Skyping Lima - update!

We held the skype session between Newcastle University 2nd year Fine Art students and Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru Industrial Design and Graphic Design students on Friday 3rd May.

The session allowed the students to hold a live discussion based around their own art work, how their course is structured and what they plan to do after uni. Suzanne gave an overview of the Transporter project and why we were working with the 2nd year students, Kitty Langton (student) gave an overview of the 'Strand' module and what they had learnt so far and how it was helping them develop their artwork and Ella Dorton (student) gave an overview of the Fine Art course and how it is taught in England.

This led onto the Lima students giving an overview of their projects and they both compared the differences with the courses i.e. lima study for 5-6 years and specialise in a specific artform and are not able to work cross artforms like in England. Lima students however have a much stronger focus on learning their skill and perfecting their craft before focussing on their own personal ideas development whereas Newcastle students are much more focussed on the concepts of their artwork and tend to learn specific skills as and when they need to.

The students asked specific questions about each others work and posted comments on the Flickr site which you can find here - http://www.flickr.com/photos/67813410@N05/

We are keen to explore the potential for students to take part in an exchange at each other's universities so that they can benefit from the different approaches to art courses.

regards
Transporter project!!

Skyping Lima!

As part of our 'Strand' project with students from Newcastle University we will be doing a skype exchange with students from the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru in Lima this Friday (3rd May).

Suzanne and I visited Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru during our residency in Peru in 2011. During our visit we met with some of the tutors who gave us a tour of the different departments and we talked about various projects that they were working on with their students and local communities  and how these might link with our Transporter project- an example of which can be found at - https://www.facebook.com/ArteSurChincha

The skype exchange will consist of the students commenting on each others work, prior to the skype session, through our Flickr site - http://www.flickr.com/photos/67813410@N05/ with further dicussion during the skype exchange itself. We will also be exploring how the students programmes compare and differ and learn about each others culture and how they approach artisitc projects.

Here are some examples of the students work and we will post another update on this once the skype session has taken place!!!

Until next time.....

Transporter project!!

Interesting projects!

Hello again, a quick update from the Transporter Project with a list of projects and websites which you may be interested in....

A great community project building a greenhouse from plastic bottles
http://www.the4csne.com/greenhouse.html

Go back to basics and make your own book!
http://theresaeaston.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/print-book-making-36-lime-street/

Uniting new and old technologies, Yvette Hawkins and Susannah Pickering - whose work incorporates books, poetry and traditional crafts - will start a poem thread on Twitter with clothing as the central theme.
http://www.bookapothecary.co.uk/#!blog/cs0g

An interesting article about sustainability
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2013/mar/18/environment-reporting-arts-council-sustainability

Northeast Permaculture - Since January 2005, permaculture activists throughout the Northeast have been meeting and actively creating a network for mutually supporting each other and advancing permaculture solutions among the wider public in our area
http://northeasternpermaculture.wikispaces.com/

A link to a great project one of our Newcastle University Fine art students recently attended
http://www.felinuchaf.org/

Enjoy the Easter Weekend!
Transporter Project

Newcastle University 'Strand' Project

We are working with 15 Newcastle University 2nd yr Fine Art students as part of our creative exchange element of the Transporter project. The 'Strand' project, which runs alongside the students studio practice, allows us to share information, knowledge and skills learnt during our time in Peru and Berlin (as well as the developments within our arts practices), with the students to help them develop ideas and new skills.

They’ve had some great ideas and are inspiring us with new ideas too- we are encouraging the students to learn a new skill or develop a body of research on a new area during the Strand. They are responding well to this and some are integrating the project into their studio practice as they discover a new interest or area they wish to work in.

We are uploading images of the students work onto our flickr photostream so please have a look and comment to give them feedback on their ideas so far! http://www.flickr.com/photos/transporterproject/sets/72157633054505042/ Any signposts to artists, books etc to help them with their research is welcomed too!

The Student project aims and learning outcomes are - 

•Develop an understanding of different crafts and skills, what role they play in cultural heritage and whether they can inspire contemporary art

•Gain a greater understanding of other art forms

•Experiment and collaborate with other artists/peers.

•Learn, share skills in arts and crafts such as weaving, paper making, pottery, woodwork etc

•Learn new ways of seeing and doing through cultural exchange and researching their own cultural heritage

•Understand issues surrounding sustaining local and international traditional art forms and cultures

•Develop understanding of sustainable arts practise and broader environmental issues

•Question and explore their relationship to their environment.

•Self direct their studies and research

•Group work and critical feedback

•Create a body of research, ideas and experiments which explore new ground for the student

•Create a ‘resolved’ new art work/design/prototype (either individually or collaboratively) for public showing.

June 2012

Phase 1 - update:

Exhibition

Well we have been hard at work since our last blog update making artwork and developing the project further. Due to various reasons we have not yet managed to organise our exhibition but we are looking to hold this towards the end of 2012 at a venue tbc.....we have one in mind but not yet confirmed so we shall keep you posted!!

The main themes of the exhibition will be -

Sustainable arts practices from around the world and what this means to artists

Our relationship to the environment and how it compares across the world

Looking back at our heritage and craft and presenting it in a contemporary way

Crossing cultures and skills sharing 

Below are some artists who will feature in the exhibition:

Jaime Miranda – Jaime is a sculptor and photographer whom we met during our 

residency at Sachaqa Arts Centre, Peru - http://www.jaimemiranda.com/

                               

                               

LEO – Leo lives and works between Berlin and London and is currently Artist in Resident
at VARC – Visual Arts in Rural Communities in Tarset, Northumberland
(www.varc.org.uk). Leo is interested in the current nature of environmental art and
public art. - www.cskx.org/leo

 

                                        

Trina Brammah – Trina is a painter and founder of Sachaqa Arts Centre .Trina works by collecting natural pigments from local river sources in the Peruvian jungle - http://www.trinabrammah777.blog.com/

                   

Testing out ideas at VARC (Visual Arts in Rural Communities)
In April – May 2012 we spent time with LEO in Tarset, Northumberland as part of his artists workshop programme. A group of us with various interests came together to make artwork inspired by the landscape. It was quite a short time scale but great to get stuck into creating something outside with the challenge of such a tight deadline. The images show what we were working on. The 'cuffed' treetrunks was an experiment with sightlines and viewpoints (and gold leaf!). The area of woodland we worked in was full of verticle lines and I wanted to cut across this with something- i also like the idea of 'ringing' the trees, to set them apart from the rest, if i'd had more time i was going ring all of the trees in that sightline. We've also been collecting platic strapping and plastic bags and creating smale scale experiments with proggy matting and weaving - with an aim that these would lead to a large scale installation. To see more images of our time at VARC visit our Flickr site.

International Skype exchange project with Lima and Newcastle University:

This is progressing well and we are looking to hold a skype session between Fine Arts Students from Lima University and Newcastle University in collaboration with David Butler in Oct/Nov 2012.

This online exchange will allow the students to discuss the theme of sustainability within their own practices and look at the differences between their work, culture, heritage, traditional skills and crafts and even the differences between their fine art courses.
This online exchange will form part of a larger project with Newcastle University students where they will be exploring the above themes through their own individual art practices in preparation for exhibiting the resulting art work as part of our exhibition in Dec 2012.

  

Transporter Interim Phase (Berlin):     
We have just received funding from Arts Council England to deliver an interim phase of the Transporter project (Hooray!) which will allow us to spend time at Kunst Stoffe in Berlin for 5 weeks in September 2012, deliver another series of workshops in the North East and develop a larger Phase 2 programme for next year.

Kunst Stoffe is an arts organisation that looks at the creative re-examination and re-use of recycled materials.

In Berlin we will spend a focussed amount of time resolving ideas, evaluating our experiences so far and realising artworks that epitomise Transporter in a visual way . We will create collaborative work inspired by Berlin and our travels so far in Peru, exploring how they could have resonance and meaning in both places. There will be a 5 day exhibition at the end of the residency to showcase our new work and as always during this residency we will post regular blogs about the artists we are meeting and the new skills we are learning.

During our residency we want to explore the idea of habitual waste in Berlin making artwork that responds to this and comparing it to the waste habits in Peru and England. We are interested in the social aspects of this topic and what we can learn about different cultures from their daily lives. We are keen to explore the functionality of waste – taking the material and creating something new and useful in a fun way i.e. weaving raincatchers from discarded bottles or strips of plastic, creating fantastical new landscapes from discarded images of Berlin or installations from recycled paper/cardboard to develop our skills in paper engineering and origami creating places to sit and reflect.

Here are some of our initial ideas......

 

  

Transporter Phase 2 -
As mentioned previously, we are currently developing Phase 2 of Transporter and hope to create a programme that will allow further exchanges and discussions to be made between the local, national and international links that we have made so far during the project. We hope to develop a wider discussion around the theme of sustainable arts such as ideas on the re-presenting of traditional craft and re-examining of waste materials.

As part of our interim phase funding we talking to a variety of organisations and artists who have similar interests and can widen our knowledge bank. We can then add this information and any skills to our blog and flickr site. We hope to develop a touring exhibition and develop a live exchange between artists and organisations from different countries.

Some of the organisations we are currently talking to are –

• VARC – Visual Arts in Rural Communities - www.varc.org.uk
• EiggBox – Isle of Eigg – http://www.eiggbox.com/
• Axis Artes and Lima University - http:blog.pucp.edu.pe/blog/axisarte
• Kunst Stoffe - http://www.kunst-stoffe-berlin.de/

As ever, we will update our blog as we go along and will post videos and images on our Flickr site.


If you think you have a project or an idea that would link to Transporter then do get in touch.

Update since our return to the UK & the next phase of Transporter...

Spending time at Sachaqa Centro De Arte and our experiences in San Roque de Cumbaza, Tarapoto, Chazuta and Lamas has allowed us to take a fresh approach to our art making, giving us time and space to learn to just relax and not force creativity! Being away from anything familiar really made you think about yourself as a person, who you are and who you want to be- something we didn’t expect! The peaceful and undisturbed surroundings were AMAZING and the way Trina and Daniel have set up the centre in a very relaxed and informal manner means you are free to work as and when you please. We were so inspired by the beauty of the place as well as the sounds and movement from the river, weather, trees and wildlife. There was thunder and lightning like we’d never experienced before, frogs as loud as horns, the biggest cockroaches we've ever seen, an orchestra from nature every night and the most beautiful coffee, pineapple and chocolate we’ve ever tasted!

Since leaving Peru we have been developing new work from ideas inspired by our time there which we did not have time to realise whilst we were there. We are currently looking at creating sculptural work from handmade paper we made whilst working with local artisans in Lamas – looking into the techniques of paper engineering and origami. We are also developing a sound and film piece made from the footage and recordings that we took as we travelled around Peru and during our daily walks around San Roque de Cumbaza where we were based. This new work will form the basis of the exhibition we are hoping to deliver in March 2012 (date and place tbc). We will post more information about this exhibition as soon as we have it!

Since our last posting we have been in contact with Lima University’s sculpture department and Axis Arte (www.blog.pucp.edu.pe/blog/axisarte ) whom we met just before our return to the UK. We are organising an online exchange between students from Lima University and Newcastle University and will be using the theme of sustainability within traditional art forms as a starting point from which to develop a relationship. The students will share ideas and thoughts around this subject and also discuss the differences and similarities between how art courses are taught in the UK and Peru.

Our next stop on the Transporter journey is to Berlin in August 2012 where we will be artists in residence in Kunst-Stoffe, an arts organisation that looks at the creative re-examination and re-use of recycled materials. While we are there we will make work inspired by our travels so far and immerse ourselves in their culture.

We will add more info to our blog as we develop this project so keep checking in with us and remember our Flickr account (http://www.flickr.com/photos/67813410%40N05/ ) where we have recently added some video footage of local artisans singing about their passion for the work that they do!!