Cornish light exhibition, Animations and Poetry

A couple of weeks ago the Illuminate group visited the "Cornish Light" exhibition at Nottingham Museums and Galleries. Whilst there we created a series of haiku's in small groups as well as one long poem inspired by the work "Ocean" by Natasha Daintry.

This week we created simple stop frame animations to go with our poems.

We started by playing with different materials to see how they might work. Each group was given a materials and a word as a prompt.

They were
Plasticine : rain
Drawn: waves
Cut out: ripples

Here are our experiments...

Poetry and Movement workshop with Artist Amy Pickles

Nottingham Museums and Galleries have recently commissioned three artist to respond to artwork with in their fine Art Painting Collection. This project titled "Search the Collection" accumulated in a free event on the 27th March where each artist showed their work in the Long Gallery of Nottingham Castle.

International Perspective on Illuminate

Hi everyone,
My name is Lisa and I was part of Illuminate for two months. Yes, you’ve got it – only two months and no they didn’t throw me out.

As you can see from the heading I am not actually British, but German and I was in Nottingham on Erasmus. Some of you may be wondering how the unique Erasmus experience can be connected with a youth group dealing with modern art and museum works – I can tell you that being a part of the group was one of the best things I experienced during my stay abroad.

To be honest- at the beginning I didn’t really want to be part of Illuminate. It just didn’t appeal to me and although I have always been hugely interested in museums and galleries, I found modern art a little uninspiring and boring. But as I really wanted to get involved in the community during my short time in Nottingham and since I always like to volunteer I thought I would give it a go. 

Compared to volunteering back in my home country, everything is really organized and well structured: starting with the volunteer fair on my university’s campus, to a detailed application form including several references and role descriptions and finally leading to a Volunteer Welcome Day and a short interview at the castle. As my remaining time in Nottingham was already quite short and I still wanted to get involved as much as possible, the Volunteer Coordinators recommended Illuminate Group. I was really curious and although I didn’t know what to expect I was excited to start.

My first meeting with the group was arranged spontaneously in the morning and after that every single week was exciting and new to me. I went to places like the Lakeside Art Centre, Nottingham’s Castle OPEN, a small and really cosy room in the Brewhouse Yard and the V&A in London. I got insights into aspects of daily museum work that I never had before and I am not sure whether I will ever have these opportunities again. I also learnt a lot about the many various tasks that are involved in running exhibitions and organising events; the urgent need of a Twitter account in order to survive in today’s world and a lot about the serious addiction to jaffa cakes.

I don’t regret a second of my time spent with Illuminate! I met artists, lots of enthusiastic and dedicated people, a curator and an amazing group. Every single second I felt welcome and as part of the group – although I still have a strange accent and my time was far too short!! There should definitely be more youth groups connected to museums and art galleries all over the world…

Lisa Meisch

Trip to the V&A

In mid-January a group of Illuminate members popped to London for the day to visit the Disobedient Objects exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. We arrived bright and early for the journey down south, and waited in anticipation as to what ‘disobedience’ we would see. At the end of the year the Nottingham Castle are displaying a variety of protest posters in partnership with the V&A, hence a trip to the institution was necessary (and fun!) to gain ideas for a future Illuminate project.

We arrived around lunchtime and headed straight for the exhibition which seemed an odd layout – the rectangular room was set out in a figure of eight, with boards of text indicating to the visitor how certain objects related to protest movements. Initially I had a preconception that the exhibition would include large, well-known protests, such as the Civil Rights Movement, however it soon became clear that it would comprise of a wide variety of small, large, historical and contemporary movements.

The welcome board stated that “the objects made as part of these movements have played a key role in cultural and political changes” – they were all important historical artefacts made by people “collectively taking design into their own hands to make a change in the world”. By focusing on protest from the late seventies onwards, the exhibition managed to show how new technologies and social struggles have been portrayed through different creative media. Displaying lots of forms of media (such as posters, textiles, interactive maps, and even an app) made the Disobedient Objects extremely engaging and it took us all a long time to work our way around the space.

Being able to interact with the exhibition in diverse ways ensured that the information exhibited was easily digestible. We learnt that defacing money has been a common form of protest against politicians and society – after Muammar Gaddafi’s fall from power in 2011, many Libyans scrawled out his face on bank notes as an act of defiance. In the same year Occupy George, a movement started by artists Ivan Cash and Andy Dao, sought to reveal unfair pay in the USA by stamping $1 bills with infographics. There was an opportunity to create your own currency protest using a rubber stamp and ink (or by taking a copy home on paper if you didn’t want to void your pound notes!) 

Occupy George bank note

News reports were also played on a TV. ‘The Barbie Liberation Organisation’ were a group of activists that made headlines in the early nineties for swapping the voice boxes in Barbie’s and G.I. Joe toys: this protest was to highlight gender stereotypes perpetuated by the toy industry, an argument that is still in headlines and discussion today. A hand-made necklace and letter from Kenny Zulu Whitmore to the visitors of the exhibition were also on display, stressing the longevity of protest - Whitmore is currently incarcerated at Angola Prison in the USA. After meeting the Angola 3 (a group of three black prison inmates who between them spent more than 100 years in solitary confinement), Whitmore joined the Black Panther Party. It was this act that Whitmore believes has kept him in jail for so long, after numerous charges have been brought (and dismissed) against him. He currently designs pendants which are made from materials within the prison and sells them to provide funds for his legal campaign.

Letter from Kenny Zulu Whitmore

We also had a chance to interact with new technologies: ‘Phone Story’ an app banned from the Apple store in 2011 was available to play which comprised of four ‘educational games’ which revealed the exploitation behind our western consumerism and gadgets. On the other hand there were traditional hand-made textiles pieces called Arpilleras, made by women in Chile to tell stories such as the violence of the Pinochet regime at the beginning of the 1980s and the Mampuján Massacre of 2010 in Columbia. Both these stories of protest were ones that many members of Illuminate were unaware of, and thus the trip served as a valuable learning opportunity.

Finally there was also the opportunity for visitors to leave their opinions and protests on the wall by the exit – an umbrella, possibly from the protests in Hong Kong, was placed simply in the corner to signify unity with their struggle. This opportunity for visitors to voice their opinions shows that the exhibition is always growing and changing – there are always protests historical and new that will change and adapt according to the political and social climate.

Visitor wall

Here are some websites relating to protests shown in the exhibition:

Angola 3: http://www.angola3.org

Kenny Zulu Whitmore: http://www.freezulu.org

Phone Story app: http://www.phonestory.org

Occupy George: http://www.occupygeorge.com

Disobedient Objects web page: http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/disobedient-objects