Re:Call 7 Interview Denise Stanton

Art has left the Building

Re:Call Interview

Denise Stanton

1) When were you at Bournville School of Art?

2006-2008

2) What course did you study here?

Visual Art by Negotiated Study

3) Who were your tutors?

Ruth Claxton / Kelly Large / Jo Newman

4) What area did you specialize in?

Craft and Fine Art

5) What memories do you have of your first day at Bournville School of Art?

Daunting

6) What memories do you have of your final show at Bournville School of Art?

Exhilarating. It delivered everything that I had hoped it would.

7) What piece did you do for your final show at Bournville and could you describe it?

It was an installation piece, which was shown in a temporary environment created specifically to allow the work to be seen in its own context, unhindered by external narrative. The work explored the notion of clothing as a wearable shelter, an intimate private space accessible only to the wearer. The transitional item was surrounded by a series of panels, a framework that served as mechanisms to create an autonomous intimate space, distancing the viewer, but to emphasise the aspects of personal space and home. The openings served as fixed frames to offer pre-determined snapshots to view the work and collectively to offer a sense of movement. The aim was to create a sense of intimacy and enticement.  3 discreet monitors displayed a series of intimate sequential stills, which explored the narrative of occupancy and the connection to the body, becoming a catalyst for the invention of stories.

8) Could you give just five words to describe your experience at Bournville School of Art?

Challenging, intense, insightful, transforming, quirky

9) Could you indicate what creative activity you have done since your time at Bournville?

I now work as a freelance visual artist and have many creative experiences since my time at Bournville. I work on large scale projects within schools, I have collaborated with choreographers and musicians, to produce site specific performance pieces, I have provided many smaller intimate bespoke projects, I produce and exhibit my own work and I also work for a well known theatre company, installing artworks in and outside of the UK.

10) Could you describe your current creative practice/ideas/work?

I am hopefully about to begin experimenting and exploring a combination of new materials with felt, to see how and if they may work within a new site specific project that I am currently negotiating on. I have worked mainly with felt, for some time now and I keen to move this forward. I researched for a brief time at Loughborough University, using their amazing equipment and technology to hopefully help me to develop some ideas within my work. However, it is an ongoing and slow process at this time, due to work commitments.

11) Could you say a little about the work you have chosen to include in the Re:Call exhibition?

This piece was produced specifically for an exhibition called ‘Making Sense’. I was asked to produce 3 pieces to go into a sensory exhibition and this was one of them, the aim was for the audience to be able use all of their senses to explore the artwork. 

12) What are you working on at the moment?

I take it that we mean my artwork! As I mentioned above I am hoping to develop my ideas for a large-scale site-specific piece and I am also working on some experimental pieces to get the juices going!!

  

13) What are your creative plans for the future?

  

These are currently under review!

14) Is there anything else you would like to add?

  

I would like to say how happy I am to see such an industrious student as Amanda, taking on not only her own final piece, but also this exhibition, well done!

The space at Bournville allowed me the opportunity to work in a way that suited my lifestyle at the time. I was due to attend Loughborough University, but because of commitments I couldn’t make the journey. Ruth and Kelly were great tutors and I am sure that I must have driven them to distraction with the volume of ideas and sketchbooks, but they helped me to realise who I am and what I do and put it into context. I do also have to mention Jo Newman, who was a rock and a good sounding board, for my more textile and maker ideas, however, collectively they offered me the support to help me realise my own potential, so thank you!!

Re:Call 7 Interview Katy Connor

Art has left the Building

Re:Call Interview

Katy Connor

1) When were you at Bournville School of Art?

1996-7

2) What course did you study here?

Portfolio Foundation: 2 years, part-time

(First year was off-site in Sparkhill)

3) Who were your tutors?

Ted and Bob Jardine were my main tutors.

(Linda Matti set up the Portfolio course)

4) What area did you specialize in?

Fine Art Photography

5) What memories do you have of your first day at Bournville School of Art?

