THIS IS WAS

JUMP IN! THE FESTIVAL SEASON HAS BEGUN

African rhythms, submerged spaces and an invasion of prehistoric puppets, and there’s alot more to look forward to in the coming weeks.

Yes it’s that time again when the city comes alive for several weeks (16 days) as Norfolk and Norwich Festival brings a plethora of different artists of all kinds to this fine city for an art extravaganza encompassing all that is wonderful in the visual arts, performing arts and most other arts in between.



So far I have had the pleasure of witnessing a spectacular opening performance, an invasion of sublime monstrous creations roaming the city and giving those lucky enough to be dining at the Pizza Express in the Forum the perfect view of the performance as it unfolded outside the Forum in front of the masses of people that had packed into the area, and I mean masses. This was an emphatic and overwhelming launch of the festival that demonstrates the interest and enjoyment that the oft-maligned and marginalised arts can generate amongst people, young and old, interested in art or otherwise. That in itself, as a fervent supporter of the arts and its importance to society, particularly in these less than satisfactory economic times (only the understatement of the century there) was a rewarding sight.



Prehistoric puppets returned in the smaller (only just) form of the wonderfully titled ‘Dinosaur Petting Zoo’. I have no shame in admitting that, despite my advancing years, I love dinosaurs, Triceratops is my favourite since you asked, T-Rex is overrated. Dinosaurs capture my imagination and it was again pleasing to see that they also captured seemingly every child in Norwich and beyonds imaginations too as they congregated en-masse in the Festival Gardens (Chapelfield Gardens for those that haven’t yet noticed the transformation) for a ‘fun for all the family’ performance of some incredibly well designed and well manoeuvred dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures.

Since then I have seen the SCVA’s portion of Bill Viola’s ‘Submerged Spaces’ which is sublime. I don’t normally take too well to video installations for some reason, but Viola’s work is magnificent. I lost myself in the submerged dark abyss as a clothed man plunged into water (see the image at the top of the article) and remained there, somewhat spellbound by the slow-motion immersion. I suggest you also take the plunge, if you pardon the pun, and see this for yourself.

My final forays into the festival have come in the form of eclectic African rhythms being played out in the Spiegeltent and the Theatre Royal respectively. Firstly the trance-like hypnotic sounds of JuJu caressed my eardrums before Bombino’s breathtaking guitar work left all within the Theatre Royal similarly spellbound.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzWBow0OAeA

So there you have it, the Norfolk and Norwich Festival is here, get involved and enjoy it. Norwich feels so much better when the Festival atmosphere envelops it.

http://www.nnfestival.org.uk/index.php

Text by Matthew Goodbun

Morag Keil: Civil War at OUTPOST

Morag Keil, presents Civil War, in the Scottish artist’s first exhibition in Norwich. Following on from shows at both the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (in conjunction with her 2010 FIAC Lafayette Prize award) and ‘Virginia Ham’ at Neuer Aachener Kunstverein in Aachen, Keil has just finished at OUTPOST Gallery. Keil was previously commissioned for a solo off-site project in Southend-on-Sea’s city centre, with Focal Point Gallery entitled ‘Public Hanging’. The artist returns to the subject of discord between contemporary art and the public sphere, implementing sensory and architectural synergism alongside images and audio. Kneading an afferent space fluctuating between the familiar and unknown, Keil uses the structural features in the gallery to suspend her work. Speakers play recordings capturing the acoustics in Norwich’s own commercial banks, whilst French online adverts are interspersed in the partitioned areas of the gallery.

At OUTPOST, Keil continued her experimentations with sound zoning and engineered areas within the gallery, to create a discombobulated atmosphere. Two speakers blast out tracks ripped from the artist’s experience of walking round Rye Lane. Her decision to edit in Internet advertisements with Rye Lane was to consider the boundaries of reality and the digital and, subsequently, copy the experience of pop-up ads, which are often companions to online media. Cuts from the fighting game Tekken with recordings of rollercoaster rides were chosen to heighten entertainment and consider the violence in these arcade videos. Each of the three themes are displayed with left and right speakers.

Keil pays particular attention to the antagonistic qualities found in entertainment, and does so by isolating sounds which reveal masculine and feminine versions, particularly when character Bryan Fury beats up Lili. The ‘cartoonified’ noises, along with the heightened volume, are disconcerting reminders of how these otherwise serious experiences are considered entertaining and competitive activities. In conversation with OUTPOST’s Alex Waters, Keil discloses how the spaces in which she exhibits are often the platforms for her political ambitions. The artist sees Outpost’s position as an institution, run with relative freedom, as mirroring her ambitions for a positive and free-thinking artistic environment.

