In the run up to our Undergraduate Show in June, we have been interviewing final year students preparing for their exhibition. Today, Sarah Froelich, BA Painting, talks to us about her final project and her experience at Camberwell.

Can you tell us about your final project?
I am currently working on a series of paintings which I have tentatively been calling ‘Synthesizer Frustration Portraits.’ They are depictions of synthesizers and other electronic musical equipment as animate characters to be negotiated with rather than empty objects to be used. It’s a very interesting project for me, because it manages to deal with my personal experience playing live experimental music to large (and often largely confused) audiences as well as engaging with my feelings about painting as a whole, which I view as a slightly more private -yet no less harrowing- preformative action.

What was your inspiration?
I take a great deal of inspiration from the excitement and terror of live performance. Because direct experience in the moment is by its very nature transitory, I had to find some way of working around those feelings: I began looking at the proxy which allows access to the aforementioned emotions, and in the case of a musician these gatekeepers would be one’s instruments. A reviewing of David Cronenberg’s 1991 adaptation of Naked Lunch really cinched the deal for me. In the film the typewriters which William S. Burroughs must use in order to write become monstrous animate agents with very distinct agendas of their own. This obviously cause a bit of friction, and ends up producing some very creative work-arounds.

What do you have left to do between now and the end of year exhibition?
Because of the way I work, I’m never really not working on something, but right now the main focus for the rest of the year is preparing the space and making the best curatorial decisions. Sometimes the most difficult choice is what not to show, but fortunately we have a bit of time to figure out the proper combinations and omissions.

What kind of things do you need to think about in preparing for an exhibition?
At this stage, the work is done (or at least halted for a moment) and the most important thing is presenting that work in the best possible way, so that you do the greatest justice to the work itself while at the same time not overtasking or insulting the viewer. Confidence and understatement are sometimes the most challenging things for me, but in exhibition they are the most important.

What are you hoping to do once you graduate?
I’ve accepted a place at Chelsea on their MA Fine Art program, so I know where I’ll be spending most of my time for the next 12 months. I’m also playing at the Wroclaw Industrial Festival in Poland this November, but other than that, it’s all up in the air at the moment.

Why Camberwell and what will you miss about it once you’ve left?
I chose Camberwell for so many reasons, but the main two have got to be the strength of its painting department as a whole, and the college’s over-all Punk Rock confidence. It has been a great three years, and I am going to miss absolutely everything, right down to forgetting my ID card and having to run back home really quickly so that I don’t miss anything. (Fortunately, I live across the street, so the whole running thing was never really that much of a problem.)

What advice would you pass on to a student about to start at Camberwell?
Make the most of it. The school provides a wealthy of talks, workshops, and events which strengthen the entire experience. You aren’t going to experience any of them if you don’t check your calender and get to the sign up sheet on time.

What pearls of wisdom from tutors or other students that you’ll take with you?
An overarching theme which keeps re-emerging in my tutorials is that it is alright if something you make in no way fufils your original intentions. If you were able to paint a picture which fully satisfied all of your desires and expectations then you wouldn’t have to paint again, you would just want to go home and take a nap, maybe watch The Voice. It is the mistakes you are fortunate enough to make on the way there which really enrich your practice.

I’ll leave you with Beckett: “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Camberwell MA Printmaking and MA Book Arts students will be exhibiting at Proof - an interim show at Brixton East between 24-27 May.

In this exhibition, printmakers and book artists from the College work with traditional and contemporary techniques to question and investigate their medium and processes of making. Proof will serve to showcase these contemporary responses to fine art printmaking and book arts and bring these to a wider audience.

This term the Undergraduate Fine Art Programme at Camberwell College of Arts has held a series of 4 Key Ideas Debates that brought together leading practitioners to interrogate ideas of subject-specificity and the role of medium.

Each debate focussed on the work of 2 artists.

• Drawing – Cary Kwok and Laura Oldfield Ford.
• Painting – Dan Perfect and Alastair MacKinven.
• Photography – Kennard/Phillipps and Hannah Sawtell.
• Sculpture – Phillip King and Gary Webb.

BA Illustration have launched their website for their ‘Well Said’ show.

wellsaid2013.com

Make sure you bookmark it and follow them on Twitter – @WellSaid2013

Camberwell College of Arts Undergraduate Show 15 – 22 June 2013 .

For full list of events and exhibiting subjects visit the Undergraduate Show 2013 event page.

BA Illustration will also be exhibiting 4 – 7 July 2013 at the Rag Factory, 16-18 Heneage St, London E1 5LJ.

Degree show promo incoming!

First up – BA Graphic Design who kick off proceedings with this quirky clip for their ‘Most Likely’ show.

mostlikely.co.uk

Camberwell College of Arts Undergraduate Show 15 – 22 June 2013 .

For full list of events and exhibiting subjects visit the Undergraduate Show 2013 event page.