I loved it.

6) What memories do you have of your final show at Bournville School of Art?

5 of us independently set up our final show at the Custard Factory, “THRU”

We hired the space and prepped it, selecting works and invited everyone down for the PV. It was a real turning point for me in terms of collaborating and setting up artist-led stuff. I worked with 4 female Norwegian students, 2 of whom I’m still in touch with now - I’m going to Norway next month.

7) What piece did you do for your final show at Bournville and could you describe it?

3 series’ of large-scale, hand printed photographs.

8) Could you give just five words to describe your experience at Bournville School of Art?

Spent most of my time in the Darkroom

9) Could you indicate what creative activity you have done since your time at Bournville?

Worked in Video, film and TV production for 6 years, and taught creative video workshops in Birmingham schools/community centres etc.

Started to make my own work again, and completed my MA in 2009, at Dartington College of Arts, Devon (which has since been closed down)

Teaching Fine Art/Media: Falmouth University, Plymouth College of Art, and one year at Bournville with Sean O’Keefe and Steve Bulcock in 2006/7. 

Now have a studio at Spike Island, Bristol (since 2010)

Practice-based PhD candidate in Experimental Media (2015)

10) Could you describe your current creative practice/ideas/work?

My practice explores the poetics of media technologies; their capacity to infuse the senses and visualise patterns of thought and physical sensation - especially those at the edge of articulation, on the periphery of vision, behind closed eyes.

11) Could you say a little about the work you have chosen to include in the Re:Call exhibition?

Afterglow (2007) is a collage of digital and VHS video, super 8mm film, medical ultrasound and an electro-acoustic composition - made in collaboration with sound artist Helena Gough.

I wanted to address perspectives and power relations that were embodied in certain technology and media and also I became a little obsessed with this structure of Spaghetti Junction – as a kind of monolith, as a body, and a site of fertile leakage in the city. So Spaghetti Junction becomes this metaphor, explored and probed by different lenses…

Afterglow was a very intuitive collaborative process – we simply passed film and audio materials back and forth to each other, building these layers of sound and image that then started to fuse together into a kind of structure.

Supported by VIVID, Birmingham Centre for Media Arts

12) What are you working on at the moment?

A series of works that explore scale and space, through microscopy, satellite imagery and 3D print.

13) What are your creative plans for the future?

My PhD gives me the opportunity to explore and develop new work over the next 18 months. I’m very fortunate as I received funding from AHRC to complete it over 3 years.

14) Is there anything else you would like to add?

...

Re:Call 6 Interview Emily Warner

Art has left the Building

Re:Call Interview

Emily Warner

1) When were you at Bournville School of Art?

I studied a full time degree, graduating in 2005

2) What course did you study here?

BA Hons Art & Design by Negotiated Study

3) Who were your tutors?

Kevin Harley, Alf Pendleton, Bob Jardine amongst others

4) What area did you specialize in?

Intervention, installation, sound

5) What memories do you have of your first day at Bournville School of Art?

Wondering where all the people were, baked potatoes and pepper sachets.

6) What memories do you have of your final show at Bournville School of Art?

Relief and achievement. Excitement and fear.

7) What piece did you do for your final show at Bournville and could you describe it?

Exploring psychological shifts in awareness, with a particular interest in film sets, I devised a vacated scenario in the gatehouse and a sound intervention in the Courtyard. Dislocated ringing from unseen telephones bellowed out in the courtyard, whilst in the gatehouse an off the hook telephone spewed out a dial tone punctured with fractured interference and a suggestion of intrusion. The piece was titled ‘Phone Rings’ and it went on to be shown in the Midwest graduate showcase that year. Michelle Cotton from S1 artspace wrote this about the piece:

‘In the darkness there's a low sound. A pool of yellow light on a desk shows a typewriter, a stack of paper and an old phone, receiver off the hook and broadcasting an unbroken dial tone. The typescript reads ominously ''phone rings...''. Is the narrative fragment in Emily Warner's installation begining or end? Are we being invited to imagine what drama follows or peice together a story of something that has already taken place?’

