Art, Design & Architecture

Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture

Research Degrees Open Event

Tuesday 21 February 2012

The Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, University of Kingston London, would like to invite prospective research degree applicants to an open event to find out more about Research Degrees in the Faculty and meet staff and students involved with the research degrees programme.

The Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture has a well established and vibrant research culture with an international profile. The research degrees programme consists of research and training and allows students to develop their practice based skills, broaden their academic knowledge, expand their methodological skills and integrate those elements as independent researchers. Our programmes are also designed to meet the needs of continuing academics and of candidates with established practices in art, design and the built environment interested in developing these in an academic context.

There are research centres in:

Contemporary Art

Design

Real Estate

Modern Interiors

Visual and Material Culture

Details of AHRC and Kingston University funding will be presented at the Open Day. We are currently seeking applications within the following areas:

Art and Design including:

• • Contemporary Art; Technologies, methods and processes; configuration of knowledge through organisations and institutions; archives and collections
  • Design for Environment; Built, product and culture
  • Communication & Image Design; Illustration, moving image; graphics and digital media
  • Fashion, Body & Material Design; Future fashion and material science; film and journalism
  • Interior and Spatial Design;
  • Architecture and Landscape; Building, sustainable communities and space interfaces
  • Surveying and Planning

History of Art, Architecture and Design including:

• Modern Interiors; Identity and design; modernity, modernism and the interior; interior decoration and interior design
• Historical and Critical Studies; place, space, and global futures; performance, sculpture, photographic and film practices; cultural intersections, archives, collections, avant-gardes and cultural activism

3 pm – 5 pm, LB103 (first floor), Knights Park Campus, Kingston University, Grange Road, Kingston

Rsvp fadaresearch-enterprise@kingston.ac.uk

Map http://www.kingston.ac.uk/aboutkingstonuniversity/location/maps/documents/Kingston-Town-Centre.pdf

For Research Degree Funding Opportunities:

http://fada.kingston.ac.uk/research/degrees/research_degrees_funding.php

Speakers:
Jill Desimini, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Professor Murray Fraser, UCL
Professor Matthew Gandy, UCL
Dr Jon Goodbun, University of Westminster & RCA
Professor Jonathan Hill, UCL
Jane Hutton, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Douglas Spencer, Architectural Association
Lisa Tilder, Ohio State University
Ed Wall, Kingston University
Tim Waterman, Writtle School of Design
Jane Wolff, University of Toronto
Dr Daniel Zarza, University of Alcala

Registration:  Attendance is free but spaces must be reserved in advance at http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2325977060 (includes location map)

Details online: http://landscapeandagency.woodpress.com/

Supported by UCL, The Landscape Institute, Kingston University, The Architectural Association, RIBA Research and Innovation Group and Writtle School of Design.

Congratulations to Ian Noble, Course Director, MA Communication Design, The Design School, on the highly regarded second edition of Visual Research: An Introduction to Research Methodologies in Graphic Design A complimentary review by Dawne Bell states ‘this book illuminates the potentially problematic issue of how to relate theory to practice.  It then goes on to provide a framework that enables the reader to generate an awareness of the theories and, through reflection, question their interpretation and in doing so enhance understanding.

http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/projects/networks/issue-16-january-2012/visual-research-an-introduction-to-research-methodologies-in-graphic-design

We are delighted to announce that the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) has awarded Interiors the title of Best New Journal during their annual award ceremony, which took place at the Modern Language Association convention, in Seattle earlier this month. We are truly thrilled that the journal has received such an accolade and would like to take this opportunity to thank the editors, contributors and subscribers for all helping to make this journal a success.

The Judges comments:

The judges distinguished Interiors as particularly exceptional and praised the journal for making “a lasting mark on the interdisciplinary study of interior design theory.”

They commented on the articles’ “cultural implications well beyond the traditional borders of the discipline” and expressed admiration for “the visuals as well as the text regarding spatial relationships, social attitudes, and design.”

“The writing [is] focused and accessible to the lay person as well as architects…. the printed publication offered [attractive] visuals illustrating salient issues and spoke to the historical reflection of structure as a symbol of culture, community, and personality.”

Emma Hart: Word Processor

Performance Event, Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston upon Thames, Wednesday 25 January 2012. Gallery opens at 6pm.  Performance begins promptly at 7pm.  All welcome.

