Portmanteau Project 2018-2019

Campus, derived from camp – a place of temporary accommodation comprising huts, tents and other structures, used by soldiers, refugees and other travelling people.

The travelling students on a university campus, its blood and lifeline, arrive in their thousands every year, journeying from all corners, take it as a given that they will settle on a reassuring foundation, a site for the transition of learning. This field (Campus) of education, where moving blocks of knowledge flow and entwine, can be viewed metaphorically as transportation in the guise of spaces of heterotopia, where the students are transforming themselves and ultimately graduating towards a new life.

In recent times the University of Northampton has had to ask itself a key universal question: where have we come from? This question helps to articulate and comprehend the next question: where are we going? The institution of the UoN, which recognizes the ebb and flow of people at its former utilitarian buildings of Park Campus, has recently had to learn how to exist in a transitional state, as it moved to the new, purpose-built center Waterside campus, now the foundation of Northamptonshire’s education.

The Portmanteau Project commission originates from the corridor of the Walgrave building at UoN’s Avenue Campus, as an invitation to an artist to take up residence and make a new body of work on and about the current position of the UoN. A key component of the project was to guide some of the very best creative students from within BA to PhD on Fine Art, Painting & Drawing and Photography courses over the period of the academic year to produce new works reflecting on the now former Park Campus.

The ten students who chose to be involved in this extra curricula study are Jessica Adams who worked closely with ‘Estates’, the facilitators of the campus’s aviary, Rob Ambidge examined dynamic composite studies of Park’s architecture, Diana Beldeanu gained ‘access all areas’ to the Halls of Residence, Francis Blore expanded his study of the Line through walking paths of the former site, Emma Britten has extracted nuanced colours and forms from the greenhouses, Clare Evans traced the original structures which gave the former campus it’s much maligned but loved identity, Michael Hobbs worked in conjunction with the science labs placing found artifacts under the microscope, Joseph Norris transferred his acute photographic eye through that of quink and charcoal from inside the greenhouses, Marigold Short has amalgamated site recordings into a sound piece that takes anyone of us straight back to Park and James Wayling has captured unnoticed symmetrical details of the former campus.

This exhibition constructs blur between representation and presentation, offering a meeting point, where discussion and constructive thinking can formulate and disseminate into coherent perspectives of reflection and direction, serving as a social history record for future generations of staff, students and Northamptonians, and as a reference in history of the university’s relatively young burgeoning life.

Thanks goes to Jane Bunce, Ralph Darbyshire, Suzanne Stenning and the Walgrave Building.

 

http://j-smith.co.uk/

FAQ:

For non University Staff visiting the exhibition at the Creative Hub (and PV) a security pass is needed beforehand, and for all other enquiries please email james.a.smith@northampton.ac.uk too.

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