Shakespeare's Animals - At the Guildhall, Portsmouth 2016

Shakespeare's Animals Exhibition

We are very excited to have now installed a new group exhibition piece for Shakespeare's Animals, part of the upcoming Much Ado about Portsmouth Festival (maap.port.ac.uk) marking the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death.

The work is a large scale group student piece and depicts some of the (over 4000!) animals which Shakespeare alluded to in his writings and will be gracing one wall of the Portsmouth Guildhall's Freda Swain room from now until 7th June 2016. During that time, Portsmouth Cultural Trust tells us, thousands of visitors will be able to see and read about the work and the students, and we hope, through coming to this blog, be able to give us feedback too. We think the diversity and talent of our first year students is well represented in this group show, as well as the explorative and questioning approach to illustration which is central to the BA (Hons) Illustration course here at Portsmouth.

We will also have the chance to celebrate with an opening event on Friday April 22nd at 6pm - 7.45 in the Guildhall, Freda Swain room. Please let us know if you'd like to come along!

My Dog Sighs

Lost and Found workshop

Many thanks to My Dog Sighs, who joined us today for a workshop and tasked the first years with finding a discarded item which they could up cycle into a characterful animal.

They returned with a wide array of found items to transform into original artworks and then return to the original location, photograph and leave behind, to be found and possibly kept by a passer by. Inspired by artworks shown by My Dog Sighs the students were introduced to the concept behind Free Art Friday, a global community of artists creating work which is returned and left for any member of the public to take home and enjoy.

The weeks so far spent studying the characteristics of the animals is becoming more apparent in the pieces the students produced.

Illustrated Menagerie - SPACE Gallery 2015

Workshop with Los Dave

Earlier this week Los Dave worked with the first years to explore the movement and balance of the animals being studied in our current unit 'Research Methodology' and express it in found materials, (namely barbecue grills, wire, sticks and string) He outlined an initial modelling technique using Blu Tac to capture the movement in 3 dimensions, before developing it using the intended media.

For more info on Los Dave see www.losdave.bigcartel.com

Illustrated Menagerie Exhibition

Interview with the University News.

Watch an interview with three final year students exhibiting in the Menagerie. 

Call for Submissions - Illustrated Menagerie Exhibition

We would like to invite you to submit artwork for our upcoming exhibition: 'Illustrated Menagerie’. The Illustrated Menagerie project itself  is coming up to its 5th birthday now and will be holding an exhibition of Illustrated Menagerie works, to which we would like to invite you to submit some work. Deadline for submission is Monday 15th December.

If you would be interested in this please find the exhibition brief and all relevant details. Feel free to contact us with any questions you may have. We look forward to hearing from you!

Drawing in the Air

This week students explored drawing in space using different gauges of wire. Focusing on a combination of continuous line drawing and gesture drawing the Drawing in the Air workshop was about capturing the physical or behavioural essence of an animal using wire.