Arts at University of Southampton

VIDEO: Arts Ambassadors attend John Hansard Gallery Opening

Two of our University of Southampton Arts Ambassadors – Kate Briggs-Price and Thea Hartman – were in attendance at John Hansard Gallery’s bumper opening event on Saturday 25 January 2020. Join them as they explore the exhibitions, mingle with the artists, interview some of the people behind the shows and generally have a good time.

Three exhibitions opened that night, as follows:

Larry Achiampong: When the Sky Falls
25 January–21 March

Many voices, all of them loved
1 February–11 April

Lindsay Seers: Every Thought There Ever Was
8 February–11 April

Video by Kate Briggs-Price for Arts at University of Southampton.

University of Southampton Lecturers Find their Voices in the Gallery: Introducing Many voices, all of them loved and Interruptions/Disruptions at John Hansard Gallery

Willem de Rooij, *Ilulissat* (2014), installation image, John Hansard Gallery, 2020. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne/New York

by Thea Hartman

Although we have been telling you about how much there is to see at John Hansard Gallery and teased you with a few snippets of what the new exhibitions within the Spring Season have to offer, we thought it’s high time we introduced these exciting events while also answering a question that I know I had been wondering about before this job illuminated me: what is the link between the gallery and University of Southampton?

The internationally renowned John Hansard Gallery (JHG) is part of University of Southampton, aiming to provide a platform for a variety of exciting contemporary artists, events and community-based research projects. Our lecturers themselves collaborate with the gallery to explore and develop ideas they have been interested in for their research in ways that go beyond academic articles – across departments, across disciplines, and across media.

One such example is one of the three current exhibitions at JHG, Many voices, all of them loved (1 February – 11 April), curated by Dr Sarah Hayden, a lecturer in the Department of English whose background is in experimental writing and the relationship between literature and visual art. The link between her research and JHG seems intuitive enough. However, the journey from her research to Many voices is much more intricate than that – so intricate that I spoke to Dr Hayden herself about it to understand it fully.

Many voices is part of the two-year project Voices in the Gallery, developed by Dr Hayden to explore how the voice operates in contemporary art. Her research, so far culminating with the carefully curated exhibition, beautifully encompasses how much more the voice represents than just people talking.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan, *Conflicted Phonemes* (detail), 2012, installation image, Kunsthaus Hamburg. Courtesy the artist

“In the works brought into conversation here, the voice is made present as rhythm, as visible pattern, and as carrier of meaning that extends form, and extends speech”, Dr Hayden explains. “The works gathered together in Many voices invite us to reflect on some huge themes: migration, displacement, legacies of colonialism, climate crisis, bio-surveillance, disability, and the role of art in resistance.”

Many Voices came out of a place of curiosity. Dr Hayden’s perception of the meaning of voice was widened by paying attention to it; and with this exhibition, she opens up the idea of voice to the Southampton audience:

“I noticed how often I was listening to voices in exhibitions—particularly in video art and installation. I wanted to understand how the presentation of the artist’s writing as an audio track rather than, say, on a wall, changed how audiences experienced the text. I was also interested in how artists were departing from the traditional format of the voiceover as we know it from documentary film and TV, and in how they were pushing vocality in a range of other directions, for purposes other than description or explanation.”

Artists Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Kader Attia, Willem de Rooij, Laure Prouvost, Liza Sylvestre and Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa all work with voice in different ways to explore a variety of themes; a voice can be a dog’s howl, a name on a screen, a person with auditory difficulties subtitling a film, a voice-over that seems to have little to do with the visual sequence of a short film.

Many voices, all of them loved, installation image, John Hansard Gallery, 2020.
Photo: Steve Shrimpton

As Dr Priti Mishra expertly summarises it, the idea of voice has a lot to say about power dynamics: “Sarah’s exhibition has enabled us to think about the ways in which dominant power is being contested by artists from different subject positions.”

Alongside her Many Voices exhibition, Dr Hayden has also worked in collaboration with Dr Priti Mishra in the Department of History, and Dr Eleanor K. Jones of Modern Languages and Linguistics, on a public programme devised to generate conversation around the themes of colonialism and its representations, as well as how states manage people by managing their voices: whose voices are being heard first, or at all?

The programme of events, entitled Interruptions/Disruptions, consists of two strands of workshops: Interruptions workshops are led by various guests with various perspectives on the aforementioned themes, whilst Disruptions is a set of creative writing workshops led by the writer-in-residence for Many voices Nisha Ramayya.