8) Could you give just five words to describe your experience at Bournville School of Art?

Fundamental / Relationships / Liberating / Forging / Directional

9) Could you indicate what creative activity you have done since your time at Bournville?

Since graduating I have worked as a creative facilitator within an educational context and developed working relationships with a group of artists as the Hive collective making and showcasing work whenever possible. I blog about things here and archive stuff here.

10) Could you describe your current creative practice/ideas/work?

I am currently developing a body of work created throughout a yearlong collaborative project called Chain Reaction. With an interest in gesture, motive, shift and change I am now exploring ways in which we interact and respond to our surroundings, and the parallels that exist between our ways of being and the external environment. I am exploring the medium of film as an output to work with and revisiting my interest in the use of sound and audio.

11) Could you say a little about the work you have chosen to include in the Re:Call exhibition?

I have presented a film sketch I created during the Chain Reaction project. Re:Call has provided an ideal framework for me to reconnect with this particular enquiry which engages the changing light of a traffic signal in a metaphorical sense. In line with the time frame within which the art faculty has operated at Bournville I have presented a loop of film timed at 11min 11sec.  I’m particularly interested in how this relates to my focus on shift and change, comings and goings – a vacated street saturated with the cycle of shifting illuminated instructions. I have given the piece a working title of ‘Untitled Agenda’ and have utilised a blank reel out of date office paper as a backdrop for the projection. I am excited about the fact that the film, the paper and the frame structure will generate new narratives once in situ, and work in dialogue with Rebecca Gamble’s work (we studied our BA together at Bournville).

12) What are you working on at the moment?

I am currently collating the collective work I have been engaged in with Hive and seeking opportunities to showcase our practice on a wider scale. I have also instated a change of direction within my current professional activity in order to focus more deeply on my personal practice and forge opportunities in new directions. So currently happily lost in the present.

13) What are your creative plans for the future?

I am starting to devise projects that will place creative activity and output in new contexts, and explore the relationship between art and leisure. I am searching out residency opportunities and continuing to produce new work in line with my current enquiries.

14) Is there anything else you would like to add?

It’s a wonderful coincidence that at a time when I have pressed the ‘reset’ button on my motion, I have found myself back where I started - reconnecting with the foundations that put me in the creative position I am now. The short story featured here by Jonathan Nolan, heavily influenced my Chain Reaction research. It wasn’t until recently that I realised it was also the basis for the film Memento which directly informed my degree work ‘Phone Rings’. I have been revisiting a lot of my early processes, references and concepts during recent projects, and it has reiterated the significance of the arts education I received at Bournville. I am grateful to have been invited to be a part of this project and the reflection it has afforded on my practice.

Re:Call 6 Interview Rebecca Gamble

Art has left the Building

Re:Call Interview

Rebecca Gamble

1) When were you at Bournville School of Art?

2002 - 2005

2) What course did you study here?

BA Art and Design by Negotiated Study

3) Who were your tutors?

Kevin Harley, Bob Jardine and Alf Pendleton. Tutorials with Nigel Prince, Kelly Large, Tom and Simon Bloor.

4) What area did you specialize in?

I experimented throughout the course really, but mostly worked with traditional and digital photography, installation, and in my final year, interventions.

5) What memories do you have of your first day at Bournville School of Art?

I don’t recall my first day exactly, but I do remember my first visit to Bournville School of Art for my interview very well. I was 17 years old and at a delicate point in my education, ready to give it up altogether due to not suiting an academically driven sixth form college. I was the last to be interviewed that day and was surprised to be met by seven interviewers. I had a lively and friendly conversation with them about my work and artist influences and remember leaving very high spirited.

6) What memories do you have of your final show at Bournville School of Art?

Preparing for the final show I remember lots of trips to Wickes and Express Polythene in Digbeth, chatting and smoking roll-ups with my tutor and chasing fellow students for their postcards for the catalogue.

