aim was to bring Seton’s tale to a modern audience, I now feel more hopeful that more people will appreciate the story’.

The Wolves of Currumpaw has also been long listed for this year’s CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal, the UK’s oldest award for Children’s literature, previously won by some of the best loved children’s illustrators, including Quentin Blake and Raymond Briggs. Grill won the Medal in 2015 for his acclaimed Shackleton’s Journey.

Alongside Grill on the Kate Greenaway Medal long list is Levi Pinfold, who graduated from Falmouth in 2006. Pinfold – also a previous Medal-winner, in 2013 for Black Dog – has been selected for his picture book Greenling, published by Templar Publishing. The Kate Greenaway Medal short list will be announced on 16 March, with the winners announced at a ceremony in June.

Cafe Morte – The Tears of Things – exhibition and events

This weekend sees the opening of Cafe Morte’s The Tears of Things at the Exchange Gallery, Penzance

A growing collection of broken objects, to initiate conversation around the emotional value and attachment we have to something that is broken in our lives. The collection will form the beginning of a growing body of research relating to death and loss. The show includes work from current Falmouth BA(Hons) Fine Art students, alumni, and lecturers, as well as other established writers and artists. As well as work artists from the UK, the exhibition features submissions from artists from Cyprus, Tunisia, USA, Poland and Spain.

CAFE MORTE: THE TEARS OF THINGS | 11Feb – 18 March 2017 | THE EXCHANGE – PENZANCE

OPENING EVENT FRIDAY 10^TH FEBRUARY, 7pm – 9pm, ENGINE ROOM: EXCHANGE GALLERY PENZANCE  Join us for an evening of performance, video, objects, narrative and stories generated by Café Morte to celebrate the life of a broken object.

EVENT: SATURDAY 11^TH 10.00 – 4.00 BROKEN WRITING OPEN INVITATION  Members of the public are invited to participate by bringing a broken object to the gallery to be documented photographically and to write a short piece of text that will be added to the collection. The collection will form an online museum of broken objects reflecting the power that these objects still hold.

Two BA(Hons) Fine Art alumni, Polly Maxwell and Lulu Richards Cottell will be returning to install and help curate the show, and as part of their visit will also be talking to current Fine Art students about their experiences since graduating last year.

Café Morte is a research group led by Falmouth Fine Art Senior Lecturers Mercedes Kemp and Lucy Willow, involving undergraduate and postgraduate students from Falmouth University, along with other artists and curators. Its central focus is to create projects that enable audiences to discuss the rich and varied themes of death found in art and literature. This is an adaption of the recently popular model of the ‘Death Café’, which has arisen worldwide as a meeting place in which to discuss death over a cup of tea.

Café Morte provides Falmouth students with the opportunity to research and make work around a focused theme. It enhances their research capability and enables them to experience the setting up and curating of a show, work collaboratively, experience working directly with audiences and networking with established artists. Each year, Café Morte welcomes a number of new students, and continues working with alumni.

The group started three years ago, working with BA(Hons) Fine Art students at Falmouth to develop research and ideas. The second year culminated in an exhibition at the university, curated by students and showing student work alongside that of established artists. The exhibition coincided with a Symposium by Moth, a research group concerning death and design run by colleagues in Graphic Design.

The Tears of Things exhibition follows a public testing of the project at The Exchange last December.

Interview with BA(Hons) Fine Art alumna, Zoe Spowage – Young Artists in Conversation

Zoe Spowage graduated from BA(Hons) Fine Art at Falmouth in 2013. Born in Long Eaton, she now lives and works in Leeds; her studio is based at Assembly House. Since graduating, she has worked as a freelance scenic artist and won the Nottingham Castle Open Main Prize in 2016 and the Surface Gallery Prize Residency and Exhibition in 2017.

Zoe describes her work as ‘furnished with loose narrative, I play with the decorative motif and the female form to create scenery. I am attracted to bold and direct visual language’.

Young Artists in Conversation have featured Zoe in an interview by Yasmin Rix –http://youngartistsinconversation.co.uk/Zoe-Spowage , in which she talks about her work and working process, and her forthcoming exhibition with Rufus Newell following their month-long residency in Com Peung, Thailand.

Get Me Bodied, from I’m in Love with Rococo Exhibition in It’s All Tropical, Leeds, 2015

A Bleaching Madden – mural detail

Maritime Mural Project – a collaboration with Falmouth, National Maritime Museum Cornwall, Spectrum, Exeter University and street artist Marc Craig

Our Foundation students here at Falmouth are involved in a community project ‘The Maritime Mural Project‘ between partners The National Maritime Museum Cornwall, Spectrum Autism Charity, University of Exeter, Falmouth University and street artist Marc Craig.

