Current exhibition
Wendy Brooke - Smith , Landfall
1st October - 18th October
This exhibition entitled Landfall, showcases the work of Wendy Brooke-Smith, a BA (Hons) Fine Art graduate of UCS who draws her inspiration from the docks, rivers and beaches of Suffolk and north Essex.
Wendy says “I’m often intrigued by the contrast and incongruity of man-made structures in the landscape - the strange drama of Felixstowe cranes or the Orwell Bridge - but also mindful of the transience of our achievements in the face of natural elements. I’m more likely to be interested in the abandoned hulk of a boat or redundant concrete pill boxes than conventionally aesthetic scenery”.
The Waterfront Gallery is a particularly appropriate venue for this artist’s first solo exhibition. Wendy graduated with one of the first cohort of UCS Fine Art students in 2008 and the demolition and regeneration of the area was the inspirational subject matter for her Degree Show paintings, as well as further commissions for Bidwells Property Consultants and UCS- some of which can be viewed in this exhibition.
If you would like to know more about studying Fine art at UCS please contact David Baldry on 01473 338000 or d.baldry@ucs.ac.uk
Opening times;-
Monday - Sunday 9am - 9pm
Up coming exhibition
thenetwerk® award 2010, Virginia Ingr and Jonathan Cheney
23rd October - 31st October
thenetwerk® is a photography research group formed by UCS lecturers Heike Löwenstein and Matthew Andrew with colleagues based across East Anglia, UK.
Since 2008 they have been focused on opening up a dialogue based around photography research, and research based practice. They are in the process of inviting colleagues across the region to join the group and move it to a different level.
In June 2009 the first thenetwerk® award was given to graduates of the first cohort of the BA (Hons) Photography at UCS, Virginia Ingr and Jonathan Cheney. The award is designed to help with the often difficult transition into the professional world after graduation. The two award winners had access to UCS facilities and tutorial support from photography staff at UCS over the period of the last year to develop their work.
This exhibition shows the culmination of their efforts. Jonathan Cheney will be exhibiting his work titled Sample - the latest colours for domestic environments, 2010. Virginia Ingr will show Saying it with Flowers.
Alongside this the show will feature some work and the proposal of this year’s award winner, Phillipe Wrigley, as well as a small selection of work from the netwerk® photographers who supported Virginia’s and Jonathan’s development.
A more detailed description and short bio of Jonathan Cheney and Virginia Ingr and their work in this exhibition follows below.
Jonathan Cheney
Sample - the latest colours for domestic environments, 2010.
The context of the project is home decoration and its associations with updating and freshening the domestic environment. Painting a wall in an alluring new colour gives a uniform finish, covering up various traces that might be viewed as undesirable. With time, these traces become visible and evident: this is the central focus of the project.
Sections of wall spaces in various domestic living quarters were photographed using a rigorously consistent technical approach. The photographs show the deterioration of the painted surfaces and the increasing visibility of what was previously hidden. The titles appended to the final images have been selected from commercial paint catalogues, but are not the names of the colours in the photographs (these are unknown).
Jonathan graduated at University Campus Suffolk, Ipswich, in 2009 with a BA (Hons) Photography Degree. During his studies he spent a considerable amount of time researching and photographing interiors, concentrating on themes such as aesthetics of absence, trace, visually encouraging the viewer to fill absent spaces and identity revealed through narratives expressed in an environment.
These themes have led to the development and outcome of the current exhibition work on display.
www.joncheney.com
Virginia Ingr
Saying it with Flowers
Being associated with trivial prettiness and therefore delegated to either hobby painters or the commercial sectors of birthday cards and calendars, the depiction of flowers has for many years vanished from contemporary art.
While paying homage to 17th century floral still life, Virginia emphasises society's journey towards the present use of the pretty and fake. Using flowers that have been either thrown away or bought for trivial sums, and in light of the development of environmental awareness, she questions our attitude to nature and the ephemeral qualities of the flower.
Long associated with love, marriage and death, they have always been a symbol of the transitory nature of life. In a society afraid to face the facts of ageing and dying, it is interesting to see the growth in popularity of cheap and mass produced flowers – some components of which will live forever.
Virginia Ingr spent several years specialising in horticultural photography before deciding to build on that expertise by becoming a mature student in 2007, and studying Photography at UCS, Ipswich.
As an independent photographer, she likes to choose subjects which she feels have a background which influences the way in which people act today. At present this interest lies in the choices people make with regard to what they buy. That these choices often appear to have roots in the past can be illustrated by her series of images Saying it with Flowers. These images of fake flowers make reference to the paintings of the 16th and 17th centuries when cultivated flowers were extremely rare and fetched huge sums of money.
She is currently working on a series which looks at the ornaments people choose for their gardens, from grecian statuary to the gnome.
virginiaingr.com
Opening times
Monday - Friday 9.00am - 8.00pm
Saturday - Sunday 11.00am - 3.00pm