Housed: Chelsea Cookhouse, 7-10 April 2015

A four-day exhibition, and collaborative project involving Chelsea MA Fine Art, and Curating students.

Image courtesy of loomio.org and Amy McDonnell

How far can you stretch the authorized set up of the museum/ institution? [1]

Art as a mirror and as a lamp. [2]

Housed: seeks to explore the interplay between the artist, the viewer and the location setting… the latter being a ‘display space’ within an art school context. Who are we? Who are they? And what role does the environment holding the exhibition play in this relationship? The collaboration (Chelsea MAFA & MACC students) will provide both groups an opportunity to address the Meta Artist/ Curator position.

Housed: seeks to reveal what remains dormant and under-exposed within us in response to the traditional and institutional framing of the socio-political artistic practice. The premise of this exhibition proposes a chain of perspectives that challenge the ‘occupancy’ inside the regimented frameworks that artists continually try to support, intervene and critically address.

http://housed.myblog.arts.ac.uk 

https://www.facebook.com/housedcookhouse

[1] Mami Kataoka, Chief Curator at the Mori Art Museum (MAM), Toyko, Japan.

[2] James Lingwood, Co-Director of Artangel, UK.

Chelsea Cookhouse, Chelsea College of Art, 16 John Islip Street, SW1P 4JU

7 - 10 April 2015: Open daily, Tuesday 7th, 11am – 6pm, Wednesday 12pm – 6pm, Thursday 9th 11am – 6pm, Friday 10th, 10am – 2pm.

For further information please contact Alex via a.roberts5@arts.ac.uk 

This postgraduate exhibition and collaboration is kindly been supported by the Postgraduate Students Communities Fund, UAL

MAFA Interim Show - works in progress

An opportunity to see what 20 Chelsea MAFA students 

are gearing up to, for September's final show... 

Fact, Fiction, Fable

Three MA Fine Art students, Paul Abbott, Alex Roberts and Michael Williams, spent a week (17-21 November 2014) collaborating, and involved with dialogue around the themes of Fact, Fiction and Fable.

"The week offered a chance for us to re-address some common threads, and overlaps of interest within our independent works. Re-looking at the question of narrative, and hints to a narrative within our studio practice. 

Our time included co-operation with using different materials such as drawing, sound, video, performance, not with the aim to produce completed works, but to allow the process of coming together to inform our interest in identity, ambiguity, narrative, the relationship between the figurative and abstraction".

A brief selection of the documented, working experience, and the installation piece (sound & visual), that came together.

Office Party - first round, complete!

Several critiques and openings later, the first round of Office Party has ended. 

Office Party was a six-week art exhibition and experiment of site specific works, installations and performances, part of Office Sessions III.  Office Sessions III is a project held at Anchorage House, London, directed by Caitlin Mavroleon.  Thanks to Adam Zoltowski for steering the 40+ artists involved.

Office within an office, 2014 - evolving, painting installation (detailed view)

Should you be looking? 2010 - drawing within a reclaimed, Panorama telescope (rehoused)

http://officepartyart.tumblr.com/post/103798781062/installation-shots-from-office-party-private

Office Session III - Office Party

40 Chelsea MAFA students, past and present, plus a few outsiders to make it interesting!

Be Inspired Contemporary Art Auction

Be Inspired Contemporary Art Auction is in aid of 

The Prince’s Foundation for Children & the Arts

Wanderings 04 2013

An opportunity to bid for one of Roberts's, original works on paper, went live this afternoon, via Paddle8. Get bidding!    

Works involved in the collection will be auctioned online by Paddle8 from 17th September to 1st October.  The auction includes a selection of art from artists such as Marc Quinn, Gavin Turk, Idris Khan, Tracey Emin and Xavier Mascaro.  Online bidding ends on 1st October, culminating in a live auction on Wednesday 1st October at the Saatchi Gallery, London.

The aim is to raise funds to expand the charity's work with children in hospice care. For more information about the charity please click here.  

Reflections on Taste - the publication is out there!

ISBN 978-1-908339-12-6

Introduction
A collective of Chelsea's Fine Art and Textile Design postgraduate came together to present their own observations and questions of taste after Bourdieu.  Led by UAL academics, Dave Beech* and Malcom Quinn*, the reading group for 'Taste After Bourdieu' was inspired by Own Jones' writing on the demonization of the working class and 'Chav' culture, and Jukka Gronow's examination of taste and fashion, informed by Immanuel Kant and Georg Kimmel.

Through a visual, tactile and interactive confession booth, the group sought to provoke the subtle and sometimes obvious denials, ironies and conflicts of private versus public tastes. Because we elicit ourselves in relation to those around us, a question of ego becomes pertinent: how can you, as an individual, foster a taste that is unique, not perverted by conformation to the standards of others? Whilst this may seem like a leading question, it merely points to the networks we enact, and the ways in which we position ourselves within them. To what extent does desire for a beneficial position, one that garners acceptance or validation or sorts, skew our behaviours? Are we made to play the role of fearful subject, telling the cultural emperor how magnificent their new clothe are?

In the worlds of Fine Art and Design, such questions of positioning and mediation can be related to the commercially viable product.  As makers of things, the question arises: can taste transcend behaviour? There is a difficult ground to be broken, and a pertinent question remains: is the extent to which identity and expression are bound to systems of commodification, a bad thing?

The Confessional Booth and the publication is a culmination of the groups' thoughts, questions and observations.

*Dave Beech is a Chelsea College of Art and Design Senior Lecturer - BA Fine Art
*Malcolm Quinn is Associate Dean of Research and Director of Graduate School Camerwell, Chelsea, Wimbledon Graduate School.

To read more, or for further information about the collective publication, please contact Alex directly.