The project is about celebrating ‘difference’ and coincides with the opening of the Maritime Museum’s Captain Bligh and Tattoo exhibition. Members of the community are being asked to draw a doodle which celebrates their difference, under the title, ‘Everyone is Different, Who are You’?

The students have decorated 16 bespoke postboxes, which are displayed around the town and also in local libraries, galleries and schools; it is hoped these will inspire the community to doodle. The doodles, together with other images researched by the students, alongside daffodils which represent Falmouth’s Spring Festival, will contribute to a 100-foot long mural which will be created by and painted onto the wall of the Maritime Car Park on Bar Road by street artist Marc Craig.

Marc Craig is based in London, and works primarily with large scale murals, both on his own and as part of the street art collective Psychodoodlz. He is also an alumus of Falmouth, having graduated with a degree in Studio Ceramics in 2003, and an MA in Contemporary Visual Arts in 2004.

 

BA(Hons) Fine Art alumna, Katrina Cowling’s solo exhibition opens February 10th at The Henderson Gallery, Nottingham.

Katrina Cowling graduated from BA(Hons) Fine Art at Falmouth in 2013 with a first class honours. In 2012, during her time on the course, she was the recipient of the Cornwall Denis Mitchell Sculpture Award. Now based in Leeds, this is her forthcoming show in Nottingham.

MA Illustration: Authorial Practice success at The Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets 2016

Atlantic Press, an independent press associated with the MA Illustration: Authorial Practice course at Falmouth has won the prestigious Michael Marks Illustration Award.  The book’s illustrator Mairead Dunne received the award for her illustrations to Luke Thompson’s book of poems, The Clearing, which was published last summer.  Mairead is a graduate of the Authorial Illustration Masters course (September 2016).

The winners were announced at a special dinner with the shortlisted poets, publishers and illustrators at the British Library in December last year.  Mairead was presented the award along with a cheque for £1,000 by Lady Marina Marks, Chairman of the Michael Marks Charitable Trust.

The images are a contemplative series in photography, using experimental lenses and interventionist drawing. The work reflects and reveals the narrative, highlighting the sense of reader as voyeur, as well as developing the symbolism and ambience of the poetry.  Every copy of the clearing is unique, the cover birds having been individually hand-stamped by Mairead.

Steve Braund, Course Coordinator of MA Illustration: Authorial Practice and Director of Atlantic Press has written a piece about the work:

“The Clearing is one of a series of four ‘poet-illustrator’ collaborations we’ve published recently at Atlantic, the others being Stone by Em Strang and Mat Osmond, Pick Me Up by Anna Kiernan and Harriet Lee-Merion and On Ridgegrove Hill by Alyson Hallett and Phyllida Bluemel.

Attempting to illustrate poetry can be foolhardy as the ability of poems to picture subject matter so vividly make them powerful illustrations in themselves. So, we’ve tried to support collaborative conversations between the pairings of poets and illustrators where the images augment the words with a fair degree of ambiguity allowing open-ended readings. In addition, and of equal importance, is the attention to the design and typography: how the book feels in your hands, how the pages turn and the use of empty spaces. In The Clearing, as with the others in the series, the design was in the hands of the illustrator.

Part of the underlying excitement in all our books is in that suspension of disbelief where the ‘unreal’, the fictional construction (or sometimes imaginative take on the real), captivates the audience, holding their attention, taking them on a journey of the imagination, the story. The best results occur when the creator/s (in this case the poet and illustrator in collaboration) inhabit their characters from within. The storytelling never works quite as well when the characters feel consciously contrived as if from a distance. If your character cuts their knee, you need to feel their pain. If you don’t, then don’t expect your audience to either.

The publication was supported by a grant from the Arthur Quiller Couch Memorial Fund (Q Fund) and through Crowd funding.”

The Award was judged by Sir Nicholas Penny, Director of the National Gallery, London from 2008 – 2015. The Illustration Award recognises outstanding illustration of a poetry pamphlet published between July 2015 and June 2016.  Sir Nicholas Penny considered illustration in any medium and was looking for a subtle and sustained relationship between image and text, as well as the overall quality of the images.

The Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets are sponsored by The Wordsworth Trust, The British Library and the Michael Marks Charitable Trust in association with the TLS and the Harvard University Centre for Hellenic Studies.

