Chelsea MA Fine Art students collaborate for the first time with Royal College of Art students on a show of paintings in Chelsea’s Triangle Space on the college campus. The private view is from 5-8pm on Wednesday 29 May. Come on over to see the chemistry between young artistic minds of Chelsea and the RCA in Honeymoon.
Chelsea Alumna Manca Bajec assisting at the 2013 Venice Biennale
Manca Bajec who completed MA Curating at Chelsea in 2011 and was the Ashley Family Foundation Research Fellow at CHELSEA space 2011-12, has been working as curatorial assistant to the artist Jasmina Cibic for the Slovenian Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale. An exciting role no doubt!
Chelsea students scoop £10,000 in SAS Scholarship Awards
Congratulations to the three current Chelsea BA Graphic Design Communication students who recently scooped £10,000 between them at the SAS Scholarship 2013 awards. The awards are sponsored by SAS London, an award-winning digital marketing & design agency.
Jack Hardiker who came in first place, winning a fund of £5,000 is originally from Manchester. He joined Chelsea after a stint in the working world and his concept of the “saving scale” tackled the issue of waste by reducing the price of produce the closer it got to the end of its shelf life.
Second place winner, Sally Lewis, took £3,000 after presenting her idea of “receipt space”, a new channel of communication between supermarket and consumer.
Josiah Jones, who came third, winning a £2,000 scholarship fund for his project based around grouping food items in a recipe together to encourage home cooking and healthy eating. Originally from the midlands, Josiah came to Chelsea after his foundation course at Northampton University.
More details of the scholarship presentations, awards and some of the students’ experiences have been documented on the SAS Inspiration Blog.
MA Interior and Spatial Design Interim Show
An interim show of work from 22 – 29 May, by students of MA Interior and Spatial Design. The show encompasses architectural proposals, installations, films, sculptural works, furniture and more. The work is a first chance to test ideas which will develop for their final projects. Come along and explore their works.
David Redfern mesmerises a packed out house at CHELSEA space
World renowned British Photographer David Redfern packed the house out at CHELSEA space last night with a presentation of some of his life’s work documenting many of the world’s greatest musicians, accompanied by many a wonderful story. From The Beatles to Frank Sinatra, London to New York, we were treated to a photo essay that left the crowd mesmerised. The images were a selection from David’s book The Unclosed Eye and other material from his career. David has also kindly lent his collection of vintage photographs of the Newport Jazz Festival as part of the Dobells exhibition.
This legendary Jazz, Blues and Folk record shop was on Charing Cross Road for many seminal decades for music in the 20th century. Dobells became an iconic venue, importing records from around the world and was a creative influence for icons in the making such as regular customer young David Bowie. This melting pot of culture created rich history in Dobells and made many more alike.
Peter Blake: Four Decades exhibition at Chelsea Futurespace
Tuesday night saw a fantastic private view at Chelsea Futurespace of Peter Blake’s prints across four decades. It was a wonderful opportunity for us to honour a great artist and celebrate his contribution to British Art. The show features a selection by Sir Peter of his prints, including his ‘Appropriated Alphabets’, ‘Homage to Schwitters’ series and the ‘London’ and ‘Love’ Suites.
The exhibition is open daily 11am – 6pm until 28th July, admission free.
Kindly supported by CCA Galleries, Paul Stolper Gallery and Berkley Group.
Chelsea Alumnus Haroon Mirza shows at Lisson Gallery, London
- © Haroon Mirza
Chelsea Alumnus Haroon Mirza is exhibiting an exciting new show at Lisson Gallery from May 17 to June 29 2013, 52-52 Bell Street, London. His second exhition at Lisson will include a reverberation chamber, a turntable piece, some light works, an LED surround sound sequencer, o-o-o-o.co.uk and collaborations with Dave from Django Django (aka Jellyman) and Factory Floor. Remixes by Factory Floor and Jellyman pressed on vinyl and released on The Vinyl Factory as limited editions of 300 copies each: release date 16 May 2013.
Haroon will also soon present an exhibition of new work at the Hepworth Wakefield from 26 May – 29 September 2013, including a site-specific installation.
‘Antipodes’ by MA Fine Art Alumna Layla Curtis

‘Antipodes’ by Layla Curtis is commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella, in association with Spacex. Technical support by Cuttlefish. Supported by Arts Council England.
