Introduction

Since moving to the Millbank site in 2005, the Chelsea postgraduate programme has expanded its number of courses and student intake, creating a strong vibrant and critically reflective international postgraduate experience.

There are five MA courses in this show from the Chelsea postgraduate programme. Here at Chelsea we have an ambition to create and develop strong communication links between the five subject areas, through the joint theory forum and the cross - course collaborative projects, that span a broad range of research interests, we maintain the historical and practical disciplines which construct the territories of the individual subject areas in order to develop unique potential for future practice and research at Chelsea.

This September also sees the launch of the Graduate School, a new and exciting collaboration between research and taught postgraduate staff and students from across Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon colleges (CCW).

The MA Degree show 2009 demonstrates and reflects diversity, depth of critical engagement, and the challenge to extend the boundaries of creative practice within contemporary culture.

Brian Chalkley - Course Director - MA Fine Art - Postgraduate Forum Leader

Thinking-through-Practice: Theory and Contextual Studies at Chelsea

At the MA level at Chelsea we are committed to the creative integration of theory, practice, writing and research and our programs are designed to facilitate this process.

We encourage students to become ‘Reflective Practitioners’ - artists and designers who take responsibility for the historical and contemporary cultural contextualization of their practices, who think critically and in depth about their work and who can articulate their ideas clearly to a wide general audience.

To enhance this the students attend a series of shared lectures - the General Theory Forum - which introduces them to key theoretical concepts, issues and debates derived from a range of discourses relevant to art and design practice. Each MA also has a series of course specific lectures given by experts in the field and it is these same lecturers who supervise each student’s written work.

These two lecture programs are complemented by a series of talks given by guest speakers from different art, design and humanities disciplines, demonstrating the relevance of reflective practice at a professional level. This year’s talks were themed under the title ‘Imagineering the Future’ and included talks by Marina Warner, Richard Barbrook and Eduardo Kac.

Through the Research and Methodology lecture series students learn about the necessary skills required to advance the integration of their learning, practice and research to Doctorate level. This year’s lectures were given by Research Fellows at the University and former Chelsea MA students currently studying for their PhDs.

In order to evidence their critical reflectivity students write a 3,000 word Critical Research Paper which explores a clearly formulated research question derived from an analysis of their practice in context. Increasingly the Research Papers develop into works in their own right as students take a design-orientated and conceptual approach to their written work.

Dr. John Cussans - Postgraduate Theory Coordinator

Critical Writing and Curatorial Practice

The MA Critical Writing Curatorial Practice programme at Chelsea has a diverse mandate where students develop work over the year, producing independent projects that can be interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, interrogative and imaginative. With a focus on fostering interconnections across the territories of critique, writing and curatorial practice the students of MA CWCP develop a range of approaches to considering and making a curatorial practice now through both collaborative and independent practice-based enquiry.

This year students have been particularly ambitious realising a year long project entitled Project Biennale. In collaboration with MA curating students from Sheffield Hallam and Essex Universities, the three programmes worked together to produce a book as exhibition work that responded to the current conditions of Biennale culture. The book featured curated pages by the students alongside invited curators from the UK and Europe. The book was only one aspect of this wider project that featured a Press Conference at SIAD gallery, Sheffield, a series of seminars, symposia and Press Room events at S1 Gallery, Sheffield, and Wimbledon Gallery, London, and a book launch at the Venice Biennale 2009 press week. Each student brought their independent research interests to the project allowing them to be discussed and contextualised within the challenging framework of Big Exhibition culture. Project Biennale reflected the ambitions of the course and the students that led, developed and produced the project. This strong group dynamic was recharged in the course’s contribution to ‘Late at Tate Britain’ in August 2009, where students responded to the theme of radio broadcast with a eventful curatorial programme of audio works, talks and performance.

Worked on and developed over the year, students’ individual interests have been focussed in their independent research projects. These projects reflect the wide scope of the social, cultural, aesthetic and political concerns of the students as individuals, and how, as contemporary curatorial practitioners they seek to respond to the demands that they have identified as vital to contemporary culture. Projects this year have ranged from deliberations on the necessity of authoritarianism, the contesting of neo-liberal multi-culturalist agendas, interrogations of the collapse of foundational space for political affect and the re-questioning the prevailing issues of curating ‘everyday life’ in terms of its mythologisation. These enquiries into curatorial practice have been shaped in numerous forms and methods, ranging from re-working archives, curating as video production, performative writing, publishing, and the organisation of networks.

Since debate acts as the hub of our programme, every year a focus gathers that establishes some shared concerns that increase with urgency as the year goes on. This year, the groups central and prevailing discussion highlighted the need for a curatorial practice that understood its own authority in the world of arts visibility whilst at the same time to grip this authority to challenge paradigmatic notions of what it meant to be socially engaged, to be capable of being heard as a new voice, or to produce a critical practice. To that extent the group’s central dynamic was one of comprehending their place within larger systems of power, whilst questioning what could be done to produce curation that surpassed illustrating the various paradox that curators often find themselves in. These debates do not end here; understood as immanent to this work these questions and others articulate the urgency of a critical curation and speak of the already public nature of the students’ projects.

Dr Amanda Beech - Course Director - MA Critical Writing Curatorial Practice

Fine Art

To create an environment that allows students to make, think, discuss and develop art that is yet to be defined as art.

