Home

BA(Hons)Visual Arts by Negotiated Study

Foundation in Art and Design

Resources

International Project Space

Location

email

Annette Lucas - Foundation Course Director

Derelict buildings and buildings that are being demolished have fascinated me for a long time. I am inspired by the way layer after layer of materials are revealed and in particular how the history of a place is revealed as part of the demolition process. This has led me to research more closely the fundamentals of Architecture including: the history, the orders and the characteristics of the styles in relation to both the structural and decorative elements.

In 2005 I founded a group called Midlands Textile Forum, the official launch took place at Birmingham City University in 2007. The Forum aims to provide a supportive network for members from those who are just beginning to enjoy textiles to leading professionals and a strong platform to showcase the wide breadth of textile activity across the region. For more information visit: www.midlandstextileforum.com 

Terry Clarke - Fine Art Senior Lecturer

I enjoy a broad range of Fine Art practice but my current work is focused on figuration. I have also developed some new landscape paintings based on a recent visit to southern China, as well as maintaining my interest in figurative drawing.

Ruth Claxton - 0.5 Visual Arts Lecturer

I work with a variety of media, in particular reconfiguring or altering pre-existing objects in order to create sculptural objects, drawings and installations which begin to question what it is to look, see or experience.  I have exhibited work in commercial and public galleries and project spaces in the UK and internationally. I am also involved in a number of projects including Eastside Projects, an artist-led gallery space, in Birmingham.

I am concerned with articulating the fragile relationship between vision and bodily experience, image and that which it depicts. The exponential rise of the internet and other telecommunications systems has resulted in an increasingly dis-located society of individuals. The real world, as a place, is becoming superseded by a space of information and entertainment, a virtual, global, digital space, book-marked not land-marked. An interest in communicating the complex relationship between direct and mediated experience informs much of my practice and primarily results in installations where the audience is physically and conceptually implicated within constructed ‘landscapes’.

www.ruthclaxton.com

Kevin Harley - Visual Arts Senior Lecturer

John Hodgett - Photography Senior Lecturer

I have always enjoyed looking at things, and taking photographs seemed to be a good way of conserving and sharing what I had seen. By a series of happy accidents, I found I could make money with my camera, and my work started to appear in places I had never have imagined, including newspapers, magazines, books and art galleries.

I don't go out looking for pictures anymore, rather I just stumble across opportunities when I am out doing other things, like family stuff, walking, cycling, going to galleries or just waiting for people - it's almost as though the photographs are now finding me.

www.johnhodgett.co.uk and www.mydiarysite.com john.hodgett@bcu.ac.uk

Jo Newman - Fashion and Textiles Lecturer

Within each piece of work I aim to capture a moment of life or an observation that I find amusing, sensitive or quirky. I like to include snippets of narrative either including text or embedded within the visual content of the piece. 
I draw in stitch onto mixed media canvasses and work my ideas directly from sketches, drawings and found imagery. My inspiration comes from everywhere!

jo.newman@bcu.ac.uk

Steve Butt - Print Technical Demonstrator

"When I look at landscape I feel a metaphysical, emotional and historical weight behind the vision: it is often not the landscape I am looking at, but the memory or idea of landscape.

Landscape for me is always viewed through a double glazed window in a centrally heated room."

Over the last two years I have been interested in the re-evaluation of landscape as a valid subject for fine art practice in the 21st century. I have taken this path for two reasons. The first was to engage in a subject which has now become irrelevant to many artists today, and examine the possibilities of revitalising its traditions, the second reason was the pursuit of ideas which were a natural extension of my previous work about memory, time and childhood. 

The pastels and prints deal with traces of memory and nostalgia in landscape as recognised through a series of marks, muted colours, and stylised form taken from wallpaper, children’s toys, advertising, and the influence of cinema. In no sense is there any endeavour to see the natural world empirically, that is, to stand within it and experience first sensations. Rather the work is reflective, and attempts to consider how time and external influences in the contemporary world transform our experience of nature. 

Peter Grego - Deputy Head of Department Course Director BA Visual Arts by Negotiatated Study 

Personal practice focuses on fine art print, video, photography and the curation and organisation of exhibitions. My research engages with, ‘problems of nationality, location, identity, and historical memory’ (Gilroy: 1993). It explores concepts of how ideas of nationhood emerge through collective imaginings (Anderson 1983), notions of ‘ambivalence’ and ‘hybridity’ (Bhaba: 1994) and how we position ourselves in, or are positioned by, narratives of the past (Hall: 1987). It also draws on the work of, amongst others, Fanon, Said and Spivak, to develop a series of questions relating to notions of belonging, community, society and the individual. 

Steve Bulcock - Visual Communication Lecturer

Fiona Banford - Student Liaison Officer

Handwoven doublecloth as always been predominant in my work so any interesting forms or ideas that inspire me are translated into these structures. I mainly use natural yarns and fibres.  Silk fibres are also used to create vessels that are then embellished with objects, stitch and mixed media.  These fibres are left in their natural state to emphasise the ‘natural’ effect.

Steve Payne - Fine Art Visiting Tutor

I did these drawings of a construction gang during the summer when they were re-structuring the road system where I live in Kenilworth. They were working directly opposite my house and I began to become interested in what they were doing and how they were doing it. So I started to draw them, and it became quite an obsessive activity. Over a period of a month I made about 100 drawings, mostly brief, telegrammatic studies in sketchbooks. Despite this I felt I got to know them as individuals and as a group despite having little closer contact than my view from my window. That's the interesting thing about drawing - a kind of knowledge you get about something or someone just from the engagement that comes from intense, focussed observation of things which were once featureless, strange or distant.

Sean O'Keeffe - Visual Arts Lecturer

My current practice centres on an exploration of drawing and animation using a combination of authographic and digital methodologies to create ‘hybrid’ site specific installations and projections. 
The piece “…undone” was made for the exhibition “lost” MAC Santiago, Chile 2007 and attempts to re-work the traditional notion of the artists sketchbook by incorporating digital video, photography and hand drawn imagery.
I am also currently developing a collaborative series of works called “Draw a Cowboy” with colleague Steve Bulcock that explore digital drawing systems.

Penny Mason - Fine Art Lecturer

The creativity for my painting comes from the following: the presence and absence of the 'being'; traces left in landscape due to the movement of water; the erosion of the elements and human intervention with the environment. I like to play with a variety of viewpoints either at ground level or looking down from above. 

My painting technique evolves from my engagement with the natural world. Through walks in the countryside, strolls by the river and the sea. I look at how light changes these places. The reflective properties of the play of light dancing on water and the moody qualities of twilight casting shadows on the landscape has influenced some of my most recent paintings, especially ‘Ocean Haze’ and ‘Blue Lagoon’. 

Joy Bosworth - Ceramics Lecturer

Joy's work is concerned with the contrast between the subtle nuances of colour and surface achieved in a Raku firing and then silver leaf is applied to the surface and patinated after firing. The understated, even humble, nature of the clay and the precious, yet damaged surface of the silver leaf make reference to issues about the 'value' of materials. Some have formed silver lids emphasising yet covering
openings.

Joy has a Master's Degree from Cardiff and Wolverhampton Universities, and has written a book in the Ceramic Handbook Series for A & C Black Publishing called "Ceramics with Mixed Media" which is aimed at the experienced maker who is exploring a new area or for students of ceramics. At present she is researching a new book on ceramic jewellery which will be published in 2010, and Joy continues to sell her own work in galleries and at Selected Potters Markets.

www.joybosworthceramics.com

Pete Whitehouse 3D Technical Demonstrator

Steve Perkins - 3D Design Lecturer