Monthly Archives: April 2011

Paul Stafford and Russell John Exhibition: extended until 7 May due to public demand

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Image: self portrait with rooks wings, plaster, wire, and mixed media – 2010 © Paul Stafford.

PAUL STAFFORD ARBS:

NEW HEADS AND OLD DRAWINGS

This exhibition is dedicated to Mona Mellor.

MENIER GALLERY 26 – 7 May 2011
Menier Chocolate Factory
PRIVATE VIEW TUESDAY 26 APRIL 6.00pm – 8.45pm
51 Southwark Street, London SE1 1RU T: 07881832291 for information
mail@meniergallery.co.uk
Opening times: Wednesday 11am – 6pm, Thursday/Friday 11am – 8pm, Saturday 11am – 5pm, Sunday Closed

On the 17th of January 2008 I crash-landed at Heathrow – London. I was a passenger on flight BA038 returning home from Beijing – China. The event had a profound effect on my life. In my work since, I have struggled to wrestle with the conflicts in my head. Sleep was/is elusive and dreams recurrent. “On the floor next to the skirting boards were 4 dead objects, birdlike, one of them was black and the body was like a mouse or bat, I got the black one first and dropped it out of the window, it flew back and started talking to me, he had a small round head with feathers very close to his scalp” excerpt from a recurring dream recorded Sunday 27th January 2008.

All my life I seem to have been obsessed by flight, I wanted to be a pilot but was rubbish at maths, I have painted, drawn and sculpted planes all my life – perhaps my flight was meant to be. None of my heads or drawings are for sale – I hope you can find the time to join me on my journey.

In October 2010 I was elected a member of The Royal Society of British Sculptors in recognition of my contribution to British sculpture.

RUSSELL JOHN

NEW PAINTINGS

Image: A painting in progress with colour swatches

A new series of paintings consisting of imagery collected obsessively from old and new media.

Through content, technique and the activity of painting, I investigate my relationship with liberty and restraint, order and chaos, and the forces at work in the world.

The Possessed – An Exhibition at CHARLIE SMITH London

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Yason Banal

Luke Brennan

Hugh Mendes

Seamus Moran

Manuel Ocampo

Toby De Silva

John Stark

Roman Vasseur

Muir Vidler

Curated by John Stark

Private View | First Thursday May 5th 6.30pm–8.30pm

Exhibition Dates: Friday May 6th – Saturday May 28th 2011

Gallery Hours: Wednesday–Saturday 11am–6pm or by appointment

CHARLIE SMITH london
336 Old Street

London
EC1V 9DR

UNITED KINGDOM

+44 (0)20 7739 4055

direct@charliesmithlondon.com

www.charliesmithlondon.com

Tube: Old St (Exit 2) Buses: 8, 26, 48, 55, 67, 388

The Trouble With Theatre – ICA panel discussion

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The Trouble With Theatre

Chaired by Sally O’Reilly. Panelists include Roman Vasseur (Kingston University Fine Art) and Tai Shani

ICA, London

28 April 2011
7.30 pm

Art has arguably become one of the places of contemporary entertainment but when does it become theatre? The lines between performance, live art, experimental theatre are not always easy to draw as theatre makers experiment further and further with the form and increasing numbers of artists turn to the tropes of theatrical performance, using scripts, actors, stages and lighting to make their work.

In this talk we invite artists who work in a ‘theatrical way’ and theatre makers who work with visual artists and outside of the conventional theatre locations to unpick what the differences are between works by people from one practice to another and how they might understand notions of entertainment, audience and art.

This talk has been put together in collaboration with writer and curator Sally O’Reilly.

£12 / £11 concessions / £10 ICA Members
£5 Students and Members under 26 (call the box office on +44 (0)20 7930 3647 to book)

Further information:
http://www.ica.org.uk/28661/Talks/The-Trouble-With-Theatre.html

Book launch at the Whitechapel Gallery

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Let Us Pray for Those Now Residing in the Designated Area.
A new publication from kynastonmcshine Projects by Roman Vasseur, Fine Art lecturer at Kingston University.

Please join us to celebrate the launch of this publication and a special issue of JVAP (Journal of Visual Art Practice) #9.2 guest-edited by Matthew Poole.
Thursday 14th April 2011
7.30-9pm

Whitechapel Gallery
77-82 Whitechapel High Street
City of London
E1 7QX

RSVP: info@kynastonmcshine.org.uk

http://www.kynastonmcshine.org.uk

http://www.romanvasseur.com

Garden Design students at Hampton Court Flower Show

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Current Garden Design student, Gabriella Hitchcock,  has been chosen to design a small garden for the upcoming Hampton Court Flower Show. The Foundation Degree in Garden Design is run in conjunction with Merrist Wood College at Guildford College. The invite for Gabriella to design a garden builds upon the success of last year’s show where two of our ex students were big prize winners, Tom Harfleet won a gold medal and the ‘best in show conceptual garden’ for the pansy project conceptual garden which he made with his brother to bring public attention to homophobic abuse.