Falmouth Fine Art Alumnus Ed Burkes selected for BEERS London Contemporary Visions

Ed Burkes, A headlight looks into the dark, but shimmers and tells you it’s cool, 127×127 cm oil on canvas

2016 BA(Hons) Fine Art graduate Ed Burkes, has been selected for BEERS London Contemporary Visions.

Burkes was on of eleven artists selected from an open call of over 4000 applicants, by a panel that included Philly Adams, Senior Director of the Saatchi Gallery, and Kurt Beers, Director of BEERS London and author of 100 Painters of Tomorrow.

This is the seventh year of BEERS London, a group exhibition that has sought to identify current trends in contemporary art. The artists selected for this year’s show are described as ‘posess[ing] a strong point of view as well as an artistic practice that shows distinct promise’. Burkes himself is described by the exhibition organisers as ‘one of the UK’s most sought-after young artists.

Burkes says, ‘My work is sparked from a commonplace drawing or situation: A friend drinking coffee, a buddy pulling up his socks, a pretty girl in the fruit and veg section of Tesco express. Through the process of painting these preliminary considerations begin to wobble out of sync to a point where their distinctiveness as a primary source slips away. This Introduces the opportunity for the work to embody its own honesty where identity stands as a framework to the painting, unfixed in its dwelling as the viewers’ considerations take hold’.

His work is also currently on display at Mall Galleries, London, as a part of FBA Futures 2017 (until 20 January) and was shown at The Other Art Fair, London, as a part of the Saatchi Invest in Art programme. Burkes was also shortlisted for the 2016 Bloomberg New Contemporaries, and was the recipient of the Falmouth School of Art Purchase Prize 2016.

Ed Burkes in his studio

BEERS Contemporary Visions previews on Thursday 19 January, open 20 January – 4 March, at 1 Baldwin Street, EC1V 9NU

Falmouth School of Art Guest Speakers announced for spring 2017

The Falmouth School of Art Guest Speaker Programme resumes in February with a series of events featuring acclaimed artists and illustrators…

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Artist Joey Holder starts the season with a talk on 8 February. Working with scientific and technical experts, Holder makes immersive, multi-media installations that explore the limits of the human and how we experience non-human, natural and technological forms. Mixing elements of biology, nanotechnology and natural history against computer programme interfaces, screen savers and measuring devices, she suggests the impermanence and inter-changeability of these apparently contrasting and oppositional worlds: ‘everything is a mutant and a hybrid’. For a recent exhibition – against the backdrop of the emergent field of computational biology and the Google Genomics project – Holder invented ‘Ophiux’, a speculative pharmaceutical company, imagining its use of genetic sequencing equipment and biological machines to collect data from humans and to sample data from other organisms. She explains: ‘It seems as if everything has become a branch of computer science, even our own bodies probed, imaged, modelled and mapped: re-drawn as digital information’.

On 15 February artist Chantal Joffe will be in conversation with Falmouth School of Art’s Director Dr. Ginny Button. Joffe’s figurative paintings usually depict women or girls, from catwalk models, porn actresses and literary heroines to mothers, children and loved ones. Her paintings question expectations of what a feminist art might be, often pointing to how appearances are constructed – whether in a fashion magazine or the family album – and to the choreography of display. Sometimes shown in groups but recently in iconic portraits, her images of women draw loosely on a range of sources such as photographs, magazines and even reflections in the mirror, using distortion to make her subjects seem more real. Her paintings achieve a psychological and emotional force, prompting reflection on ever-changing human relations and the endless complexity of looking.

1 March sees a return to Falmouth of Illustrator, author and Falmouth Honorary Fellow Posy Simmonds. Simmonds’ work includes many books for adults and children, including Literary Life, Lulu and the Flying Babies and Fred, the film of which was nominated for an Oscar. Working across a range of formats and contexts, Simmonds is probably best-known for her series of weekly cartoon strips commissioned by the Guardian since 1977. Gemma Bovery, her reworking of Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary into a satirical tale of English expatriates in France appeared first in the Guardian before publication as a graphic novel in 1999. Acclaimed by the critics for its wit and wickedly sharp observation, it was made into a feature film in 2014. Her prize-winning graphic novel Tamara Drewe also became a very successful film, directed by Stephen Frears.

Falmouth School of Art’s new Visiting Professor of Illustration delivers his inaugural lecture on 22 March. Graham Rawle is an internationally admired writer and collage artist whose visual work incorporates illustration, design, photography and installation. He has produced regular series for The Observer, The Sunday Telegraph Magazine and The Times and among his published books are The Card, The Wonder Book of Fun, Lying Doggo, and Diary of an Amateur Photographer. His collaged novel Woman’s World, created entirely from fragments of found text clipped from vintage women’s magazines won wide critical acclaim, described by The Times as ‘a work of genius…the most wildly original novel produced in this country in the past decade.’ He is perhaps best known to some for his long running ‘Lost Consonants’ strip, which first appeared in the Guardian in 1990.

We finish the 2016-17 Guest Speaker Programme with a TateTalk at Falmouth by Fine Art alumna (2001) Jessica Warboys. Warboys works across painting, performance, film and sculpture. Her talk is in association with Tate St. Ives, which in March will present a major solo show of Warboys’ work. The show will feature films, sculptures, large scale paintings, and Sea Paintings commissioned for the show and created along the Cornish coast. In her Sea Paintings, Warboys explores the connection between painting and performance, submerging damp, folded canvas scattered with coloured pigments into the sea, and allowing the movement of the waves to ‘paint’ the canvas.  Her work is informed by personal or collective memories – hystorical, mythical or fictional. Warboys currently lives and works in Suffolk and Berlin and has enjoyed wide international exhibition success, including solo exhibitions. Her work was recently included in British Art Show 8.

Registration is required for these events, and is open now: http://falmouthschoolofart.eventbrite.co.uk

See all Falmouth University events on our website: www.falmouth.ac.uk/events

Hew Locke in conversation with Alex Schady at the Tate Modern, London

Falmouth alumnus and current Visiting Professor of Fine Art, Hew Locke, will be speaking about his work in conversation with Alex Schady at the Tate Modern, London, at 4pm this Monday 9 January 2017.

Installation shot of Locke’s solo exhibition ‘Beyond the Sea Wall’, Hayles Gallery London, 2014

This talk is part of the Central Saint Martins ‘This is An Art School’ in Tate Exchange.  The public are invited to enrol in the temporary art school and explore what the future of arts education might look like.  The art school is created by students, staff and alumni of Central Saint Martins.  The venue is Switch House, Level 5 in the Tate Modern, and the art school is open from 9 – 15 January 2017 from 12.00pm – 6.00pm each day.

Falmouth’s Visiting Professor of Fine Art, Hew Locke, exhibits in XIII Bienal de Cuenca, Ecuador

Exhibited for the first time, Locke’s bill-board-sized print The Canal Interocéanique de Panama will be applied directly to the side of a building at the junction of Vargas Machucha and Calle Larga, Cuenca, Ecuador. This work is part of his on-going series Share, investigating the cycles and histories of international finance and trade, where Locke works directly onto actual antique share certificates.  

Hew Locke joined Falmouth as Visiting Professor of Fine Art in 2016, an appointment that will see Locke work with Falmouth for three years delivering both public lectures and working with students during his annual visits.  Locke’s inaugural visit as Visiting Professor took place earlier this month and we are very much looking forward to the next.

 

Highlight Creative Fair Saturday 3rd December

The Highlight Creative Fair was founded by students Lucy Rivers (BA(Hons) Illustration) and Megan Fatharly (BA(Hons) Drawing), and FXU Falmouth President and former Fine Art student Chris Slesser, as a way to utilise the new Fox café atrium space and for students’ work to be celebrated and highlighted and for students to meet, collaborate and create.

Entry is free and open to the public.  Holding a stall is free and open to staff, students and alumni. It is hoped that this will become a regular event.

Recent BA(Hons) Fine Art Graduates Selected by Saatchi Art

‘I don’t think about the Horses’ in my pocket’ Ed Burkes 127cm x 127cm © Ed Burkes

Rebecca Wilson (Saatchi Art Chief Curator) has selected ‘8 UK Artists to Buy Now’ to represent some of the best of the UK’s recent art school graduates.  Two of the selected artists are our own graduates from 2016 – Ed Burkes and Nicholas Griffin! 

‘Lighter than Air’ Nicholas Griffin 120cm x 150cm © Nicholas Griffin

The exhibition of work by the eight chosen artists is currently on view in London, and can also be viewed online.

Ed in his studio © Ed Burkes

Nick is also exhibiting in the Midas Exhibition, currently showing at The Exchange, Newlyn Art Gallery, Penzance.  Ed was the recipient of our Falmouth School of Art Purchase Prize for 2016.