Liza Sylvestre, *Captioned: Twentieth Century*, film still, 2018. Courtesy the artist

Dr Mishra and Dr Jones ellaborate on the importance of the public programme experienced alongside the exhibition:

“We’ve recently seen a resurgence of eugenics in mainstream UK politics, an increased glorification of our colonial past and present combined with a denial of its most brutal aspects, and continued inaction on climate, so talking about these things is more important than ever – and it’s also important for us to talk about creative ways to resist them, and learn from people who have been doing so for a long time. We hope our programme can offer the space for this creativity!”

Many voices and Interruptions/Disruptions have a lot to offer to any audience, especially students. Not only do they tackle themes relevant to our political climate, they also help us to think about concepts we are familiar with and which we may have studied in a completely new setting, or, if you are not a frequent gallery-goer, in a completely new place as well.

It’s true, the thought of going to a gallery can be quite daunting for some people, but the colourful sign at the entrance of John Hansard Gallery is more persuasive than I could ever be: “You belong here.”

Asten Holmes-Elliott and Breakout Youth, *You Belong Here* (2018). Photo: Kate Briggs-Price

As with all exhibitions at John Hansard Gallery, Many voices, all of them loved is free to attend and the accompanying Interruptions/Disruptions events programme is also free of charge.

For a list of events, times, and sign-ups head to the John Hansard Gallery website: www.jhg.art.

Women Leaders South West – CALL FOR APPLICANTS

Are you interested in the arts? Do you enjoy problem solving or making things happen?

Women Leaders South West is a project run by eight arts organisations and Southampton Business School at University of Southampton. The project also involves the WOW foundation.

Women are under-represented at a leadership level across all art forms in theatres, festivals, galleries, and museums. Racism, ableism, transphobia, homophobia, economic constraints and caring responsibilities also create barriers to career development. We want to understand these barriers and develop tools to tackle them.

Women are invited to apply to take part in a 10 month leadership programme that includes work placements, mentoring and training with Southampton Business School. It will take place between June 2020 and December 2021.

Click here to find out how to start your leadership journey.

Deadline for Applications – Monday 20th April at 9AM

Review: The Three Musketeers at NST City

Audience reactions to The Three Muskateers at Nuffield Southampton Theatres

By Thea Hartman

I didn’t know what to expect heading into the NST for Le Navet Bete’s production of Dumas’ classic The Three Musketeers. Subtitled ‘A Comedy Adventure’ and with a poster with some rather striking facial expressions and a BMX, I wasn’t sure whether I was about to watch the actual musketeers being heroic or four men running around in musketeer outfits for children’s enjoyment.

As it turned out, it was definitely more of the latter, but without the negative connotation – I enjoyed the running around perhaps more than the children. The classic, exhibitionistic comedy acting was finely interlaced with a sterling production, and a script which is both timely and timeless. In a Nuffield Southampton Theatres spring season filled with literary adaptations, this production does not beat around the bush when it comes to questions of adapting a literary text and tailoring it to their audience. The apparently necessary aspect of historical and textual accuracy is dropped from the very beginning, when the four actors present themselves to their audience out of costume, breaking the fourth wall and clarifying that the production does not claim to hold the ultimate understanding of the 700-page novel, but just wants have as much fun with it as possible, without taking itself very seriously.

Whether or not this is a recipe for a great adaptation is a completely different, less fun conversation with likely no verdict whatsoever. The only conclusion I can get to is that it’s definitely a recipe for roaring laughter. The four actors were a delight to watch, having the time of their lives on stage, flawlessly switching between characters with quick changes of costume, and even when the changes weren’t as smooth as they should have been they acted so naturally that I doubted whether or not the mistake was actually planned. Stand-out characters were Madame De Winter, Cardinal Richelieu, and D’Artagnan, played with fantastic consistency throughout, but every single change of costume brought a fresh round of raucous laughter, whether caused by an oblivious Lord Buckingham or a vindictive nun. The sheer amount of events happening and the relations between all the characters were confusing, but instead of running away from this, Le Navet Bete flipped it on its head, aware of just how much was happening and having the characters explain things they did not understand themselves.

Audience engagement was a huge positive part of the show. The fourth wall, removed from the very beginning of the play, never returned, with the actors thriving when improvising reactions to the audience’s own. The funniest moment of the show required the audience to throw plush ducks at Madame De Winter as she was proving her hunting skills to Lord Buckingham. The willingness of the actors to improvise and the natural manner in which they did it really elevated the show.

