Interior Architecture and Design students address inefficiency in the workplace

from the UCA newsdesk….

Image from the Despite Efficiency: Labour exhibition in the Herbert Read Gallery, UCA Canterbury

Interior Architecture & Design students from the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) have developed an ambitious exhibition with multidisciplinary studio Aberrant Architecture that challenges the efficiency of workplaces.

Currently on display in UCA Canterbury’s Herbert Read Gallery, Despite Efficiency: Labour is a participative exhibition thatlooks at the practical consequences and critical value of inefficiency in the context of work. Upon arrival, visitors are invited to sit underneath a 1.5 metre suspended ceiling on a desk chair in an area flooded with artificial light.

“Inefficiency can be understood as an effort without reward; as the negative result of a system designed to be profitable,” explained Emma Braso, UCA’s Cultural Programme Curator. “The project creates a working space where these ideas can be played out in different formats and shapes, independent of their utility.”

Openings in the grid ceiling also allow visits to stand up and enjoy a series of different micro-environments, which are naturally lit. A number of narrative panels, each individually designed by participating students and able to be viewed through binoculars placed by each opening, explore the history of office design.

The gallery is hosting a number of live performances, videos and projects as part of the exhibition, all presented by a group of international artists and related to situations and models of unprofitable, futile or ineffective work.

This project was supported by Recreate and ICR, two initiatives selected under the European Cross-border Cooperation Programme Interreg IV A France (Channel) – England, co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund.

View over the top of the suspended ceiling – natural light

View of office desk with seats below suspended ceiling and video playing

View of visitors on seats underneath the suspended ceiling

 

For more information about Despite Efficiency: Labour, please visithttp://www.ucreative.ac.uk/galleries/herbert-read.

 

ICR was selected under the European Cross-border Cooperation Programme INTERREG IVA France (Channel) – England, co-funded by the ERDF

 

 

Advertisements

The enterprise of liberation

The Creative Challenge has kicked off with a bang this year, with a packed schedule of workshops in the UK and a residential in France for many students. There is a truly international flavour with students from ESADHaR as well as our own UCA students getting involved.

Both UCA and ESADHaR students submitted proposals this year; submissions were scored by external assessors and all successful students were offered an all-expenses paid place on the Residential Workshop held in Le Havre, France from Monday 24th to Friday 28th November. The trip to Le Havre was a great success, with forty-nine students from UCA and ESADHaR attending.

“Liberation” was the theme of the residential; student were grouped to focus on different aspects of liberation with the support of a facilitator and, for many groups, a previous Creative Challenge student. Each group was challenged to tackle their theme and to create a work to exhibit.

 

ICR was selected under the European Cross-border Cooperation Programme INTERREG IVA France (Channel) – England, co-funded by the ERDF

Creative Challenge Residential Nov 2014 gallery

Louisa’s new opportunity

Louisa at work

Alumna Louisa Love is a successful artist, who has developed a wide practice that encompasses sculpture, writing, research and archiving and collaborative activity. Through the ICR programme, Louisa is undertaking a graduate residency at UCA Canterbury based on the Limber: Spatial Painting Practices exhibition and research project which was showcased at the Herbert Read Gallery and Grandes Galleries de l’ESADHaR, Rouen, in 2013.

As part of the residency, Louisa has been invited to be a guest artist at the graduate show at ESADHaR in Le Havre, and will be visiting the art school this month to install her work alongside the students.

Louisa says,

This is a great opportunity not only to begin exhibiting my work internationally, but also to test out and develop ideas and ways of working with other people. The work I’ll be exhibiting will take quite a different approach to the previous shows I’ve done and will mark this really interesting point in my practice. The residency I am doing is generating some really exciting conversations, collaborations and opportunities, which I hope will continue to develop these close relationships between UCA and ESADHaR and their respective regions.