Jayne Thomas won a silver gilt medal and the people’s choice award for the best small garden in show for her Midsummer’s Nights Dream garden.

The Hampton Court Palace Flower Show runs from 5 – 10 July 2011.

“Localism: Embracing the Culture of Community-Led Planning”

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The School of Surveying & Planning is organising a conference on Tuesday 10 May 2011 with workshops to complement and launch their forthcoming CPD programme.  The conference will be held at One Fleet Place, London EC4M 7WS.

Localism and its emphasis on community-led planning at the neighbourhood level requires planners to adapt to new ways of working with the community to foster their relationship with local people. Not only will planners have to come to terms with changes in legislation and the consequent makeover in organisational practice and delivery, they will need to adapt their skills and working practices so that they can be proactive in working with local communities planning their neighbourhoods.

This event is designed for planners from both the public and private sector, with or without experience in community planning, who recognise the opportunity to be at the forefront of Localism by ensuring they have the right kind of skills to work with and facilitate local communities to embrace their new rights and responsibilities in the planning of their neighbourhoods. With this intention, the School of Surveying & Planning at Kingston University is extending its philosophy and approach to planning education in which emphasis is placed on putting people first in the delivery of sustainable development.

Talks in the morning will be followed by interactive workshops in the afternoon. The talks are intended to highlight the opportunities that current changes can bring to the planning profession. They will address the contextual changes anticipated in planning and the contribution of planners to community involvement drawing on experiences to date. Furthermore there will be an insight into the special capabilities and competences demonstrated by planners which make them ideally suited to take on the challenge. Using this backdrop, the workshops will debate different examples of practice to avoid the pitfalls and discuss the potential for delivering successful community involvement.

This event too, is being used to launch our emerging programme of CPD sessions for those people involved in the planning process to up skill for the pending changes to planning and to strengthen technical skills on aspects of development related to zero or low carbon design and the “green economy”.

Book your place:  www.kingston.ac.uk/designbookonline

Conference Programme:

9.30 Registration and Refreshments

10.00 Welcome and Introduction,

Charlotte Harris, Principal Lecturer and Field Leader in Planning, Kingston University

10.15 OPENING KEYNOTE TALK

A brief introduction on the implications and effects of Localism on the planning system

and the incentives / opportunities for planners to be at the forefront of community-led planning.

Steve Quartermain, Chief Planning Officer, DCLG

10.45 EXPLORING CULTURE CHANGE: A LOCAL AUTHORITY CONTEXT

A personal experience, exploration and reflection on the contribution of planners

to community involvement in the local authority context.

Professor Janice Morphet, Visiting Professor, UCL

11.15 MORNING BREAK

11.30 EXPLORING CULTURE CHANGE: A COMMUNITY PLANNING CONTEXT

A personal experience, exploration and reflection on the contribution of planners to community

involvement in the community planning context,

Georgia Wrighton, Lecturer in Planning, Kingston University

12.00 THE PLANNING PROFESSION’S CREDIBILITY IN COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Based on the findings of Kingston University in their 2008 ESRC Research Project on built environment

professional skills for sustainable communities,

Professor Sarah Sayce, Head of the School of Surveying and Planning, Kingston University

12.30 PLENARY: Questions and Answers

13.00 LUNCH: NETWORKING AND SIGN UP FOR CASE STUDIES AND WORKSHOPS

14.00 CASE STUDIES AND WORKSHOPS:

LEARNING FROM GOOD PRACTICE AND EMERGING MODELS OF ENGAGEMENT

ENGAGING DIVERSE COMMUNITIES

Applying skills and techniques to engage diverse communities in neighbourhood planning

by drawing on case studies and role play,

Patrick Anderson (Planning Aid for London)

A MODEL OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Learning from the experience of the Women’s Design Group Project, working with women from

diverse backgrounds to address gender specific issues for more inclusive neighbourhood planning,

Barbara Wallace and Amy Kennedy (Women’s Design Service)

VILLAGE DESIGN STATEMENTS (SPDS)/PARISH PLANS

Applying and adapting practice in facilitating village design statements/parish plans, recognising

the strengths and weaknesses of the community-led planning process and recommendations for

successful future practice,

Dagmar Hutt and Lesley Downing, (Formerly of Planning Aid South)

