Arts

Art historian curates Reno exhibition

Matthew Poole, Acting Director of the MA in Gallery Studies at Essex art historian will travel to the US this month to co-curate an exhibition at the Sheppard Fine Art Gallery at the University of Nevada in Reno.

Matthew is organising the exhibition with artists Amanda Beech, of Chelsea College of Art, and Jaspar Joseph Lester, of Sheffield Hallam University. The show brings together video works by internationally recognised artists as well as emerging figures: Beech and Joseph Lester as well as Mark Leckey, Pierre Bismuth and Roman Vasseur.

A still from a video by Jaspar Joseph Lester entitled Spirit, 2007

One Way Street will showcase video works in different areas of an elaborate installation of tilted walls that will be built within the gallery space. The unusual architectural structure formed by the fragmented walls will create an environment similar to the German artist Kurt Schwitter’s famous Merbau - The Cathedral of Erotic Misery.

Matthew explained: ‘The title of the show takes its cue from Walter Benjamin’s text of the same name. Benjamin’s text navigates language, architecture and time to produce a subjective force that is present, anti-historical and always on the move. The exhibition will show works that attest to this Benjaminian sensibility.’

One Way Street opens on 1 March in the US and runs until 6 April. For further information see www.unr.edu/art/site/galleriesevents/sheppard_gallery.html.

Art History travels

Art History undergraduates have visited Florence and New York as part of their studies.

During the Florence trip, a compulsory part of the second year course The Renaissance in Tuscany, students viewed churches and museums, and studied classical architecture. They were accompanied by Professors Jules Lubbock and Valerie Fraser, while Dr Caspar Pearson, a former PhD student in the Department, joined them from Rome.

The seven-day visit to the Big Apple was with lecturers Matthew Poole and Dr Margherita Spiro. Dr Spiro said: ‘We visited the main museums and galleries including MOMA and the Whitney Museum. We also visited galleries in the Lower East Side, as well as in the Chelsea area. We shared pizza and the famous clam pie in Lombardi’s in Little Italy and some of us had Manhattan cocktails!’

Dr Spiro had only recently returned from two European trips, where she presented papers at conferences. Her paper, ‘The Impurity of the Image Peter Greenaway and the Politics of Practice,’ was presented at the CENDEAC conference in Spain. Dr Spiro explained: ‘The British film maker Peter Greenaway was there to hear our papers on his work! The conference had many international speakers and was well attended.’

Ancient Greece inspires theatre production

The Lakeside Theatre welcomes the debut performance of a new work written by undergraduate Drama student, Eleanor Barton.

Middle Ground is Eleanor’s own adaptation of an ancient Greek tragedy, Tereus, Procne and Philomela. She draws on several versions of the story told throughout history, including Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, Ted Hughes’ Tales from Ovid and Wertenbaker’s The Love of the Nightingale. She said: ‘The play is titled Middle Ground because it is a central point between these adaptations, in which I try to give equal weighting to each character and side of the story; almost like giving each a fair trial and leaving the audience to decide who to empathise with.’

As well as writing, Eleanor is directing and producing. After each performance there will be a feedback session, giving Eleanor the opportunity to explore how her work was received.

Middle Ground runs from 28 February until 2 March at 7.30pm. Tickets priced at £6 (£4) are available from the Arts Office, telephone: 01206 873261 or e-mail: arts@essex.ac.uk.