URBAN Fringe Artists
Date uploaded: December 12, 2012
For the pilot phase of the URBAN Fringe project, four artists – Simon Barker, Nayan Kulkarni, Jo Roberts and Stephen Turner – spent time exploring and discovering the fringe lands of Medway and Swale.
URBAN Fringe is an art and architecture research programme developed by Kent Architecture Centre to strengthen the role of artists and local people in place making. Each of the four artists have been engaging new audiences in the urban and rural fringes of Medway and Swale and capturing and celebrating the unique qualities of these areas through their work.
The project offered time and space for artists to meaningfully engage with people who live there, to draw out the narratives of this unique place and to influence future renewal and developments.
Nayan Kulkarni and Simon Barker worked together on a series of collaborations using video and sound. Both artists are concerned with the distinctiveness of place, how relationships with people and place develop particularly within the built environment.
For URBAN Fringe the interaction with the residential and commercial communities was key to the work. Nayan and Simon focused around the areas of the Medway Gate Development built into the old quarry site in Strood; across into the Business Park; the Medway Valley Leisure Park and to the water’s edge.
Click here to view Recorded Delivery, Simon Barker's and Nayan Kulkarni's short video work.
Artist Jo Roberts thinks of herself as an explorer, someone who meditates, ponders, portrays or records. For URBAN Fringe Jo immersed herself in Medway and Swale north of the old Roman Road, the A2, with Rochester to Sittingbourne at the core. She spent time studying, identifying and determining the nature and utilisation of the fringe areas, creating a new map of her journey, with her personal survey called Deckle Edges.
‘The definition of A Deckle Edge is the rough feathered edge of handmade paper. Similarly the equal distribution of land and water in the estuary area of Medway and Swale creates a visual pattern, looking similar to a deckle edge’. Jo conducted surveys by bicycle, walking and public transport, interviewing people she met along her way.
Stephen Turner’s work is concerned with aspects of time and the dynamic between transience and permanence. His work often involves spending long periods in odd, abandoned places noting changes in the complex relationship between nature and the man-made.
For URBAN Fringe Stephen took on the guise of an Urban Fringe adventurer, taking a number of journeys across the fringe lands of Medway to Swale, observing, surveying and contrasting the natural environment with that of the waste disposal and processing that take place within the urban landscape.
URBAN Fringe is a Kent Architecture Centre project sponsored by Arts Council England, Kent County Council, Medway Council and the University of the Creative Arts.
For further information regarding URBAN Fringe please contact: [email protected] or follow the project on Twitter @UrbanFringe2012
The URBAN Fringe Seminar: The URBAN Fringe Seminar was held at 3pm on 28th November at UCA Rochester and was the culmination of the 6-month Urban Fringe pilot programme.
Click here for Jaye Nolan’s blog on the seminar.
Click here for further information on the Kent Architecture Centre website.