PLANNING GAMES

Using selected tools e.g. Building Futures and Inquiry by Design as a role play to further develop

interactive techniques and skills for working with communities,

Nisha Kaduskar, (Community-led Urban Designer)

15.00 AFTERNOON BREAK

15.30 PLENARY: Feedback and summaries from the Workshops, Workshop Facilitators

16.15 CLOSE: Charlotte Harris

Kingston’s ‘Time Team’ swings into action

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An archaeological team from Kingston University has gone beneath the surface of the historic churchyard at the borough’s All Saints Church to try to find out more about its history.  The team carried out a full scientific survey of the site in the heart of Kingston’s town centre and local people and schoolchildren also took the opportunity to get involved.

A church has stood on the present site for well over a thousand years and is of great historical significance.  It is widely believed to be the site of the crowning of at least three Anglo-Saxon kings during the tenth century, including Aethelstan, the first king of a unified England in 925 and Ethelred the Unready in 978/9.

Dr Helen Wickstead and her colleagues used an earth resistance meter to survey the entire graveyard.  The device measures the resistance the weak electrical current it produces encounters as it passes through the earth.  The results meant that a two-dimensional image could be created of exactly what lay below ground.  Nothing remains above ground of the original Saxon church except for outlines marked by stones outside the south door of the present building.

Dr Wickstead was asked by the church to carry out the survey.  “We discovered three possible brick vault structures.  Usually these contain coffins of members of a family in an underground chamber,” she said.  “We know exactly where these vaults are now and we’re hoping to use the documentary evidence available – an historical burial map and other church records – to find out exactly who was buried in those vaults and precisely when they date from.   It would be really interesting to find out their stories.”

Local people also had the chance to get involved during the weekend survey and they were welcomed by students from Kingston University’s Museum and Gallery Studies and Forensic Science courses.  Pupils from Nonsuch High School for Girls also took part in the archaeological survey.

“Several passers-by came along and showed a real interest in what we were doing,” Dr Wickstead said.  “Some of the mapping was actually done by interested people who just happened to be in Kingston on the day.   From that point of view it was also a huge success because the schoolchildren and students really enjoyed it and learned a lot.  We got to make some new discoveries and gave people the opportunity to explore archaeology and geophysics in a way they wouldn’t normally do.”

Reverend Jonathan Wilkes, Vicar of All Saints Parish Church, said he was delighted to work with the University on the project.   “An important element of our redevelopment concerns the heritage that the site holds and represents and so gaining a deeper understanding of what’s below the surface will help inform and educate us as we move forward,” he said.  “We’re particularly interested in what the survey tells us about the site of St Mary’s Chapel which lies to the south of the current building and which is only acknowledged now by plaques that mark where the walls would have been.  It was great that Helen and the team could do some work on that.  We hope very much to work with the University in the future so were really pleased that through this open event Helen was able to bring archaeology to anyone who was in the town on those days, and this approach is something that we hope to develop further in the future.”

Leah Rogers, 23, who is originally from New York and is taking the Museum and Gallery Studies MA at Kingston, said getting involved was a great help to her studies.  “One of my major projects at the moment involves deciding what a hypothetical museum about Kingston would look like in 2030,” she said.   “Being from the United States originally, it was fascinating to get an understanding of one of Kingston’s heritage sites and what that might mean to local people in the future.  This ended up being a really great example of community participation and people were very curious about what we were doing, especially when they saw us holding the earth resistance meter, which is a bit bizarre-looking if you haven’t seen it before.”

Following the success of the All Saints Survey project students from Kingston’s Forensic Archaeology course will now be taught the practical part of their course at the church.

For further information please contact the Kingston University press office on 020 8417 3023 or press@kingston.ac.uk.

The CIOB Student Challenge 2011

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A Kingston University School of Surveying and Planning team were runners up in a field of 10 teams in the CIOB National Student Challenge.

The Kingston University team, comprising Alec Donald, Adam Brown, Ben Maxell-Aylwin and Elliot Sparsis, were winners of the London Branch heat. The London heat was significant in that Kingston School of Surveying and Planning fielded three teams and were placed 1st 3rd and 4th, no small feat as the London heat emphasis was on construction management and, although we had undergraduates from the Building Surveying, Quantity Surveying and Residential Property Degrees, there was no specific Construction Management expertise.

The CIOB National Student Challenge was sponsored by Marks and Spencer property division and the CIOB with the emphasis on the M & S ‘Plan A’ – “because there is no Plan B” with the stated aim of becoming the World’s most sustainable retailer by 2015.