Word Processor is a Research Statement Performance Event forming part of Emma Hart’s Fine Art PhD thesis with the Contemporary Art Research Centre, Kingston University, to be completed in early 2012. The event is being developed as the direct result of a three-week period of residency at the Stanley Picker Gallery through January 2012, during which the artist will be using words as the primary material for the production of the work presented.

Hart’s wider practice encompasses videos, performances and sculptures that ask not “what is it of?” but “what is it doing?”. She has presented solo exhibitions and performances at Cell Project Space, The Whitstable Biennale, Camden Arts Centre, Modern Art Oxford and Matt’s Gallery London, and is currently working on the Film and Video Umbrella/Jerwood Foundation award “Tomorrow Never Knows”. She is represented by Matt’s Gallery, London.

Stanley Picker Gallery
Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture
Kingston University, Knights Park
Kingston upon Thames KT1 2QJ

+44 (0)20 8417 4074
picker@kingston.ac.uk

The School of Art and Design History (ADH) has signed a partnership agreement with London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA). The agreement sees the school become the ICA’s University Associate, with the aim of developing research and external engagement activities. The agreement provides ICA memberships for all of the school’s students, giving them discounted access to the events and activities of London’s most dynamic cultural institution. The School is planning a series of round-table events at the ICA, and a major conference: ‘BUNK: Celebrating 60 Years of the Independent Group’. Curated by Professor Anne Massey, the conference brings together leading scholars of art and design history from all over the world to discuss the legacy of this seminal multi-disciplinary group of practitioners and theorists, who first met at the ICA 60 years ago. ADH Head of School Professor Charles Rice said that ‘this represents a perfect partnership for the School of Art and Design History. The ICA’s innovative programs covering art, design, architecture and film match the school’s commitment to a critical and innovative approach to art and design history in the contemporary world. We will be able to share our research expertise with the ICA, while offering our students a central London home.’

Four members of The Modern Interiors Research Centre have co-edited this awaited volume, companion to Designing the Modern Interior (2010).

Performance, Fashion and the Modern Interior examines the interior as a stage upon which modern life and lifestyles are consciously fashioned and performed, and from which modern identities are projected by and through design.

Scholars from Europe, Canada, America and Australia present a range of interior environments – domestic interiors, sets for stage and film, exhibition spaces, art galleries, hotel lobbies, cafés and retail spaces – to explore each as an intersection of fashion, lifestyle and performance. Sharing the thesis that the fashionably-dressed body and the interior can be seen as part of the same creative and expressive continuum, the essays highlight the ways in which interiors can give shape to and dramatise modern life.

About the Authors/Editors:

Fiona Fisher and Patricia Lara-Betancourt are Postdoctoral Researchers in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at Kingston University, London.

Trevor Keeble is Associate Dean of the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at Kingston University.

Brenda Martin is the Curator of the Dorich House Museum at Kingston University.

For further information see: http://www.bergpublishers.com/?tabid=15037

Nick Tromans (Art & Design History / Surveying & Planning) has recently published a new book on the Victorian painter Richard Dadd, one of the most extraordinary figures of nineteenth-century art.

Richard Dadd: The Artist and the Asylum Tate Publishing 2011

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/ bookreviews/8668171/Richard-Dadd-The-Artist-and-the-Asylum-by-Nicholas-Tromans-review.html

A brilliant young painter specialising in romantic literary subjects – especially Shakespearean fairies – Dadd toured the Middle East in the 1840s, bringing home sketchbooks full of exquisite drawings. But he then fell victim to a psychotic mental illness, killed his father and spent the remaining decades of his life in Bethlem Hospital and then Broadmoor.

The book includes much new material on Dadd, including the long poem the artist wrote to explain what has become his most famous painting, The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke, which he painted for a member of staff at Bethlem. This fantasically complex image incorporates a large cast of characters, beginning with Shakespeare’s Queen Mab who spends her time galloping about planting dreams in sleepers’ minds. In the detail from the picture shown here, the tiny figures of Mab and her elaborate retinue (who include a risqué French dancer whom Dadd remembered from the London stage of the 1830s) process leftwards along the bizarrely elongated brim of a hat worn by a character identified by the artist as “the Patriarch”.

Nick’s book has been widely reviewed in the press and has led to some interesting lecturing invitations, including one from English Touring Opera who have staged Purcell’s Fairy Queen in a mental hospital with sets inspired by Dadd’s paintings.

On 1 December, Tate Britain, who own the Fairy Feller, will be hosting an evening of discussion around Dadd’s work, led by Nick and the historian of medicine Mike Jay: http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/eventseducation/talks/24959.htm

For a copy of this exciting new book see: