Activating Spaces: Central Saint Martins
As art institutions and organisations navigate online during the Covid-19 pandemic, artists continue to make work. The next generation to come, carrying out their studies at Art Schools across the world, are also making new work during this situation-specific time.
Led by artist Lucy Joyce, ‘Activating Spaces’ is a project for second-year BA Fine Art students at Central Saint Martins, in partnership with Camden Art Centre. A group of students from different pathways were bought together for this project, but soon found themselves either holed-up in London student-halls, re-locating to the homes of friends or family in the UK, or called back across the oceans to isolate. But work continued to be made. The title of this project has thus become 15713 referencing the cumulative mileage of each student’s distance from Camden Art Centre’s physical building, where their work began.
From 14-17 May, the students' work will be showcased in a series of Instagram takeovers and posts. These will give a glimpse into how students are responding, referencing and challenging this moment in time. With studio spaces no longer accessible, 3D footage has been made from memory of rooms once occupied; paintings created with two-metre sticks zoomed beyond recognition into pixilated portals; poetry written to dead branches found while out walking; an inkling of a music video and film trailer; a reference to the endless scroll of social media and thinking spaces created in a back garden. What 15713 offers is a snapshot into the generous working minds of these students holding their own at this time.
Central Saint Martins Artists
Alice Bajaj
Notes since I was here, May 2020
CSM BA FINE ART STAGE II 4D
Currently in isolation in Singapore
8,340 miles from Camden Art Centre
Exploring disconnection from her university bedroom, in London, where she lived before moving back to her family’s home during isolation, the room is mostly based on the way the artist remembers things with some fabrications of the truth. The space symbolises a period in time that now feels distant.
Anna Levenson
Transcripted Devise, 2020 (0:37, Film)
CSM BA FINE ART STAGE II 4D
Currently in isolation in London
1.7 miles from Camden Art Centre
As a multi-media artist exploring distance through the copy, Anna Levenson focuses on transposing the physical and virtual. Considering the interconnectivity between containment and transcendence, body and mind. Despite working mainly with abstracted imagery a theme of personification can often be realised, taking the form of sculptural entities.
Annie O'Connell
Experiment in Knit, 2020
CSM BA FINE ART STAGE II 3D
Currently in isolation in Boston, MA, USA
3,277 miles from Camden Art Centre
Annie is creating knitted wearable pieces to be worn/inhabited within and around the domestic space by her family members. Through the act of dressing relatives, the artist aims to address ideas concerning repetition, movement (restricted or not), costume, tradition, comfort, and separation. Displacement due to the pandemic has reintroduced the inherent incongruences that emerge from living/studying in the United Kingdom as an American.
Junho Hwang
Monster Under My Bed, 2020
CSM BA FINE ART STAGE II 3D
Currently in isolation in London
10.6 miles from Camden Art Centre
There are three different viewpoints to concentrate on in this video. The first one is a range of sound sources that divide the real world and their ‘own world’ in the video. The Second part is photographic and video footage showing silhouettes. The last one proposes that there might actually be a monster under the bed.
Emily Barker
Series 2, 2020
CSM BA FINE ART STAGE II 3D
Currently in isolation in London
5.6 miles from Camden Art Centre
Emily Barker's practice has always been very tactile and material based; The artist likes to use her hands and feel the forms as they are being made. Emily is interested in the spaces between and the unseen. More recently, she has been exploring her own form and the space around her. Emily has devised a rule for working, body as an instruction to make, and in turn what’s made as instruction for the body. These rules have been adapted and changed due to the current situation, and so a new way to make.
Kashish Saini
I do my shopping in a thinking trolley, 2020 (Moving image, 00:59)
CSM BA FINE ART STAGE II XD
Currently in isolation in London,
7.7 miles from Camden Art Centre
Originally from Bombay, India. Kashish has moved to many places as a result of a family deeply integrated in the aviation business. The artist is currently pursuing a fine art degree at Central Saint Martins and within her practice is passionate about nostalgia, memory and challenging spaces. A practice consisting of poetic photo collages, contours and occasional text, Kashish's work traces the existentialism of the self by using themes of displacement, monotony, and playing with the fabrics of time.
Ruo Wei
Last Night My Hands were Folded (An Extract from Performance), 2020
CSM BA FINE ART STAGE II 4D
Currently isolating in London,
6.8 miles from Camden Art Centre
Ruo Wei is interested in capturing ritual moments. Through exploring the relationship between body, object and space, the artist hopes to build a sense of hope and belief that can lead the audience and the artist to a liminality that lies between reality and the virtual world.
Ekaterina Chetvergova
Garden Manifesto, 2020
(A series of digital moving image sketches, 30 sec each)
CSM BA FINE ART STAGE II 4D
Currently in isolation in Doncaster
173 miles from Camden Art Centre
During this project, Ekaterina has been observing and documenting spaces, shapes and forms around her through various digital and analogue mediums. The artist then used the collected and archived materials to create new experiences and environments and manifest them in a moving image form; exploring where and how these environments situate themselves within our perception of reality.
Connor Faulder
Still Alive 16/03/2020~ongoing (Texts, photo images, moving images)
CSM BA FINE ART STAGE II 2D
Currently in isolation in London
3.8 miles from Camden Art Centre
In this specific time, the daily, uninterrupted conversation with the artist's father was more like reporting that they were alive, rather than talking. Almost every day, 24 hours in a small room, these records become a connection with this space, as a repeating routine, bored but also having to continue. The dialogue is then printed on coloured tracing paper and put in the place where they stay the longest. They start becoming my trace.
Noah Thompson-Holbourns
The Dance of the Bamboo, 2020
(Bamboo, Decking wood, Electric tape, Emulsion paint)
BA FINE CSM BA FINE ART STAGE II XD
Currently in isolation in Essex
27 miles from Camden Art Centre
Noah is a sculptor who deals with concepts of falsehood and scale, whilst employing a selective approach to material choice. Working with a limited range of material allowing the sculpture to claim its own figurative identity. Noah has a sustained interest in construction and formation, using concrete and metal to devise works and he is now adapting his process to use what is readily available. Using figurative, yet rigid found materials such as bamboo and wood has allowed the artist to employ a less serious, more playful approach to sculpture making. Using the method of photography to choreograph falsehoods, altering perception of scale, movement, manipulating material and ultimately devising the dance of the bamboo
Meg Ganonsky
Hiatus: Poetics of the suburban, 2020 (images from an ongoing series)
CSM BA FINE ART STAGE II 3D
Currently isolating in Essex
45 miles from Camden Art Centre
In a time when artistic practice has to be stripped back to its core, Meg has been utilising text and photography to grapple with situating herself in a time where she is reflecting on the past (a time of consistency), aiming to capture the present and creating a future through a narrative. The use of a Polaroid camera has given the artist comfort during this time when everyone is becoming reliant on technology, a small glimmer of hope through its physicality