Susie Calvert is in her final year of BA Illustration. She talks to us about her final project, preparing for her end of year exhibition and her hopes for the future.

Hi Susie, can you tell us about your final project?
My final year project has been an investigation of space and environment, I will be exhibiting a book inspired by “The Poetics of Space” ; a psychoanalytical look at the human relationship to the home. Whilst on Erasmus I began drawing the foreign surroundings in a descriptive way, which has now progressed to a more abstract understanding with a focus on colour compatibility and composition.

What is your inspiration?
Natural and Industrial Landscapes

What do you still have left to do between now and the exhibition?
Build the exhibition installation plinth, layout of book in InDesign and print and bind, varnish wooden paintings, quite a lot really.

Have you been involved in an exhibition before? What kind of things do you need to think about?
Yes, the curation is  a long process especially considering so many individual pieces to be composed together. Lighting is also huge consideration also.

What are you hoping to do once you graduate?
Live in Camberwell and get involved with set design in theatres around London.

Why Camberwell?
Camberwell is small enough to feel intimate but with great facilities and supportive technicians it also creates a  positive space for student collaboration. I chose Camberwell for its ethos on craft-making and creativity.

 What pearls of wisdom will you take with you either from your tutors or class mates?
I think studying Illustration you discover how you don’t work first and foremost, before actually resolving how you do. You need to be playful, make mistakes and not be afraid of failed experiments. I also got some good advice at Saint-Lukas, Ghent where I spent a year studying; a tutor said ‘if you talk about style you don’t have style’ since then I’m not fixed on what is expected. I now try to be unaffected by trend and the superficial assumptions of Illustration through self-reflective practise and exercises.

What advice would you give to a new student?
Get involved with absolutely every workshop that you can, even if you think that its not very ‘you’ or you’ve never done it before. Experiment constantly and discover through making.

What will you miss about Camberwell?
The community and workspace that I won’t have.

The beginning of this month saw Camberwell Space taken over for a morning residency by Committee.

Committee is a partnership between Harry Richardson and Clara Page who met whilst studying fine art. Since then they have conducted a series of experiments in commercial activity that have led them to work within the design industry. Following their noses, rather than any defined career path, they have come to design products as varied as lighting, rugs, ornaments, furniture, textiles and wallpaper, for brands such as Established & Sons, Moooi and Lladro. During this time they have also maintained a studio practice producing self-initiated and commissioned works borne of academic interest for galleries and institutions around the world.

Much of Committee’s work is based upon an investigation and reworking of existing ‘ready-made’ objects – a review of ‘things’  as they are today that asks what objects should become tomorrow.

“It is our belief that any manufactured object – its function, its aesthetic, how it was made, how it was/is used , and how it will be discarded – offers a rich story of humanity. And that collected together, the world of objects could offer any alien in the universe all it could ever want to know about human beings – our strengths, our frailties, both physical and psychological.”

Students from across all courses at Camberwell College of Arts were invited to participate in the Residency, which ran as part of the current exhibition in Camberwell Space ‘Thingness: The Collection’.

The exhibition continues until 25 May 2013. Further details and a list of upcoming events can be found on the Camberwell Space website.

Photos courtesy of Maiko Tsutsumi.

Getting Making is a project involving students from MA Designer Maker and MA Book Arts.  A series of challenges were set, each leading on from the previous challenge.  Working on the challenges individually, participants made objects in response to them.  The aim was to think with and through materials, and communicate our ideas visually and physically through objects. Before receiving the next challenge the made objects were shared with the group for handling and discussion.

The exhibition showcases some of these objects, demonstrating the process behind a finished work and the physical outcomes of a makers thoughts, and is a precursor to the upcoming interim shows.

Getting Making

23-25th May

Upstairs at The Bear

296a Camberwell New Road, SE5 0RP

Private View 23rd May, 6.30 – 11pm – all welcome

Open Friday 24th May, 4pm- 12am and Saturday 25th 12pm – 6pm

The show, called ’5′, is on at the Loughborough Hotel Gallery SW9 and the Private View is Thursday 30th May, 6-9pm.

There is also an open house viewing on Saturday 1st June 11-6pm.

It will be a great opportunity to see work from Camberwell’s fantastic technical team. Hope to see you there!

At the beginning of the week we shared images from some of our CCW Foundation Diploma students development work with you ahead of their summer show. And now, with just a week to go until the show opens we are pleased to present you with some more of the fantastic work from the Foundation students.

Above and below we have the work of Kai Lawrence, a student on the 3D Product and Interior pathway.

Next we have Daisy Buckle who is on the Fashion pathway:

And this is the work of Sarah Balmont, who is also on the Fashion pathway of the course:

And finally, do check out the work of Tommy Halpin from the Media Photography pathway. As a lot of Tommy’s work is moving image it is best viewed on his website at: http://tomharpin.blogspot.co.uk/

Finally, you can find more infomation about the upcoming CCW Foundation Diploma show here.