END OF YEAR FOUNDATION SHOW 2010

To all Foundation students, congratulations and thank you for the outstanding contribution you made to the end of year exhibition and open evening. The teaching staff were delighted by the maturity and the diligence that most of you displayed in bringing together your installations for the show. The private view evening was a busy affair and considered a great success. Many new visitors commented positively on the diversity, creativity and quality of the work displayed.
All of the team here had an enjoyable and rewarding time teaching you this year, and wish you the very best of luck for the future.
Warm wishes Sue, Colette, Barbara and Graham

Dates for your diary

Well this is it folks, the final furlong. Just so you don't forget here is those important dates to remember in the run up to your final show.

Tuesday 25th
The big clean up...all student and communal spaces need to be cleared in preparation for show

Wednesday 26th
Begin to hang exhibition, all student displays must be up for 4pm

Thursday 27th
Essay and final evaluations submitted. Place in your exhibition space


Private view of show Tuesday 15th June 6 - 8.30pm
Pick up work Thurday 1st July before 4pm

Good luck everyone!

http://www.nottinghamvisualarts.net/writing/feb-10/ian-breakwell-elusive-states-happiness

Ian Breakwell: walking Man

http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/chrisofili/default.shtm

Chris Ofili's exhibition at Tate Britain contains some highly provocative paintings. We will visit the show when we are in London. This video sees Ofili contemplating his own work; how growing up in Britain in the 70's and 80's has affected his progress and where he sees himself in the future. In 1998 he won the Turner Prize and in 2003 he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale.

http://http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/feb/10/don-mccullin-review Don McCullen's photographs should be seen by all!

Help one of last years students creat a piece of work for his Illustration course at Central St. Martins. Please see below: http://tragicglamour.co.uk/

One last thing... I have a new site for my latest project at CSM ( http://tragicglamour.co.uk/ ) if you could promote it to any staff/students I need people to email me their little disappointments to gallery@tragicglamour.co.uk so I can create a visual response and upload it to the site, its all explained on the website. Thank you David Lynn

We will be having an exhibition at Kirkby Library from the 15th March to 6th June 2010 and we are inviting you to submit work for this.
Mindful that you will need your best work for your portfolio, you might consider submitting prints or photographs.

Sue

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5wHMgTPF-s

Contextual Studies 4/2/10

JAN SVANKMAJER

'Shock and incomprehension are probably the first reactions to the films of Jan Svankmajer. The imagery is violent, witty and disturbing in its transformations and juxtapositions of objects, materials and beings. The humour is black and the editing rhythm's sharp and remorseless. Moreover, for Westerners, the films don't fit readily into any tradition, genre or filmic category:to describe Svankmajer simply as an animator would be misleading. His use of puppets and trick photography signals roots and references and an aesthetic that, at first, are deeply perplexing. The work induces a kind of critical and cultural trauma, and reveals a technical brilliance and soaring of imagination rare in cinema today.'

Michael O'Pray

(Monthly Film Bulletin no.630, July 1986)

Today's session will feature the Czech Surrealist filmaker Jan Svankmajer and the German animator Lotte Reiniger. Both taking the art of collage to extreme lengths.

Svankmajer is a prolific filmmaker who has made a steady stream of films from 1964 up until the present day. He is often named as being a big influence on today's subversive filmmakers Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, The brother Quay, and Shane Acker. (amongst others) One of the films I am going to show today 'Dimensions of Dialogue' (1980) was selected by Terry Gilliam as one of the '10 best animated films of all time.'

Svankmajer's films are often characterised by their exaggerated sounds, fast motion sequences, and stop-motion animation. His references weave through poetry and literature, and his obsessions are evident: effigies, disembowelment, bodily ruptures, cannibalism, disgorgement, surrealist lists and a macabre wit. Not too distant from Max Ernst's collages of fiendish and delectable nightmares, and reminiscent of the American surrealist Joseph Cornell's 'boxes'.

In 1972 Svankmajer was banned by the communist authorities from making films and many of his later films were also suppressed. As a result he didn't really come to prominence in the West until the 1980's.

LOTTE REINIGER

(1899-1981)

Altogether Reiniger has made nearly 60 films.

From the first, Reiniger was attracted to timeless fairy-tale stories for her animations. Cinderella and The Sleeping Beauty were among her earliest subjects. She made the specific animation technique of silhouette animation, her own. Taking the ancient art of shadow-plays, as perfected predominantly in China and Indonesia, and adapting it superbly for cinema.

The avant-garde artist and filmmaker Hans Richter was a life long friend and wrote of her that 'she belonged to the avant-garde as far as independent production and courage were concerned' even though the spirit of her work perhaps harked back to an early innocent age.

Her work seems particularly relevant today with the explosion of artists using card cut out techniques in their work, and significantly with the new exhibition of Afro Modern which has just opened at Tate Liverpool. Expressly influencing 'cut out' artists Kara Walker and Ellen Gallagher.

At the end of the Contextual studies session you are invited to post a comment about the fims shown.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI0ciYJKBxQ&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI0ciYJKBxQ&feature=related William Burroughs and Brion Gysin popularised the concept of cut-ups in the late 1950's and early 1960's but the action can be traced back as far as the 1920's when the Surrealists first played with the idea of "consequences" when Tristan Tzara offered to create a poem on the spot by pulling words randomly from a hat to build the poem from the act of chance. David Bowie and Kurt Cobaine revered Burroughs and quoted him as an influence on their writint. Cobaine recorded with Burroughs in fact.