The breast imprints are the first to be seen within the gallery. Upon entering the rest of the gallery it is easy to assume that these works have no relation, but considering Keil’s involvement with feminism, political and social disparity and unionism, it becomes clear that each piece is unified. Keil sees her own anatomy as a body-politic, representative of freedom and restriction; personal and performative. In much the same way that her sound installations demonstrate the intense environment in which we live, her prints are confrontational and explicit to the dual purpose the female body is considered within society.

By consciously adopting OUTPOST as an integral part within her own work, the parameters of practice and politics are not only clouded, but also heightened through the audio and visual experience within the gallery’s four walls. The intention to demonstrate her body as both mechanical and yielding, in turn, reverberates the dual purpose of OUTPOST as facilitator and participant.

Words by Holly Howarth.

The Future of Yesterday: An Artist-Curator Collaboration Project

I recently worked on an exhibition with Hannah Drake, a Fine Arts student at University Campus Suffolk. One of her second year modules was entitled ‘Professional Practice’ and encouraged collaboration projects with people from a variety of different fields. Hannah asked me whether I would be interested in being the curator for a display of her paintings, which would be based on a theme we would decide together. This would give me the opportunity to put my gallery and curatorship knowledge into practice (I’m currently studying History of Art with Gallery and Museum Studies), whilst learning what it is like to work in a partnership/with clientele. The knowledge we would exchange and gain made the project sound all the more interesting.

After a number of meetings, we settled on the theme of ‘The Future of Yesterday’. This would explore the idea of technological development and what the world would be like if we had the technology of the future in the past. As a point of focus, we took the Art Deco period and incorporated the concept of a futuristic ‘Steampunk’ world. ‘Steampunk’ is a sub-genre of science fiction and fantasy, primarily including the social aspects of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries and often emphasising ideas far beyond the time period.

Let’s go to the fair!    (2012)

Hannah Drake

Acrylic on canvas, 40 x 50 cm

The biggest challenge we had was finding a suitable space to exhibit the series of paintings, especially as it would be quite short notice in order to meet the module’s deadline. Ultimately we decided to find somewhere in Norwich as there is a wider variety of alternative spaces than in Ipswich, where University Campus Suffolk is located. We sent out a vast number of emails to various places explaining our project, but the most suitable and appropriate for our exhibition requirements was Frank’s Bar in Bedford Street. The venue changes their wall art every couple of weeks and kindly offered us a short period in between two larger exhibitions.

The exhibition ran from the 7^th to the 13^th May, and we were really pleased with the final product. Both of us have learned a lot from the experience and have very much enjoyed the process of taking an initial idea and turning it into a reality. Hannah’s paintings worked well within Frank’s’ décor and atmosphere, and the feedback has been positive. Working on an artist-curator collaboration project has been a great experience and is definitely something I would be interested in doing again should the opportunity arise.

Beth Drewett,

Second Year, WAM undergraduate

Review of Museums in New York

Back at the start of March I spent 2 weeks in New York, attending the UN Commission on the Status of Women with the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. I took the opportunity of my weekends in this fabulous city to explore a few of the bigger and smaller museums. Over my first weekend I visited 3 museums: the Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum, and the Museum of Sex.

The Museum of Sex is most definitely overpriced and draws in a wide range of tourists simply based on the subject matter it portrays. The galleries present some interesting inclusions and omissions – for example an exhibit about online searches presents images of the top 100 searched porn interests. In this display, all are represented with an image of the phenomenon in question apart from ‘rape’ which is depicted using a ‘real men don’t rape’ image. Other images did include other illegal acts such as bestiality. Elsewhere, a gallery about the moving image in porn made no judgement about the use or lack of in the porn industry.

The Museum of Modern Art exhibition I went to see, ‘Sweet Violence’, included interesting pieces about women, their rights and cosmetics as a controlling force. My favourite was a participatory piece where a text from Amnesty International on the USA’s lack of ratification of CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of all Discrimination Against Women) was printed on red paper, screwed into balls and strewn around the floor of the gallery. Some visitors ignored it completely, others picked it up, unfolded and read it, but ultimately the paper had to be re-folded and thrown back onto the floor with a sense of disregard for women’s rights. Due to my personal political stance and a forewarning of what the texts were, I picked it up and read the paper. Screwing it back up and putting it on the floor seemed completely unnatural as I hold women’s rights in such high regard, and I was filled with a tremendous sense of discomfort at the process.