18 May – 13 July @ Spacex, Exeter
‘Antipodes’ is an ongoing online and photographic project that pairs webcam images from places at the opposite ends of the globe. Although Australia, despite our colloquial name for it, is not directly ‘down under’ from Britain, and the other side of the world from us, like much of the planet, is actually sea, the 4 per cent of the earth’s surface in which land is antipodal to land offers rich terrain for interesting parallels and correspondences.
As far away from each other as it is possible to be, their day-for-night, summer/winter contrasts palpable, often extreme, these distant ‘twins’ (Bali/Tobago, Montevideo/Seoul, the Kalahari Desert/Hawaii) frequently possess surprising affinities. Having researched multiple webcam sources from myriad international locations, Curtis revels in drawing out these points of connection: finding topographical echoes in the landscape, as well as architectural and cultural similarities.
The volcanic peak of Tungurahua in Ecuador is shadowed by the majestic summit of Sinabung half a world away in Indonesia while the port of Melbourne is complemented, in miniature, by its geographical equivalent – a dockside scene in one of the islands of the Azores. Like mirror images, the key elements of the picture may be the other way round but their inherent similarities are undeniable.
A number of photographic diptychs, distilled from the stream of webcam footage, press the point home. Highlighting both the distance and the difference between us, they also remind us how technology is bringing us closer together.
HIERARCHIES – A Group Show & Publication – Private View
A group show/publication devised by Vanessa Hodgkinson and Lillian Wilkie, supported by the Chelsea Arts Club Trust. It brings together six artists and six writers to explore the traditional institutional approach to the hierarchy of genre originating in painting.
Newly devised works and new texts are presented in an exhibition and publication, using the MA Fine Art program at Chelsea as a starting point to find out whether these terms of engagement, (allegory, portraiture, genre, landscape, animal painting and still life) have any relevance to the way young artists are being taught or indeed are developing their idiolect within the art school framework.
We are thrilled to be presenting works by
NECOLE SCHMITZ, JAMIE BARBOUR, VICTORIA TRINDER, MARIA SALGADO, LUKE JORDAN, VANESSA HODGKINSON & LIILIAN WILKIE
and new accompanying texts by
PHILLIPA KAINA, NIKOLAI ISHCHUK, NATANYA MARK, JONATHAN P. WATTS, PADDY BUTLER, ALEXANDER REGIER & LILLIAN WILKIE.
The publication will be available to buy for £5 either on the night or by emailing vhodgkinson@gmail.com
Private View on Wednesday 22nd May 2013 between 5pm and 8pm and the show runs from 23rd May and 7th June 2013.
Sounding Space Symposium
Save the date
Sounding Space
Private view: 5 June 2013
This summer, University of the Arts London (UAL) will host the BE OPEN Sound Portal on the Rootstein Hopkins Parade Ground at Chelsea College of Art and Design. The private view offers attendees the chance to experience ambisonic sound pieces created by UAL students for the Sounding Space symposium.
The BE OPEN Sound Portal is the result of a collaboration between BE OPEN, a foundation that supports innovation and creativity, and The London Design Festival. The portal, designed by ARUP, forms part of BE OPEN’s research into sensory design and its potential impact on the environment.
UAL will use the portal as part of an inter-college project, where students from Chelsea College of Art and Design, London College of Communication and Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design will work with its ambisonic technology to create sound compositions. The project will begin with a series of lectures, masterclasses and workshops, and culminate in the Sounding Space symposium. Students’ work will be unveiled at the private view on 5 June 2013.
Each college has adopted its own thematic. Chelsea’s Sound as Measure looks at sound as an integral element of interior and spatial design work. London College of Communication is focusing on the thematic of Sound, place and memory, and Nomad Lab, led by Central Saint Martins, explores the creative potential of working across different artistic disciplines; to be nomadic.
For further information and updates please visit the BE OPEN website.
Chelsea Alumni Captures The Thames

Commissioned by Museum of London and Film and Video Umbrella with generous in-kind support from the Cultureship. Supported by Arts Council England.
Nikolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen, Chelsea Alumni has been commissioned by the Museum of London and Film and Video Umbrella with generous in-kind support from the Cultureship. Supported by Arts Council England.
Larsen’s ‘Portrait of a River’ showing in the ‘Estuary’ exhibition from 17 May to 27 October 2013, is an evocative study of the sometimes overlooked, strangely indeterminate landscape through which the Thames cuts its sluggish, widening course on its journey out to sea.




























