Lisa Pettibone, MA Art and Science at Central Saint Martins, reflects on her recent one-week residency at Domaine de Boisbuchet, France.

Tucked away in the unspoiled agricultural backwaters of Southwestern France, this 19^th Century chateau and rambling farm buildings is the picturesque location for contemporary summer design and architecture workshops at Domaine de Boisbuchet.  The pedigree of the international teachers, its support by the Vitra Design Museum and the beauty of the location were sufficiently tempting for me to apply. But it was the work of American artist Janet Echelman and the possibility of creating a large­-scale collaborative artwork using sustainable solar powered cells that really drew me in.

After my degree show on the MA Art and Science course in May 2018, I was keen to push the scope of my installation work and her approach to creating monumental ‘self­-forming’ outdoor sculptures was alluring. The Solar Futures project goal was to design and construct a site-specific self-illuminating installation using thin film solar photovoltaic technology provided by German company Opvius. I had my doubts how 13 participants and Janet’s colleague, landscape architect Trevor Lee, would be able to navigate such a large project in five days. The experience and the resulting work were filled with fun and folly, wavering from brilliant focus to full-on chaos along the way.

By Antonis Sideras, MFA Fine Art Graduate at Wimbledon College of Arts

Victoria Sin

Held at the HENI project space at the Hayward Gallery, the exhibition titled ‘DRAG’ stays true to its promise to showcase images in which artists capture their departure from the binaries which encase gender. Featuring a range of artists from various backgrounds gives the show a distinct dynamic; the works of established artists from the late 20th century is curated alongside that of emerging artists working across art and drag, and also that of lesser known hybrid performers from the past. This makes the show feel more like a study on the history of gender shifting from the 1970’s onwards.

Final report by Ekene Okabi,  MSc Applied Psychology in Fashion, LCF

Funded by the Post-Grad Community Project Fund

See Ekene talk about her perfomrance from 1.04 onwards

I initially proposed this project as a performance that would incorporate data from a number of sources, including that collected as part of a UAL-commissioned longitudinal study into the university’s own Attainment Gap conducted by Duna Sabri. Its purpose was to provide an opportunity to promote engaged, compassionate community problem-solving. My plan was to recruit up to six creative alumni and PG students across UAL and other local campuses.

Final report by Sasha Burkhanova-Khabadze and Amanda Newell, PhD students at CSM and Chelsea

Funded by the Post-Grad Community Project Fund

Hotel Jaguar was created by Amanda Newall (PhD student, Chelsea) as an immersive installation, which took her audience to the setting of a family-run hotel — hosted by Exposed Arts Projects, just a minute away from busy High Street Kensington. There were two options for people: if they wanted to they could take part in the project themselves: to take a position of either a hotel guest, or a member of staff. The storyline, created by Newall, expanded around them accordingly. The hotel itself looked like a semi-fictional historical-futuristic situation, where the time scales, visual references in design and style, as well as the overall “atmosphere” was not pointing to one particular period, but merged the experience of deja-vu with a dream setting of a place that has never existed (yet nevertheless seemed eerily familiar, according to the guests’ feedback).