Arts

Art in Transit

The University Gallery begins the new academic year with an exciting and intriguing exhibition inspired by the University's Collection of Latin American Art (UECLAA) entitled Transit.

Using the broad network of meanings provided by the prefix trans this exhibition represents the development of a concept of translation not only as a movement taking place within the structure of language but also as a physical, emotionally tangible movement, affecting individual and collective bodies.

The exhibition will include works belonging to UECLAA as well as some works loaned to the University by a number of South American artists including one of the most important artists working in Brazil in the 1960s, Mira Schendel.

On show will be a variety of media including sculpture, photography and video installation. Works inhabiting and transforming conventional objects, such as the bank note and the book, will also be exhibited.

The exhibition has been curated by two of the Department of Art History and Theory's PhD students Maria Bernal and Isobel Whitelegg.

Transit opens at the University Gallery on 3 October and runs through to 9 November. Admission is free and the opening times are as follows:11am to 5pm Monday to Friday, and 1pm to 4.30pm on Saturdays.

Theatre news

Staff and students from the Centre for Theatre Studies have been busy over the summer. Here are details of what some of them have been up to:

Simon Usher, Visiting Practitioner, directed four new plays during the summer including, Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads at the Royal National Theatre and I am Angela Brazil by Angela Brazil at the Edinburgh Festival, a play by former Writer in Residence Lucina Coxon. All four plays received excellent reviews.

A play inspired by a short story penned by Dr Roger Moss of the Centre for Theatre Studies premiered in Italy during the summer. Le Morne, written by Dr Moss during his time as a visiting lecturer in Mauritius, re-tells the traditional legend of the mass suicide of a group of escaped slaves who were living on Le Morne du Brabant, a mountainous isthmus on the south-west corner of the island. The play was first staged in June in Bergamo and has subsequently toured around Italy.

Teaching Fellow Anne Eddington spent part of the summer working on the Royal National Theatre's Primary Shakespeare Project, part of the government funded Art of Regeneration initiative targeting inner-city areas with limited access to the creative arts and Barbara Peirson, a Visiting Practitioner, was selected as one of a team of writers commissioned to write a drama series for First Take Films and Anglia TV.

Executive Officer, Sheila Foster, is currently preparing for a production in the Mercury Theatre Studio. A Sidelong Glance At Pinter is a collection of short plays by Harold Pinter, some of which ill be performed at the Lakeside Theatre during week 3.

Also, second year students David Kirk, Sean Carrigan and Rachel Snider were selected to take part in the Royal National Theatre's summer workshops on Commedia during July and third year student Becky Brice spent her summer acting at the prestigious Williamstown Theatre Festival in the US.