Wimbledon College of Art’s third year Costume Design and Costume Interpretation students recently collaborated with Hampton Court Palace on an incredible project. The students created over 40 costumes that were   paraded in the King’s Gallery on Saturday 5th May as part of  the newly opened exhibition entitled ‘The Wild, the Beautiful and the Damned’.

The costume designers created new characters through exploring the themes of the newly opened exhibition, whilst the Costume Interpretation students constructed accurate realisations of costumes designed for theatrical productions from the Baroque period.

The parade was a huge success and an amazing opportunity for the students to be involved with in their final year.

Willem Weismann, 'Cumulus', Oil on Canvas

The exhibition opens next week on Wednesday 2nd May, 5 – 8pm, so please come and enjoy the exhibition, and join the artists and curators for a celebratory drink.

ALL WELCOME!

Mayor of Merton, Gilli Lewis-Lavender with Technical Arts and Special Effects students outside the Civic Centre preparing for the walk

Walking through the streets of Merton

The horse on display in the College's foyer area

In January this year we excitedly blogged that Merton Council were announced the dual winners of the 2012 London New’s Day Parade, for its ‘Horsepower’ float.

The mechancial horse, which paid homage to the Merton borough for having the first licensed public railway in the world, the horse-drawn Surrey Iron Railway, was designed, constructed and operated by five of our talented 2nd year Technical Arts and Special Effects (TASE) students; Eleanor Brereton, Ethan Burthenshaw, Adam Edwards, Melanie Rhodes and Karl Ventura. The horse pulled a locomotive tender behind it during the parade, an inventive idea based on early steam travel and horsepower. The horse also steamed from the nostrils as it pulled the tender long.

Last Saturday on the 21st April, the magnificant horse, which has been on display in the Merton Council’s Civic Centre, was walked from the Civic Centre by the TASE students, with the Mayor of Merton, Councillor Gilli Lewis-Lavender and members of the community to Wimbledon College of Art. The horse is now on display in the main foyer of the College.

Lady Gaga's Monster Ball tour (2009-10), set design by Es Devlin. Photograph by Es Devlin.

Wimbledon College of Art’s Senior Lecturer in Theatre Design, Peter Farley has designed and curated The Society of British Theatre Designers exhibition, Transformation & Revelation. The exhibition, which is showing at the V&A from 17^th March until 30^th September 2012, follows its great success in Cardiff, where approximately 5,500 visitors saw the show and its trip to the Prague Quadrennial, where it won both of the special awards for Sound Design and was seen by approximately 40,000 people.

Exploring the theme of transformation, this exhibition reveals contemporary designs for performance by over 30 British Theatre Designers. It provides an intriguing insight into the designers’ creative process and includes costumes, set models, photographs, drawings, sound productions and lighting designs.

The exhibits include WCA alumnus Richard Hudson’s designs for the Royal Ballet, Pathway Leader of MA Drawing at WCA, Michael Pavelka’s designs for Off the Wall, LCF/V&A Research Fellow, Donatella Barbieri’s film Encounters in the Archive and distinguished former Course Director of Theatre Design at CSM, Ralph Koltai’s designs for An English Tragedy. The exhibition also includes the work of the 2011 overall winner of The Linbury Prize for Stage Design, Hyemi Shin, a recent graduate of WCA.

Admission is free, so why not take a look this weekend?

It’s open for a week only so be sure not to miss it! And do come along to the opening event on Wednesday 18th April, 5 – 8pm, and join us for a glass of wine and an evening of specially commissioned performance.

Savinder Bual, Still from 'Thumascope', 2012

SWITCH/OVER
Monday 16th – Friday 20th April 2012
Open 10am – 5pm daily
Opening Event: Wednesday 18th April, 5 – 8pm

ALL WELCOME!

28th March 2012 – 30th March 2012

Description

The premise that drives The Drawn Out Network was seeded during the first UAL / RMIT drawing conference held in Melbourne during March 2010. This conference was initiated as a means of exploring cross disciplinary approaches to drawing. It resulted in the organizers wanting to better understand drawings’ relationship with writing and notation; knowledge that we expect will help us in establishing drawings’ position as an active component of general literacy.

With drawing established in the minds of the organizers as the tangible bridge between textural and non textural communication our collaboration has resolved to develop a network of interested parties.

Working with the assumption that drawing is not simply a way of thinking and communicating but an integral part of our everyday and professional lives DRAWING OUT: 2012 will address, how drawing functions as a part of literacy through three themes;

2. Drawing as Writing Drawing after, before and as a part of writing. An exploration of literacy and communication.

3. Drawing: recording and discovery. Drawing as a speculative activity and means of holding and transferring information.

For more information please visit:

http://thecentrefordrawingual.wordpress.com/

The Bar-Tur Award is now open for submissions.

University of the Arts London (UAL) is pleased to launch the 2012 Bar-Tur Award. The award was established in 2011 in memory of Ann Lesley Bar-Tur (1947-1984). Ann was an exceptionally talented British artist and alumna of Chelsea College of Art and Design, who died after long illness in 1984. The award has been created by her family and friends in collaboration with the University.

The Bar-Tur Award is open to all current students studying at UAL and alumni who have graduated in the last ten years. Students and graduates will be able to submit up to 4 images to this year’s award theme.

The selected theme for 2012 is ‘Olympian’. The judges will be looking for entries that demonstrate the breadth, depth and diversity this may mean to individuals, communities and society. The theme has been chosen to reflect a diversity of interests and concerns of the broad community of photographic practitioners at UAL and amongst its graduates.

Closing date – 3 May 2012.

Visit www.barturaward.com for further information on the award, prizes, and how to apply.

All good things must come to an end. And so too must the Construction Gallery. To celebrate the end of a successful three month run, the Construction Gallery is holding a Sculpture Show from Wednesday 21 March to Sunday 25 March from 12 – 7pm daily, with the closing event on Saturday from 6.30 – 9.30pm.

The Gallery was brought to life by Wimbledon College of Art alumni Pippa Koszerek and Fiona Long, and curated and designed by Fine Art Painting graduates Warren Andrews and Christopher Lawrence.

For more details please visit: http://constructiongallery.co.uk/

Demelza Watts speaks to pupils from class 4a about her site-specific project

On Monday 12^th March, class 4a from Wimbledon Chase Primary School visited PARK TWELVE. PARK is an annual outdoor sculpture exhibition which has been hosted by Wimbledon College of Art at Cannizaro Park for more than three decades. The class were taken on a tour of PARK TWELVE, with each of the artists speaking to the pupils about their site-specific projects. PARK has a long association with local schools, providing an opportunity to introduce pupils to contemporary art and for students to consider how to present their work to a young audience.

Susan Sluglett, 'The Morning After the Night Before'

Congratulations to Wimbledon College of Art alumna, Susan Sluglett, who was recently awarded a 2013 Jerwood Painting Fellowship. Susan, who graduated from BA Fine Art Painting in 2008, was successful alongside two other artists after they were chosen from more than 300 entries by mentors and selectors Marcus Harvey, Mali Morris RA and Fabian Peake.

As part of the Fellowship, Susan will receive a bursary of £10,000 and one year of critical and professional development support from Marcus Harvey. During the Fellowship year each artist will develop a body of new work which will be exhibited in a  group show as part of the Jerwood Visual Arts programme at Jerwood space, London in March 2013 before touring within the UK.

Pictured above is one of Susan’s paintings titled ’The Morning After the Night Before’, which is part of an ongoing series related to an arbitrary mythology.