Exhibition Season - Diffusion, Grad Shows and More!

It's been just over a month since there any activity on this blog - apologies - but I have good excuses. Little activity here is probably a good sign that there's a lot of activity elsewhere. So here is a round up on what's been happening and what's going to happen very soon!

Summer is - more or less - here, and with it comes the usual swarm of exhibitions. Second year students are currently preparing for their show at the Riverfront, third year students are preparing for their graduate shows and Cardiff is hosting, for the first time, it's International Festival of Photography: Diffusion!

May is going to be a busy month.

You can find out all about Diffusion festival on their website. Keep an eye out for the shows featuring Newport lecturers, students and alumni (which includes some very intriguing fringe events).

The current Photo Art 3rd years will be holding their graduation show on June 6th at the City Campus in Newport city centre. You can head on over to their website for more information and whilst you're there you might as well enter their prize draw where you can win prints and publications featuring some big names such as Clare Strand, Jason Evans, Cristina de Middel, Helen Sear, Dan Holdsworth and Martin Parr.

The current Photo Art 2nd years will be having their end-of-year show at the Riverfront on May 16th.

Beverley Cornwell on Source Magazine's Graduate Director's Cut

Graduate Photography Online is a showcase of work by the latest photography graduates around the country run every year by Source Magazine. In the past Photo Art has had a great presence on the site and hopefully this year will be no expection.

In the run-up to this year's showcase, Source are elisting a number of bonus selections by the directors of the country's photographic courses who are choosing their favourite body of work from a university that is not their own.

Jim Hamlyn, subject leader on BA (hons) Photographic and Electronic Media at Robert Gorden University in Aberden, has selected Volitant by 2012 Photo Art graduate Beverley Cornwell. On his reasons for choosing the work, he says:

"My toddler son is fascinated by animals at the moment: the four legged kind especially. He is so attuned to their characteristics that he often calls out 'horsey' or 'wuff wuff' long before anyone has even spotted the tell-tale outline in a rough-torn piece of bread or in a tiny illustration buried amongst a clamour of abstract shapes and colours. Such fascination with animals is surely universal - one that is expressed in the earliest cave paintings as well as in religious iconography and even the sounds and concepts that we use to communicate. Whether in reality or representation animals stare back at us in inscrutable silence. For millennia this mute incomprehensibility has provoked us, sometimes toward acts of celebration and veneration and sometimes towards acts of cruelty and invasive scrutiny. Beverley Cornwell's images talk of this paradoxical relationship of fascination and violence. They speak of hunting and of simulation, of brutality and deathly precision. And in this play of the real and the imagined they refer also to photography's transformation of the real into fiction, of representations into things of ardent fascination. And in those implacable shining surfaces, like eyes that stare back at us, we see only ourselves reflected."

He can see the selection page for yourself here, and for those who are graduating this year and are interested in submitting their own work, click here.

2nd Year Pontypool Exhibition Opening

Last Friday the Photo Art 2nd year's Pontypool exhibitions opened to the public along with the accompanying publication distributed by the Free Press. There was a great turn out, speeches, buffets and a well-deserved pint at the end of a very busy week. Congrats to all those involved!

The exhibitions are still open over the next week and there are copies of the publication still available in various places throughout the town.

2nd Years in South Wales Argus

There's an article about the current 2nd year's project in Pontypool in the South Wales Argus which you can read here.

Remember: the exhibition and publication will be up this week with the opening being this Thursday at 5pm in Pontypool Market.

Jade Dolby Raises Epilepsy Awareness

Photo Art graduate and current intern at the eCPR Jade Dolby is raising awareness about epilepsy after she was diagnosed with the condition during her studies at Newport back in 2010. There is a great article all about her experiences and awareness-raising mission over on the UWN website.

reFrame: Pontypool Exhibition and Publication

The Photo Art 2nd Year's residency in Pontypool is coming to an end. Selected work created over the past few months is soon to be displayed around the town in various locations and a publication is to be sent out to local residents via the Free Press. 

The opening of the show, titled reFrame, is at 5pm on 14th March at Pontypool Market. Work is also being displayed at venues on Crane Street, Commercial Street and George Street. Copies of the publication can also be picked up at these venues.

Each venue will be open daily from 10am to 4pm until 21st March.

You can keep up to date with all the Pontypool goings-on here via their blog.

Josephine Sowden Solo Show, A Lotus Flower is Born in Water

2012 graduate Josephine Sowden is having her first solo show! It opens at 6pm next Friday (8th March) at Motorcade / FlashParade in Bristol. The exhibition continues until Sunday 10th.

From the press release:

Josephine Sowden uses lens-based media to explore the human condition in relation to modern day consciousness. Commissioned by Hand in Glove, Sowden’s new work As a Lotus Flower is Born in Water is an immersive two-channel video installation.

Inherently performative, the work features the artist amidst the natural landscape, externalising notions of ‘nature’, ‘self’ and ‘ego’. The oppositional personas that Sowden assumes reduce experience to a series of words, distorted memories of the past and predictions of an uncertain future. These confrontational actions exaggerate and bring in to sharp focus a modern day obsession with inner streams of thought; ultimately seeking to question a separation from nature and more primal instincts and desires. 

A piece of critical writing by artist Trevor H Smith, recipient of Hand in Glove’s PLATFORM Professional Development, will accompany the exhibition.  

Sowden graduated from BA Photographic Art at University of Wales, Newport in 2012 and has since been selected for the Catlin Guide, Videoholica International Video Art Festival in Bulgaria and the 2012 Aesthetica Art Prize. Her degree show piece Lilies of the Field was selected by Hand in Glove for PLATFORM 2012; a group exhibition showcasing work by promising arts graduates from Bristol, Bath and Newport. Sowden was then awarded the PLATFORM Commission, to create new work with the support of Hand in Glove for her first solo exhibition. 

Lilies of the Field will be screened on the opening night only.  

The PLATFORM Commission is part of a twelve month series of projects funded by Arts Council England. University of Wales, Newport are also supporting As a Lotus Flower is Born in Water. With thanks to Motorcade/FlashParade, Louisa Fairclough and Maia Conran.