I then fell in love with the Brooklyn Museum. Partly because sections of its collection parallel the Sainsbury Centre – which I had grown fond of in a familiar way over my time there – but mainly because of the Elizabeth Sackler Centre for Feminist Art. My favourite work of art ever now has to be ‘The Dinner Party’ by Judy Chicago which forms the centre piece of these galleries. It takes a great deal of immediate emotional attachment for me to spend $50 on the exhibition catalogue.

On the final Saturday, before leaving New York, we did a whistle-stop tour including: The 9/11 memorial preview site; The Skyscraper Museum; Battery Park (including Castle Clinton); The Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian.

I found the 9/11 memorial preview site exhibition interesting, and it treated its subject matter in a very similar way to a UNICEF exhibition on the Japanese tsunami. There was no mention, consideration or discussion of the cause of the event other than noting that ‘planes’ hit the ‘towers’ i.e. alike to the devastation caused by the tsunami wave. The organisation and display of the chosen exhibits were clearly designed to provoke emotions such as sympathy, respect and consolation rather than an understanding of the event in any kind of geo-political framework. Only a decade on, this is a site of memory, not yet objectified as history. This display is also focused on resonance with location based identities: New Yorkers, Americans and ‘Westerners’. There is simply no representation of an “other” in any form. The exhibition could as easily be talking about an accident as a terrorist attack.

The Skyscraper Museum came with the caveat from an ill-tempered staff member as being unfinished. As such the already minimal admission fee was halved. As two geographers we were drawn to maps, diagrams and scale models. The mirrored ceiling giving the illusion of a double height space was an interesting feature. A time line of related engineering feats opened a number of discussion points about architecture and city layout, and a scale model of Manhattan could have been given greater prominence within the exhibition – rather segments of it were located at different points around the space. This would have given a focal point which was otherwise lacking. Near what turned out to be the end of the exhibition was a section on the world trade center site. Compared to the previous exhibition it gave an interesting perspective on the effect of the architecture of one building on a skyline and thus the problematic nature of deciding what to replace them with after their destruction.

Battery Park, as the home of the Liberty Island Ferry, appears to be a glorified holding area for tourists. The interpretation panels around the park do give useful information about the bay area, and it was intriguing to learn that Castle Clinton has at different times been an administrative office, fort and aquarium. I find the trend to stop people from easily accessing grass area in parks in New York to be a little odd.

Though we visited the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian for less than 20 minutes in total, I gleaned a lot of previously unknown information about the native population of the New York area from a free booklet aimed at 10-14 year old visitors. As an institution I can imagine they have a wealth of conservation issues as their collections are almost exclusively organic materials, and most of them textiles. The guide I picked up gave fascinating insights into the effect of the native populations on the contemporary geography of the city. I learned why Broadway takes the route it does and why Wall Street is so called. It also struck me how the floor plan mirrors the British Museum on a smaller scale. This is intriguing as the British Museum floor plan evolved organically and had little planned architectural design in its creation.

New York has hundreds of museums to offer and I look forward to another visit to discover even more!

Pippa Gardner, WAM Postgraduate

Debating ‘World Art Studies’ and globalism in Art History

For those of you interested in issues concerning World Art, globalism and art history, then maybe you might find this lecture of interest…

Current Unresolved Issues Regarding Globalism in Art History
James Elkins (School of the Art Institute of Chicago)

Saturday 7 July 2012, 4.00pm, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, The Courtauld Institute of Art, booking necessary.

In the last decade the question of art history’s global reach – or lack of it – has appeared as an inescapable topic for art history. As the discipline of art history wakens to the possibility of worldwide art historical writing, it also becomes more seriously engaged with postcolonial theory, critical theory, anthropology, visual studies, cultural studies, and subaltern studies, all of which have been intermittently or continuously interested in art practices outside of Europe and North America. This lecture reports on some recent attempts to understand the phenomenon, including the Clark Art Institute’s Mellon project to study world art histories; the books Is Art History Global? and World Art Studies; the 2007 Stone Summer Theory Institute Series Art and Globalization; and a conference in Beijing in May 2010.

INTERVIEW WITH AN MA STUDENT: MATTHEW GOODBUN

Why did you choose UEA? (both times!)

I chose UEA for my undergraduate degree for the very obvious allure of studying in the SCVA and the ‘World Art’ approach to teaching as my interest has always been in non-Western ‘art’ rather than what you could refer to as ‘traditional’ art historical subject areas. In addition to this I was also drawn to UEA for the live music scene and the fantastic array of bands that have graced Norwich in the last five years I have now lived and studied here.

