News: Art students gain live experience at internationally renowned venue
Thirty Fine Art Degree students from Nottingham College are gaining a unique insight into how a public gallery works by creating an installation for the prestigious Djanogly Gallery, Nottingham Lakeside Arts, from 26th January to 10th February.
The installation will accompany the current exhibition by 20th century painter Harold Gilman, renowned for his paintings of English domestic situations. His regular subjects include living spaces, wallpaper, curtains, urban space buildings, furniture and women, often sitting in isolation. Each student is developing a square floor work as a visual response to the main exhibition and its wider theme.
Taking the exhibition as a departure point rather than script, the students are making meaningful connections to the domestic subject, using a range of different mediums, including: drawing, paint, photography, textiles, graphics and mixed media sculpture.
Fine Art Lecturer, Tom Hackett, said: “This is a first-rate opportunity for our students to gain live experience of showing in an internationally recognised venue. Working with Lakeside Arts will give the students a fantastic understanding of how a public gallery works in connecting with its audience, as well as a great first rung on their future careers as artists.
“Using a modular floor grid structure, the installation promises to create a dynamic viewer encounter, similar to a birds-eye view, into the complexities and curiosities of home life both past and present. The content will vary from the absurd to the intimate and from the personal to the political.”
Student, Talitha Kukk-Smith, said:
I’m really excited to have our work shown alongside a first-rate artist, in such a fantastic space.
— Talitha Kukk-Smith
Richard Hyde, 54, enrolled at Nottingham College after selling his creative businesses. He now hopes to become a full-time artist. He said:
Working for a real client at such a renowned venue gave us a window into the real art world. It was a short project with a tight deadline and we had to work around the logistics and constraints of the brief, which was a valuable insight into the industry and what will be expected of us.
“I produced a painting for the exhibition using acrylic and DIY filler, it’s actually only the fourth painting I’ve ever done, so it’s out of my comfort zone, but my lecturer encouraged me to give it a go and I’m really pleased with the result. I hope the public enjoy what I’ve created.
— Richard Hyde
Learning Officer, Ruth Lewis-Jones, is always looking for new ways to make Djanogly Gallery relevant and appealing to young people. She says this about the partnership with Nottingham College: “I am thrilled that staff and students at Nottingham College have responded so positively to this opportunity, and I am really looking forward to seeing their visual ideas, and also observing the public reaction.“
Also showing in the adjacent space will be a series of small-scale mini houses and chair designs by Nottingham College students studying the Level 3 Diploma in 3D Design and Architecture, looking at domesticity from a design perspective.
This free-to-view exhibition is open to the public from Saturday 26th January to Sunday 10th February 2019, Tues to Sat 11 – 5pm and Sundays 12 – 4pm (Closed on Mondays). Students will be on site every day during the installation to discuss their work with visitors.
Published on:
- 14th January 2019 (9:00 AM)
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