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Students take fine art on location in Wolverhampton

27/01/2016

Students take fine art on location in Wolverhampton

University of Wolverhampton students have taken fine art on location in and around Wolverhampton – showing off the results of their work in a series of exhibitions, temporary installations and trails.

The second year Fine Art degree students have explored moving from the past to the present at the Old Post Office on Princess Street and the Springfield Brewery site, worked with school pupils at Heath Park School, created small 2D and 3D works for the Museum of Cannock Chase and developed a temporary sculpture trail for Shoal Hill Common.  As part of the off-site module students have benefited from a programme of theoretical lectures, seminars, workshops and exhibition planning sessions.

Gavin Rogers, Senior Lecturer in Fine Art (Public Realm) at the University of Wolverhampton, said: "Each off-site project has been a unique micro ‘artist-in-residency’ experience, giving our students insight into what it is like to work in the public realm and to respond to sites in both a practical and theoretical context.”

“For example, students explored and rummaged through archive material at the Old Post Office and created site responsive work which was exhibited at a ‘show and tell’ seminar recently – from stamps to maps, from paint peelings to digital imagery – the work produced has left us time travelling from past to present.”   

Fine Art students go on location around Wolverhampton to create work to exhibit.  

Rebecca Stewart, one of the students who went on location to Shoal Hill Common, said: “It was really interesting to explore buildings and landscapes outside of the University buildings, taking into account the history of places and what they have meant to people over the years.  We then had tobuild that meaning into creating artworkthat has some relevance to the place where it will be exhibited.”       

The Wolverhampton School of Art has a heritage that stretches back to the period of the Great Exhibition of 1851. The iconic School of Art building on Molineux Street is the home of expert practitioners and is recognised for the quality of its research, both in the UK’s Research Excellence Framework and internationally.

 At Heath Park School students designed, planned and delivered workshop teaching sessions and hosted a visit by the pupils to the Wolverhampton School of Art. Together students and pupils created a body of collaborative works which are on display at the school.

Students were asked by the Museum of Cannock Chase to respond to their permanent collection with a body of small works to be exhibited and put up for sale in their gallery café onsite. The exhibition runs until the 8th March 2016.

Students visited Shoal Hill Common and were given a historical narrative about the site in order to create a temporary sculpture trail.

The University of Wolverhampton has recently started redeveloping the former Springfield Brewery as part of its plans to expand the campus. Students were granted access to the site in its derelict and working state and armed with high visibility vests and hard hats, they worked alongside the estates teams to gather information, objects and histories about this former working brewery site. They exhibited their work on site – a range of textural paintings to large scale sculptures. 

Anyone wanting to study art at the University of Wolverhampton should visit the next Open Day on Saturday 6th February 2016 or check out the range of courses on the website: www.wlv.ac.uk.

Picture Caption shows Rebecca Stewart with her art work at Shoal Hill.

ENDS

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Date Issued: 29th January 2016

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