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Art in Action
Jasmine in Colvin 1 sent this report:
We began the day by catching a train to London Victoria and then walking to the Emmanuel centre, where we registered and sat down right at the front by the stage.
The first speaker, Tom Piper, is a well-known man within theatre. He is mainly known for his play writing and construction of theatre sets, however he was also a key part in the poppy project. He spoke about how he focuses on creating sculptural theatre through 3D stages. He explained that he 'translates images into sculptural stages' through using models at a 1:25 scale so he can feel like he is physically working with the model rather than doing it digitally. He also said that the key aspect in a play is immersing the audience by using three periods, the period the playwright wrote it in, the period it was set in and the present. Finally, he spoke about the poppy project and how contracting it was very similar to the way a play set is constructed. He told us it was very difficult to find the right material to give the perfect effect of the poppy 'wave' however after approaching a welder they found the perfect material and it then took 3 months to fill the whole area with poppies. Tom was really interesting to listen to and we learnt a lot about working in theatre production and the skills you need.
The second speaker, Roz Hall who is a digital artist, spoke about touch screen technologies in contemporary art and gave a demonstration of the technique and skill used in Digital Art. He began by taking us through a timeline of digital art; beginning in 2007 when the first generation iPhone came out with the brushes application where artists such as David Hockney began 'finger-painting' on the new technology. As technology developed and larger scale devices (such as iPads) came out more apps such as Inkpad and Procreate were developed. After a 9-year break Roz returned to Digital Art and he found that it was so much more practical than brush to canvas art as he could simply 'undo' mistakes and be experimental because of this. Roz soon became very well known through his work on Procreate, he was featured in many exhibitions and Apple reached out to him with their new Procreate project where his work was displayed in Apple stores all over the world. He also had his work on the Procreate app as a demo for people. This was very beneficial for all students to see how they can develop their work and reach out to more people to improve their skill and become more well known and the demonstration was exceptionally helpful in showing everyone simple ways to improve their digital artwork.
The next speaker was Rebecca Salter RA, who was interviewed about her time spent in Japan and the work she did there. Rebecca is most well known for her woodblock art she created during her two years spent in Japan. Her key message was that you should push for what you want in life, as she was told she would never be able to go to Art University. However, she did not listen and went to Hong Kong which she said would have been her biggest regret if she had not. From her two years in Japan she learnt that it takes a while to know your surroundings before you can make art from it and she also learnt how to juxtapose her work with her materials. Her lecture was very beneficial for all the art students as she showed us the skills needed to become an artist and showed us we need to persevere if something does not go as we planned.
The final speaker was Richard Bellingham who is a photographer and filmmaker. Richard began early on as an artist, painting his alcoholic dad in natural life, capturing the realism of his life. He decided to apply to Universities with his paintings and although he was rejected from all of them, one University requested to see the photographs on which the paintings were based. Following this Richard decided to explore filming, for which is now very well known. His lecture was very beneficial as it showed how you can make something out of nothing and how to improve photography and film skills.
We would like to thank Mr Rzepka for organising and taking us on such an incredible opportunity.