The production value was also outstanding, from a simple yet versatile set, to the similarly versatile costumes. The stage was a constant whirlwind of moving props, flying costumes, and musketeers riding bikes instead of horses – and whilst it may have seemed quite natural, it required calculated coordination and elaborate choreography that did not go unnoticed. However, it was the sound that truly enhanced the comedic effect. For instance, if the shotgun sounds didn’t play exactly as Madame De Winter was ‘shooting’ the plush ducks, the effect of that scene would have been significantly diminished. The sterling synchronization between sound effects and the onstage acting deserved a standing ovation in itself.

Overall, The Three Musketeers: A Comedy Adventure was a witty, self-aware show, unafraid of tapping into the childish side of all the audience members – children or adults – of questioning its own script, or of pushing the limits of what onstage performance is: if you get a line wrong, acknowledge it and do it again, it might make the whole scene funnier that it was meant to be intentionally!

Le Navet Bete provided a complete escape from the worries of everyday life – I laughed more than I have in a long time, and isn’t that what we all need?

The Three Muskateers: A Comedy Adventure ran at NST City from Tuesday 18 – Saturday 22 February 2020.

For more details of NST’s literature loaded spring season – featuring Pride and Prejudice (sort of), War of the Worlds, Wuthering Heights and more – click here.

Review: Heist at NST City (or Our First Dance Show Experience!)

By Thea Hartman and Kate Briggs-Price

To our shame and huge excitement and curiosity, the opening night of ZoieLogic Dance Theatre’s Heist was the first time either of us had seen a dance-only production. And on top of that, whilst between us we have a few years’ worth of mostly amateur dance experience, we know nothing about contemporary dancing, which was the show’s predominant style. In a nutshell, we went to the opening night of this show with absolutely no expectations and completely ready to see contemporary dance with fresh eyes.

And that is exactly what happened. As ZoieLogic Dance Theatre Artistic Director Zoie Golding expertly put it (she created the show after all), Heist mixes “the adventure of Mission Impossible, the gaming of Crystal Maze, and a little bit of the heart of The Goonies” – an emotionally dynamic, cleverly woven, action-packed show bursting with the most graceful moves which kept us on the edge of our seats throughout.

One of the most striking aspects of Heist was in the way it established the tone so promptly and accurately from the very first minute with the help of soundtrack and a villain with robotic moves, deeply unsettling facial expressions and Matrix-like costume. We like to think that we don’t get scared easily, but we definitely found ourselves huddling close into each other as the villain slowly approached our end of the stage. This almost instant characterization was also instilled into the four ‘good’ guys – despite there being absolutely no words spoken for the entire duration of the show, we quickly got a real sense of the dynamic between the characters in the first act, as their movements started to organize themselves into patterns and motifs to show their quirks and mannerisms, their teamwork and their willingness to do whatever it takes to escape the prison.

Interestingly, the storyline was quite minimalistic. Whilst the general plotlines were conveyed by the characters’ interaction with the set, the soundtrack and the dancers’ movements and facial expressions, the lack of words brought with itself a lack of specificity which Heist turned on its head into a vagueness encouraging audience engagement. We did not know exactly why the four men were imprisoned, or what they tried to set free at the end of it, but when we talked about it after coming out of the show we both thought it had something to do with identity. Whether or not that’s what it actually was about is a different question.

The great thing about the show is that none of this guesswork actually matters: you don’t get brownie points for identifying one specific metaphor the author wanted to convey. The focus was simply on how the incredibly skilful and graceful movements affected the audience’s emotions (and trust us, they did). The plot was merely shaped by some classic heist film tropes (e.g. the chase scene), and the fantastically adaptable set which enhanced the experience of the show by being as fluid as the dancers’ movements; the essence was all in the relationship between movements and emotion. As the dancers were climbing the prison’s walls showing some real parkour skills, we waited anxiously for them to fall. As they supported each other through their feeblest sequences of choreography we felt feeble with them. As they were running from the villain through the set which became a maze we were rooting for them to get away.

For us, that was the essence of Heist. It did not matter that we knew close to nothing about contemporary dance. It only mattered that we opened our eyes and hearts to see and feel this show, and we left NST City all the richer for it.

Watch the trailer for Heist below, and catch ZoieLogic Dance Theatre’s next show @zoielogic or at www.zoielogic.co.uk.