7) What piece did you do for your final show at Bournville and could you describe it?

Information Point Service

Information Point Service was a functional, yet fictional information point constructed in IPS: International Project Space. The seemingly authentic construction was situated near the entrance to the gallery space, where an information point is typically situated, however the construction was left un-painted, hinting to its inauthenticity. Originally it intended to create a space in which the audience could encounter books made capturing a series of observations and interventions in Birmingham. It later became much more interactive with the site, other graduates and audience. Throughout the weeklong exhibition I added information to the installation and interacted with gallery visitors – offering fictional tours of the final show exhibition and hand-made exhibition catalogues.

8) Could you give just five words to describe your experience at Bournville School of Art?

Experimental, playful, supportive, self-motivated, valuable.

9) Could you indicate what creative activity you have done since your time at Bournville?

I studied MA Interactive Art and Design at University College Falmouth and after graduating undertook a period of practice-research as an associate artist at University of Worcester as part of the National AA2A scheme, supported by CHEAD and Arts Council England. During this period I participated in the temporary pubic art exhibition Two and a Half Hours of Oxygen in Birmingham.

After moving to Nottingham in 2008 I began working at Surface Gallery, an independent art gallery supporting early-mid career artists and later joined the committee (2008-2011) to develop the exhibition programme, artist studios and residencies. In 2009 I began a practice-as-research PhD in the School of Art and Design at Nottingham Trent University.

I am currently based between Nottingham and Worcester; working from an artist studio and a member of the board of directors at Primary, an artist-led space in Nottingham that exists to support creative research and to develop new ways of engaging with audiences, and teaching New Media and Professional Practice at University of Worcester.

I archive my practice and exhibitions on my website.

10) Could you describe your current creative practice/ideas/work?

I would say that my work operates in the practical and theoretical sphere of interactivity, bringing into play modes of social exchange, audience engagement, and participatory performance. I work site-responsively and approach urban and online spaces as my playground and stage, intervening with tactics, actions and games.

In my current practice-as-research, the convivial mode of hospitality is tested as an artistic methodology to activate audiences in participation and radical investigation. Using a playful, participatory and performative practice, I am researching how we live, relate and interact in virtual environments while addressing the theories, ‘tactics’ and ‘constructed situations’ of Michel de Certeau and Guy Debord. This practice-as-research has so far included a speed-dating event with avatars between a physical and virtual café, an experimental dance workshop using the gestures menu from Second Life, and performative interventions as Mariela, my digital avatar.

11) Could you say a little about the work you have chosen to include in the Re:Call exhibition?

I have chosen to share the traces and documentation of a live intervention as my digital avatar Mariela, which took place in a café during an art festival in Nottingham, Mariela: cmd, click, control. The piece followed a series of practice-led research into how we communicate online, focusing on the virtual world of Second Life in which avatars communicate mostly through a menu of gestures.

Mariela: cmd, click, control intends to question the increasing familiarity of modes of online communication through re-framing and re-performing them in a physical everyday space. During the live event café customers could place an order with a waiter from the menu of gestures to instruct Mariela’s movements, performed one-to-one at tables. It becomes a digital performance work without any technology present, where the audience determines the movement and duration of the live one-to-one performances.

This is the first time I have shown this material (video documentation, hostess trolley, the menu, order tickets, left-over tea and biscuits) as a piece of work in an exhibition context and intends to consider the role of the document in live artistic practice.

12) What are you working on at the moment?

I am currently living in the Library working on my PhD thesis.

13) What are your creative plans for the future?

To play, to travel, to collaborate...

14) Is there anything else you would like to add?

Thank you to Amanda for the invitation and for being such an enjoyable person to work with in an ambitious exhibition programme. I was delighted to get an opportunity to show work with Emily Warner, a close friend after first meeting at Bournville School of Art ten years ago, and an artist I continue to gain much inspiration from, in her practice and in our collaborative projects.