 

 

ICR was selected under the European Cross-border Cooperation Programme INTERREG IVA France (Channel) – England, co-funded by the ERDF

Facing Extinction

Facing Extinction

Gustav Metzger, artist and political activist known as the proponent of the Auto-Destructive Art and Art Strike movements, is exhibiting Facing Extinction, a reworking of his seminal work Mass Media at the Herbert Read Gallery, Canterbury from 17 Oct to 15 Nov.

The work centres on thousands of newspapers, sourced by staff and students of UCA and partner institutions, stacked in a mass in the gallery space; visitors will be invited to interact with the work, responding to the theme of extinction by choosing articles and pinning them to the walls.

The exhibition is supported by the Interregional Culture-led Regeneration (ICR) programme and is curated by Andrea Gregson.

More information: Rafau at RSieraczek@ucreative.ac.uk

 

ICR was selected under the European Cross-border Cooperation Programme INTERREG IVA France (Channel) – England, co-funded by the ERDF

Rebound: The Sculpture Question Colloquium, 29 – 31 Oct 2014

The Sculpture Question Research Group at UCA, Canterbury is organising Rebound: The Sculpture Question Colloquium, taking place from Wed 29 – Fri 31 October.  We will be joined by students, researchers, academics and French art school representatives who will come together to work on a collective statement: We Are For An Art School…

The Colloquium is an opportunity to explore the role of research and teaching in the context of current art school / art university institutional models. Through discussion we will arrive at observations, insights and further questions related to pertinent issues that we are confronted with as artists, cultural researchers, professors, students, administrators and publishers in our institutions. How do we foster an art school that puts critical engagement at the forefront and encourages the unique role that artists can play in advancing this discourse? The Colloquium includes participants from France, the UK, Canada and the USA. Their specific cultural and institutional similarities and differences will deepen our deliberations. As a concrete outcome we will summarise our discussions to make a collective statement.

This event will be hosted by artist Dr.Cathy Busby (Vancouver) with guests Roger Conover, Executive Editor of MIT Press (Cambridge, Mass), and Ella Tetrault (Berlin), recent MFA graduate, Public Art and New Artistic Strategies at the Bauhaus.

Updates from the colloquium, which is funded through the ICR project, will be available in our next newsletter.

For more information please contact Amie at arai2@ucreative.ac.uk

 

ICR was selected under the European Cross-border Cooperation Programme INTERREG IVA France (Channel) – England, co-funded by the ERDF

A question of sculpture…..

Emma Hart - “Giving It All That”, image courtesy of Thierry Bal.

The Sculpture Question Research Group presents ‘The Sculpture Question’ conference in partnership with Folkestone Triennial and University for the Creative Arts, Canterbury.

In a post-medium art world, the term ‘sculpture’ still has resonance and significance for artists who continue to align themselves with its histories and challenges. Yet over the last half century the practice of sculpture has increasingly positioned itself in the realms of installation, architecture, performance and design. In these inter-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary contexts, how might sculpture, as a discipline of fine art, continue to be taught and defined today?

This conference, supported by ICR, will take the Folkestone Triennial as its case study, while looking back at significant historical precedents, such as Sculpture Projects Münster, Chambres d’Amis and Culture in Action. In these contexts, this conference will seek to argue that sculpture is always political and space is never neutral.

Keynote speakers: Nicolas Bourriaud, Director of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and curator of Taipei Biennial 2014; Penelope Curtis, Director, Tate Britain; Mary Jane Jacob, Executive Director of Exhibitions and Exhibitions Studies, School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Independent Curator.

Speakers: Amina Menia; Jordan Baseman; Claire Doherty; Anouchka Grose; Emma Hart; Anthony Heywood; Anna Moszynska; Terry Perk; Dominic Rahtz; Shelley Sacks; Iain Sinclair; Sarah Staton; Gilda Williams; Jon Wood.

One day: £15 / £10 concessions
Both days: £20 / £15 concessions
Ticket prices include tea and coffee, and a glass of wine at the drinks reception.

To book your ticket, please visit: http://www.folkestonetriennial.org.uk/the-sculpture-question/

 

ICR was selected under the European Cross-border Cooperation Programme INTERREG IVA France (Channel) – England, co-funded by the ERDF