Visiting Professor appointments at Falmouth School of Art

Falmouth’s Visiting Professor programme brings international speakers of the highest calibre to the university to share their knowledge, insights and experiences with students, staff and wider public. Visiting Professors are appointed for three years, delivering both public lectures and working with our students during their annual visit. The Falmouth School of Art is delighted to announce new appointments this autumn of the artist Hew Locke as Visiting Professor of Fine Art and illustrator and writer Graham Rawle as Visiting Professor of Illustration.

Hew Locke, 2016, by Charlie Littlewood

Hew Locke is one of Falmouth’s most celebrated alumni and he’s keen to revive his special connection with the university: ‘I am very much looking forward to taking up this appointment, and to travelling down to Falmouth once again. My time at the School of Art was an important part of my career, and experiences I had there still resonate in my work today.  I hope in (my) turn to be able to make my own positive contribution to students’ development over the next three years.’

Born in Edinburgh, Locke spent his formative years in Georgetown, Guyana, before returning to the UK to study. He received his BA(Hons) Fine Art in 1988 from Falmouth, then an MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art, London in 1994. His investigation of the display of power includes royal and swagger portraiture, coats-of-arms, public statuary, trophies, financial documents, weaponry and costume.

The Nameless (2010), Installation view, Hew Locke. Photo courtesy Hales Gallery.

 

Maritime imagery and symbolism have been ongoing preoccupations in his work, along with reflections on his upbringing in Guyana. Locke has work in numerous collections including Tate, the British Museum, the V&A, Brooklyn Museum and the Perez Art Museum Miami. He has had solo shows in public galleries in the UK and the USA, and has taken part in Biennials in Hangzhou, China; Kochi, India; Prospect3, Miami; Guangzhou, China; Valencia, Spain and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Locke’s inaugural Professorial Lecture, for which registration is now open, takes place on Wednesday 16 November, 2016.

Graham Rawle. Photo credit: Jenny Lewis

Internationally admired, Graham Rawle is one of the UK’s most interesting and original visual communicators, perhaps best known for his long running ‘Lost Consonants’ strip, which first appeared in the Guardian in 1990. His flair and passion for education has also been recognised through honorary appointments and awards. As a previous contributor to both Falmouth School of Art’s guest speaker programme and its Illustration Forum he already has a strong interest in Illustration here.

Of his appointment, Rawle says, “It’s a great honour for me to have been made Visiting Professor of Illustration at Falmouth University. I have long admired the School of Art’s commitment to nurturing original and individual thinking in art and design. My own research in sequential design and visual narrative spans across illustration, literature and, more recently, film. I’m interested in how the principles of storytelling, particularly three-act structure, can be employed in the development of design strategies across a wide range of disciplines. I look forward to finding ways of making connections with students, staff and researchers at Falmouth”.

(C) Graham Rawle, Woman’s World, close-up

Rawle is a writer and collage artist whose visual work incorporates illustration, design, photography and installation. He has produced regular series for The Observer, The Sunday Telegraph Magazine and The Times and among his published books are The Card, The Wonder Book of Fun, Lying Doggo, and Diary of an Amateur Photographer. His collaged novel Woman’s World, created entirely from fragments of found text clipped from vintage women’s magazines won wide critical acclaim, described by The Times as ‘a work of genius…the most wildly original novel produced in this country in the past decade.’ His reinterpretation of The Wizard of Oz won the Best Illustrated Trade Book Award as well as 2009 Book of the Year at the British Book Design Awards. The Card, was shortlisted for the 2013 Writers’ Guild Award for fiction.

Rawle has established himself as a ground-breaking research-led writer, illustrator and designer, evidenced through the range and depth of key scholarly texts that cite and analyse his work. He teaches on the MA Sequential Design/Illustration and MA Arts and Design by Independent Project courses at Brighton and in 2012 he was awarded an honorary doctorate for Services to Design from Norwich University of the Arts. He will give his inaugural Professorial Lecture at Falmouth in March 2017.

Midas Exhibition 2016 opens 11 November

Recent work by Linda Straehl (video still)

We’re getting ready for the 2016 Midas Exhibition at Newlyn Art Gallery, featuring work by ten artists, selected from their BA(Hons) Fine Art degree shows at Falmouth Campus this summer.

The exhibition runs from 12 November to 7 January, and includes work by Ella Caie (film), Finbar Conran (kinetic and sound installation), Tanya Cruz (sculptural video installation), Robert Davis (large kinetic sculpture and other works), Joe Fenwick-Wilson (painting and sculpture), Nicholas Griffin (painting), Zoë Pearce (painting), Bharat Rajagopal (painting), Isabel Ramos (video installation), and Calum Rees-Gildea (painting).