The ten teams, each a regional heat winner, had to assess ‘closed loop material solutions’ to recycling which could include tagging of materials for demolition and recycling at the end of the useful life of a “learning store”. Things to take into account included; Zero embodied energy, sustainable materials, biodiversity and total recyclability.

The outcomes were twofold; firstly a detailed written breakdown of proposals and recommendations to M & S and, secondly to make a 10 minute presentation to the assembled teams and their tutors/supporters on the proposals (guillotined if the 10 minutes was reached.)

Kingston’s presentation was acknowledged by many of the accompanying tutors as ‘polished and informative’ and was thought of by many as the best of the day. Their professionalism was to a high standard and caused a minor stir amongst the judges with their team colour ties and smart suits.

At the prize giving the lead judge, Beulah Keane of M & S, acknowledged their performance but said they were just pipped in their first submission by the company targeting of the winners, despite the guillotine in the presentation of Glasgow Caledonian University

The team won a trophy, a commemorative medallion and £50 cheque each.

Planning for success – Kingston win Planning Student Quiz 2011

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Kingston’s Planning students have managed to top the success of the London Regional heat with three teams in the top four by winning the final of the Planning Student Quiz 2011. Not only did one of the Kingston teams win the competition, but third place was also claimed by their classmates!

“I think this is a fantastic result which confirms Kingston’s position as a premier providing of planning education. The students are fantastic Ambassadors for us and thoroughly deserve their win!” Professor Sarah Sayce, Head of School.

The Last Bastion of Communism won first place with students Majeed Neky, Margaret Shum, Kieran Taylor and Florence Temple collecting a prize of £1500 as well as the prestige and respect of their peers. Andy Irish, Leon Murray, Steve Saville and Jamie Sharples, all members of Kingston’s second team PPS I Love You, came 3rd in the national final!

“It would be easy to make the crass assumption that because teams from Kingston came first and third in the planning quiz, graduates from Kingston are somehow better than those from other institutions. Although it was just a bit of fun it is an assumption I encourage all potential employers to make”  winning member Kieran Taylor said.

The winning team plan to spend their prize money on the annual field trip to Warsaw.

If you are interested in learning about planning why not have a look at our MA in Planning and Sustainability located here http://www.kingston.ac.uk/postgraduate-course/planning-sustainability-ma/ .

‘Shaper of Cities’ accepts Honorary Doctorate at Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture Graduation Ceremony

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London’s creative industries have bounced back from the recession according to one of the city’s most influential designers.

Peter Bishop, who has just stood down as deputy chief executive of the London Development Agency, was speaking after being awarded an honorary doctorate by Kingston University. He describes himself not as a planner, but as a “shaper of cities”, having influenced the Canary Wharf development, the BBC’s White City Media Centre and the new development of King’s Cross. He also works as an adviser to the civic authorities in the Romanian capital Bucharest.

Mr Bishop received his honour from the University’s Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture in a ceremony at the Rose Theatre in Kingston. “Architecture and design touch the lives of all of us,” he told an audience of more than 700 students. “The cities that look after their public spaces, care about their new buildings and preserve their historic fabric will thrive. I’ve just attended a big property festival in Cannes and I came back feeling very positive about London. I’m confident it’ll continue to be a place where great designers are given the freedom to create great places.”

Peter Bishop set up Design for London, the Mayor’s architectural organisation in 2006. “Design for London has the luxury of being able to think about what makes the capital unique,” he said. “It devises big strategies for change and works with local communities to shape their neighbourhoods and improve people’s lives.”

The Head of Kingston’s School of Architecture and Landscape, Daniel Rosbottom, described the unique opportunity that Kingston’s architecture students have had in working with Design for London over the past two years on the East London Green Grid and High Street London. He said he is looking forward to the relationship continuing in years to come. “Under Peter’s leadership the students have really engaged with what architects do. They have benefited hugely from the opportunity to work with the key design strategists for London, allowing them to play a part in thinking about the future of our city, but equally, I know that Design for London have appreciated the breadth and innovation of their ideas and research.”

Mr Bishop said he hoped the honorary doctorate would enable him to build stronger links between academia and architects and designers currently working on projects in London. He had previously worked for four London Boroughs before moving to Design for London and, then, the London Development Agency. “I am working with the mayor on his design advisory council, have a book being published later this year called The Temporary City, I’ve taken on a directorship at an architects’ practice and am doing some university lecturing,” he said.

“I hate it when people ask me what I do for a living. I have to say ‘Well, have you got half an hour?’”

For further information please contact the Kingston University press office on 020 8417 3023 or press@kingston.ac.uk.