This years MA Fine Art Degree show at Chelsea attempts to address this ambition.

Brian Chalkley - Course Director - MA Fine Art - Postgraduate Forum Leader

Graphic Design Communication

‘They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?’

M.A Graphic Design Communication is an interdisciplinary course that has as its basic premise an understanding that all communication is located within a cultural dialogue. Raymond Williams discussed the idea of culture as a product of human interaction and community.

Any given object of production contains traces of the cultural world which we inhabit.

Any given object of production contains traces of the cultural world which we inhabit. Given that design is the production of culture and we all on a daily basis assimilate and create our own cultural practices, it makes sense to see design communication as simply a part of what we do anyway.

Students on the Graphic Design Communication M.A are encouraged to recognise that they are cultural producers in their own right, that there is no enigmatic step up, but rather it is latent within them and all it needs is a personal realisation to manifest.

This year, as in previous years, the focus of the course is on process: getting the group to think about their own needs as a designer and work through them in both a theoretical and practice based manner.

This is not to produce the solipsistic autodidact but more the designer that realises that their own cultural understanding can help shape the way they describe and explain the world to others.

As with the other M.A courses here at Chelsea, Graphic Design Communication has a culturally diverse body of students which creates a vibrant and dynamic community that is challenging to students and staff alike.

This challenge can be seen in the work produced this year.

The students’ final self-directed projects encompass a wide range of themes and ideas which cannot be categorised simply as Graphic Design Communication.

From traditional print and book production through the creation of 3-dimensional objects to performance, all the works are underpinned by a set of broader and deeper cultural resonances, that seek to point toward or inform the viewer.

As for the title of the show the explanation will come from the student you think has the stamina to dance for 24 hours.

Frank Cartledge - Course Director (Acting) - MA Graphic Design Communication

Interior and Spatial Design

The MA in Interior and Spatial design is a multi-disciplinary course with students coming from a wide variety of backgrounds. This year’s cohort includes students who previously studied architecture, interior design/architecture, fine art, photography, graphics and landscape architecture. Many students also have considerable experience in design or architectural practice. The course thus offers real opportunities for the swapping of skills and experiences, and the engaging of different art and design methodologies. The incredible cultural diversity of students is reflected in the fact that students come from 19 different countries. This diversity provides a particularly rich academic environment.

What unites the course is the insistence on ‘space-making’ as a distinct activity with its own set of concerns. We adopt a critical stance towards our discipline, questioning where the boundaries are drawn. We are very much concerned with how people inhabit or occupy space - what Merleau-Ponty would call ‘lived space’. There is much discussion about issues such as the distinction between spectator and user, whether projects engage issues of function or non-function, and whether they are permanent or temporary. The range of projects encompasses the design of architectural space (engaging issues of brief and social programme) through to more experimental exploration of space using film, animation or installation.

Field trips this year include a visit to Lithuania, and a trip to Kilder Forest and Newcastle. We undertook collaborative projects with MA Critical Writing and Curatorial practice and MA Graphic Design Communication, and did a one week joint workshop with Musahino Arts University organised by Takako Hasegawa. We also benefitted from a range of Spaces and Narrations talks which included architects Charles Barclay and Stephen Taylor, designer Fred Scott, artist Amikam Toren and performance artist Anthony Howell. Staff teaching on the course this year included Julia Dwyer, Kristina Kotov, Robin Jenkins, Gwendolyn Leick, John Cussans, Takako Hasegawa, Ge Fei Dong and Alex Mohrmann.

Ken Wilder - Course Director - MA Interior and Spatial Design

Textile Design

This has been an exciting year for students on the course who have come from a wide international arena with diverse research subject interests: from Santa Fe to Sheffield to Shanghai. Their individual projects have all addressed, in various ways, the wide interpretation of environment and sustainability, especially relating to textile creativity and production. The course is concerned with making and problem solving and to do this, students have made full use of studios and workshops, exploring and experimenting with materials beyond the conventional perceptions of textile production. Waste and reuse are common themes which have been tackled imaginatively but with a real focus on practical function in contemporary contexts.

The course has been directly involved with a number of external collaborations. Students and staff on the course were directly involved in a ‘3-way’ international research project involving universities in Sydney, Australia; Santiago, Chile and the UAL, England. The topic of up-cycling plastic was keynote and will culminate with an exhibition in Sydney in 2010. Students also contributed to a collaborative initiative with the NHS Central Middlesex Hospital by installing a cabinet exhibition based on the theme of ‘culture’.

We are pleased to continue our association with the Doi Tung Foundation, Chiang Rai Thailand - a sustainable design project. This is now the fourth year that an MA Textile Design student has undertaken field research working with this important project, whose aims are the re-employment of local hill tribes who once earned a living from opium growing. The project has received international acclaim and is seen as a template for similar global initiatives.

The course would also like to acknowledge the important contribution of The Laura Ashley Foundation, which has continued to support all students in vital ways. By providing a scholarship and additional funding for materials and processes, all students have benefitted.

Lorna Bircham - Course Director - MA Textile Design

Acknowledgements

The graduates at Chelsea College of Art and Design would like to thank Chelsea Arts Club Trust for their kind support.

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