What was your favourite exhibition/object at the SCVA?

Blimey, I have seen a few exhibitions at the SCVA, I particularly enjoyed ChinaChinaChina!!! because of the fantastic array of contemporary art from China, Eye Music because Wasily Kandinsky’s work featured heavily and he is one of my favourite artists, and Martin Bloch because it was the first exhibition I saw at the SCVA on a UEA Visit Day. As for objects, there’s the Rarotongan Staff God and the Kuba Dance Mask in the Living Area which I have studied at various stages throughout my degrees which are two of my favourites.

How are you finding the MA?

The Sainsbury Research Unit MA in the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas has been fantastic. It is such a focused course which I had been hoping to do since I started my undergraduate degree (History of Art with Year Abroad in North America or Australasia). There isn’t a course like it and it has greatly broadened and strengthened my knowledge of the areas in terms of Archaeology and Anthropology in particular. I have studied African and Oceanic art during my undergraduate degree but through this MA I have developed a strong interest in the Northwest Coast of America. I would highly recommend the MA to anyone with an interest in any or all of these areas, or for someone wanting to immerse themselves in non-Western art.

Did you get to go on any fieldwork trips or gain relevant work experience through your studies at WAM?

My undergraduate module choices did not result in any fieldwork trips but I have gained a considerable amount of relevant work experience in WAM throughout my time here. I assisted with the creation of the Education and Resources area of the ChinaChinaChina!!! exhibition at the SCVA, curated my own exhibition of works from the University Collection as part of an undergraduate module called ‘Exhibitions and Experience’, worked on the SCVA’s Culture of the Countryside project on the ‘COAST’ festival which enabled me to work with Maori artists Rosanna Raymond and George Nuku, the latter I interviewed for my undergraduate dissertation. Basically you get out what you put in, as with most things. There are a vast array of opportunities at the SCVA, in Norwich and the wider Norfolk region. It is up to you to get in contact with people and get involved, but there is plenty of arts experience to be gained through your studies at WAM certainly. I have also been on numerous trips as part of my MA, to the Pitt Rivers Museum, the Museé du Quai Branly, the Horniman Museum and the British Museum.

What was your year abroad in New Zealand like?

I could throw every cliché at my year abroad that you care to read, it was “life-changing” etc, etc. It was an incredible experience, studying Maori and Pacific art, travelling around New Zealand, as well as trips to Tonga and Australia. During my time there I went into glow-worm caves, abseiled, went tramping, skiing, went to the Wellington Sevens rugby tournament, and saw the All Blacks versus Australia in the Tri-Nations. The whole experience was worthwhile, daunting at first, but after a few weeks I had become accustomed to living and studying in Wellington, which is a wonderful city, full of museums and galleries and much more besides. I did the vast majority of the research for my undergraduate dissertation on contemporary Maori art, specifically wood-carving, whilst I was there, gaining valuable contacts and learning the basics of Te Reo (Maori language). There is so much to be gained from a year abroad, although it is not for everyone, so give it careful consideration but certainly be open to the idea.

Maori Wood Carving

What advice would you give to someone thinking about studying at WAM?

Quite simply, go for it. You won’t regret the decision. I have had a fantastic experience and I can’t speak highly enough of WAM. I have spent five years here and they have provided me with so many opportunities that I simply would not have been afforded at other institutions. Studying under a Norman Foster-designed roof surrounded by the art and artefacts that are normally only viewed within the pages of books on a daily basis is unbeatable. I don’t tire of wandering around the SCVA and studying the plethora of works on display. It is just a brilliant place to study for a History of Art degree (and all of the other variants that WAM offer). A piece of advice would be to not make a decision before you have taken a look around the SCVA, both the gallery and the teaching spaces and see for yourself how good the facilities are here in WAM for studying.

Where You Had Been

 

 

Saturday 12 May 2012 at 6pm (£3)
World Art & Museology Lecture Theatre (enter via World Art & Museology entrance)
Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich

A quest for the core of things, these six films circle the phenomenal and essential.

Framed by two luminous works by the Orcadian poet Margaret Tait which summon the wild and elemental, films by Peter Todd and Nick Collins by contrast tackle the resolutely quotidian, bounded spaces of the domestic interior and the garden, yet in doing so reveal the wonder within; a world of enchantment.

The screening will be introduced by artist and curator Peter Todd, who will take questions afterwards. A programme with full film notes will be available on the night.