In the lower gallery, last year’s Midas winner, Linda Straehl, who graduated in 2015, will present a new video work.

A preview evening on 11 November (7-9pm) will include food from Cornish Fusion Fish and Food, as well as a pay bar. We are pleased to be enabling a group of current BA(Hons) Fine Art students will be attend the preview and an Artists’ Talk at 11am on 12 November, also open to the public (free with the cost of admission).

For more than ten years, Midas Construction, through the Midas Award, with Falmouth University, Newlyn Art Gallery and Anima-Mundi (formerly Millennium, St Ives), has provided recent graduates with funding for materials, mentoring and an exhibition in their first year after university.

A number of those exhibiting this year were featured by ArtCornwall talking about their work earlier this year: read more here.

Fine Art Alumna has film selected for the Cornwall Film Festival

We are thrilled to announce Tanya Morel, a BA(Hons) Fine Art alumna has recently co-produced and directed a film which has been selected for the Cornwall Film Festival.

The screening will take place this Saturday 05 November, 1.30pm at The Poly in Falmouth.  The screening will follow with a Q&A/panel discussion, tickets are available to buy here.

Diary of a Madman “follows Poprishkin, a low ranking civil servant with ideas above his station, who has fallen in love with the Director’s daughter.  Coupled with delusions of grandeur and an inability to accept his lot in life, this obsession becomes a catalyst that sets him on the road to madness.  A journey that is both absurdly funny and heartbreakingly tragic” (Devon and Cornwall Film).

Tanya, who originally trained as an actor, graduated from Falmouth in 2006 with a 1st class BA(Hons) in Fine Art and has since gone on to work with drawing, sculpture, printmaking, painting, animation and film making.  Tanya co-founded Oddbodies, a critically acclaimed and award-winning production company that specialises in innovative and highly visual work.

Skeleton: New Sculpture from Old Boats

Skeleton 190x55x53 cm

“A boat is but a shell.  Shells grow in increments, bit by bit, compartment by compartment.  So does a wooden boat hull.  Frame by frame.  Plank by plank.  The tiny increments of boat construction enable graceful curves to grow.  The result is a hull that will curve through water, smooth as silk.” (Rob Johnsey).

Transom 44x44x21 cm

Ship 90x33x82 cm

Lifeboat 108x45x45 cm

Keel 80x33x33 cm

Coracle 113x87x38 cm

Carcass 50x50x65 cm

Coil 42x14x34 cm

The exhibition ‘Skeleton: New Sculpture from Old Boats’ opens on 10 November and continues until 30 April 2017 at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall.  It features 8 wooden sculptures by artist Rob Johnsey, and is inspired by boats in the NMMC collection and Rob’s time as a boat building volunteer.

Rob Johnsey is an alumnus of Falmouth University, he studied BA(Hons) Fine Art and graduated in 2014.  Rob’s spent the past 18 months working on a sculpture exhibition for the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth, and was the very first Artist in Residence at the NMMC for the period of the sculpture project.

Spotlight on Falmouth Fine Art Graduate Michael Cox

 

Somerset based artist and Falmouth BA(Hons) Fine Art graduate Michael Cox will soon be exhibiting ‘New Works‘ at Art Represent, London, E2 0JD.  Opening from 28 October until 1 November Michael will be collaborating with another graduate artist, James Briggs.

During Michael’s third year at Falmouth, he was selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2016.  As part of the touring exhibition Michael’s work has already been exhibited at the launch exhibition at Bluecoat, Liverpool, forming part of the Liverpool Biennial.

Following the success at Liverpool, Bloomberg New Contemporaries featuring Michael’s piece ‘De Beauvoir, 2015‘ will move on to London, exhibiting at the ICA from 23 November 2016 until 22 January 2017.

Michael has previously exhibited in London, most recently as part of a curated show selected by critic and curator Sacha Craddock and Falmouth Associate Lecturer Jesse Leroy Smith.  Selected artists were chosen from the BA(Hons) Fine Art final year student cohort and the exhibition took place at the Underdog Gallery, London in July 2016.

Falmouth Fine Art London 2016

Michael’s work has also been featured recently as part of a 2016 graduate piece for the ‘It’s Nice That‘ platform, which also featured him six months before he completed his studies at Falmouth (Here).  Michael discusses his Somerset countryside childhood and the influences this has had on his urban style of painting, the highlights of studying the BA(Hons) in Fine Art at Falmouth University and his future plans.

http://michael-cox.co.uk/