For more information, including film notes and biographies of the artists, visit http://promontories.org / to reserve a seat, e-mail info@promontories.org

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This is the first ever screening of Nick Collins’ film Dark Garden. Co-curated by the artists, with Adam Pugh. Many thanks to both Peter Todd and Nick Collins for making this screening possible; also to Ben Cook, LUX, and Simon Dell, School of World Art & Museology. All proceeds go to the artists to partly cover expenses.

Peterborough Museum Re-Opens After A 15 Month Refurbishment!

On Saturday 31st March I headed off to see Tony Robinson (of Time Team and Blackadder fame) reopen the museum in my hometown of Peterborough. After a brief speech about how he hopes the new galleries will engage children particularly we were ushered inside by an eclectic group of costumed staff – medieval monks, Napoleonic soldiers an roman centurions amongst the group.

On the ground floor a refitted shop and new signage greets the visitor, with gorgeous restored Georgian room on your right housing a relocated museum café (with free wifi). The layout of the current temporary exhibition (a touring Superhero one from Stevenage Museum) is confusing and the exhibits seem rushed - with poorly constructed interactives - but perhaps this issue will be resolved once staff are dedicated to the exhibition programme rather than renovating permanent galleries.

We then headed up to the top floor to work our way back down the building. The Changing Lives Gallery gives a fascinating look at the changes to life in the city over the last 200 years and I loved some of the very robust interactives and the interpretation at different levels for children and adults. There’s an interesting clocking-in activity that identifies the multitudes of products made by people from Peterborough, and a simple city-centre future planning table where you allocate blocks to areas on a map to envisage the city you want to see in the future – a very tactile way to get people think about urban geography! Across the way the Norman Cross Gallery, relating to the Napoleonic prisoner of war camp near the city, was so heaving with visitors we only briefly looked at an exquisite carved palace. Children were engaged with all sorts of activities and exploring a lesser-known part of the history of this New Town.

Back down the stairs we passed several panels interpreting the history of the building itself – originally a family home, it became a hospital in the late 1800s and then transformed into a museum for the city just before the second world war. To help understand this heritage, the refurb has seen the opening up of an original Victorian operating theatre offering a great educational opportunity for visiting GCSE history groups to explore the history of medicine. This is carried through to the first floor where the newly opened up ‘Surgeon’s Office’ has a very beautiful touch-screen interactive with four screens set into a desk, that allows visitors to explore the history of the building thematically through time, or via a floor plan of the building.

The Wildlife, Ice Age and Geological galleries on this floor have all been redone to a superb standard. For somebody who is only mildly interested in natural history I found the displays engaging and there was a really clear narrative through the three galleries starting with dinosaur fossils and progressing through woolly mammoths to butterflies and a red brick house. Another touch screen interactive explores the types of habitat around the city and what creatures you might find there at different times of the year.

Then we came to the ‘First Peoples Gallery’ a poorly titled gallery about the archaeology of the city from first settlement through to medieval times – and I was extremely disappointed. Compared to the high standard of the renovation in the rest of the museum this gallery wasn’t even an afterthought, nothing has changed and it seems to mark pre-industrial archaeology apart as not a priority for effective presentation or interpretation. The simple mechanical interactive were broken, several lights were out (including a short-circuit which clicked ominously overhead), and interpretation was offered in the form of torn, office-printer produced pages in acrylic holders marred by mismatching fonts. As a part-archaeologist, who wrote her undergraduate dissertation on the presentation of the wealth of roman archaeology in the city, I was severely disappointed with the complete lack of effort put into this gallery. 

But on a more positive note, we then returned to the ground floor to visit the City Gallery – one of Peterborough’s very few art galleries. The current exhibition was better laid out than the Superheroes one next door, and presented photographs by a well-known local amateur photographer. It offered  glimpse of the city in the 70s through to the present day with images for sale, but the feature of the exhibition were a number of works first taken in the 80s and recreated recently with the same people in the same locations – a fascinating exploration of changes to people and the city through photographs. 

We finished our visit, as every visit should, with a visit to the gift shop. Nicely fitted out though offering a limited selection of products, the quality and value of their stock was extremely variable. The shop assistant was extremely enthusiastic when my sister was the first purchaser of a woolly mammoth stuffed toy – I can’t fault their customer service, but there were an awful lot of staff on hand to cope with the amount of visitors during their first day of opening after 15 months.  I thoroughly recommend this museum as a great way to explore the heritage of Peterborough, and the free entry is a definite bonus! Though perhaps if pre-19th century archaeology is the only thing you want to visit, maybe give it a while to see if there are any improvements to that gallery in the future. Else it’s a great lesson on how not to display archaeology for any museologists.

Pippa Gardner, MA Museum Studies Student