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ET25.2 What do volcanoes and Downing have in common? · The Downing Arts Podcast

0:00
Welcome to the Downing Arts Podcast.
0:08
This episode is the second in our creative arts launch double bill,
0:12
and I'll be talking to the Keeper of the Huon Gallery as well as Team
0:15
Rawlinson about the recent Magma Rising exhibition. But first,
0:19
the winners of the Twining Eggington Prize for Fine Arts 2025.
0:23
In first place was Sophia Lin with her piece With Love.
0:27
And our runners up were Frankie Ratcliffe and Molly Olivier.
0:31
Congratulations. And congratulations to everyone who entered Artwork.
0:34
It's a really fantastic exhibition and is open Wednesday to Sunday
0:38
until the 18th of May, so do catch it if you can.
0:48
Rachel Coombs is here in the studio today to tell us all about her
0:51
role with the Hyung Gallery and also about some of the exhibitions.
0:54
Welcome, Rachel. Thanks so much for having me. Louisa, hello.
0:57
That's okay. I'm really, really excited to be talking to you.
1:00
So could you just introduce yourself for anyone who hasn't yet come
1:04
across you? Yes, absolutely. Hi, I'm Rachel.
1:07
I'm the Graham Robertson Research Fellow in Art History here at
1:11
Downing. So I joined the college in October 2023,
1:15
shortly after finishing my PhD in Oxford. And what does your research involve?
1:21
So my research is in late 19th and early 20th century French visual
1:25
culture. So think post Impressionism, your Gauguin,
1:28
your Van Gogh, your Cezanne. But what really interests me
1:32
is the strong. The strong kind of cultural undercurrent of the period. So not
1:36
so much the avant garde movements, but these artists and other
1:39
cultural figures who felt kind of threatened by what they saw
1:43
as a general sort of cultural disintegration. So this
1:46
stuff is by no means as sexy as the avant garde material.
1:50
It's fraught with some quite murky ideology,
1:54
but it was nonetheless a really important impulse within the culture of the
1:57
time, and it's one that's been very much overlooked. So I'm
2:01
particularly interested in how alliances were formed across the arts,
2:05
so particularly between artists and musicians as
2:08
a means of kind of strengthening their particular cultural
2:12
stances. And if people are particularly interested,
2:15
I'm currently working on a project about the artist Maurice Denis,
2:20
who was very friendly with musicians in the period and did some sort of weird
2:23
and wacky decorative work which you can still see in situ in
2:27
various places in Paris, in fact. Wow. There's quite a lot going on
2:31
there and there's also quite a lot going on in the Gallery.
2:34
And so you have a role as Keeper of the Gallery, is that right?
2:37
Yes, absolutely. So since last summer, I've taken on
2:41
on the role of keeper. Yeah. So what do you have to do
2:46
in that role. So my job is essentially
2:49
to oversee the programming of the space. So in terms of exhibitions
2:53
and events, it's very busy. Lots of liaising with
2:56
external curators, artists and organizations
3:00
to help sort of bring ideas to life. One of the things
3:04
we've done is actually instigate a new exhibition strand which takes place primarily
3:08
during Lent term. And these exhibitions are called Visual Inquiries.
3:12
And the idea for these shows is
3:15
that the exhibition theme is sparked from an area of academic research within
3:19
the Cambridge community, and particularly within the Downing community.
3:24
And so we're using artwork to explore this research in sort of fun,
3:27
imaginative ways, kind of shining a light,
3:31
a new light on scholarship in a kind of visually stimulating fashion,
3:36
I suppose. It's also about reminding us that art doesn't have to belong in a
3:39
kind of lofty and detached aesthetic realm.
3:42
And of course, we've recently had the Magma Rising exhibition, which has been amazing,
3:46
all sorts of things going on and sort of ways of expressing art.
3:51
So we've had visual art. There's also
3:54
sort of like sort of soundscapes and things and,
3:57
yeah, just a whole load of really interesting stuff.
4:00
So, I mean, we'll be hearing a bit more about that later in the
4:03
show. But could you tell us a little bit about perhaps what's coming up
4:07
later, sort of this term and beyond, if you've
4:11
got plans, which I'm sure you have. Yes, absolutely.
4:14
So, as you say, Magma Rising has. Will now
4:17
have drawn to a close, but it's been a really, really exciting exhibition.
4:21
We've had kind of record numbers of visitors and that was the first within
4:25
our Visual Inquiry strand. So it's. It's really proved, I suppose,
4:28
that there is this appetite for bringing together art
4:31
and research, and perhaps particularly art and science,
4:35
in a really interesting way. I'm excited
4:38
for the Twining Egginton Student Art Prize,
4:42
which opens on the 1st of May and that runs until the 18th
4:47
of May. So that'll be open to the public. There's plenty of
4:50
opportunities for you to come and see what's on display.
4:54
Perhaps I'll just say a little bit about the prize. It was
4:58
set up in 2014, so we're now in the 11th year
5:01
and for the second time only in its history, the works are going to be
5:04
on display in the Hyung Gallery and open to the public.
5:08
We've had a bumper crop of entries this year. I think we've got 24 students
5:12
participating. Many of them are submitting multiple works,
5:15
so it's certainly going to be very kind of visually busy. And exciting
5:19
in the space. We've got whole range of media represented.
5:23
We've got photographic work, we've got paintings, we've got
5:27
paper cuttings, cross stitch, video art,
5:31
ceramics, lino cuts, you name it, it's going to be
5:34
there in the gallery. And if you're actually,
5:37
if you're listening to this and you're thinking, as a student, oh, actually,
5:41
I want to get into kind of arts and crafts,
5:44
sort of flex my. My creative skills,
5:48
then please do consider submitting to next year's prize. As I say,
5:51
this runs annually. There are three cash prizes up for grabs and
5:55
we'd love to boost the visual arts presence among the Downing
6:00
student community here. Wow. I mean, it's a lot of.
6:03
It must be a lot of work in between exhibitions, sort of taking one down
6:06
and then setting up another. I mean, how do you find time
6:10
for that? How do you coordinate all that? Well, actually, I'm lucky enough to have
6:13
a really wonderful team of people, including Becky in the comms
6:17
team and our new Creative Arts coordinator, Fran, who joined about
6:20
a month ago now. So they're really hands on with helping out with
6:24
the logistics, which means that thankfully, you know,
6:27
I can afford to be a little bit more hands off usually.
6:32
But, yeah, absolutely. As you say, I think unless you're actually doing it,
6:36
you don't quite understand the sort of, you know,
6:39
the full practicalities of setting up an art gallery. You know,
6:43
whether it comes to doing all the paperwork with the loans or
6:47
managing the art transport, doing the wall text,
6:50
liaising with the graphic designer, producing the catalog,
6:54
wondering if you're going to have merchandise, that kind of thing. It's a really.
6:58
As I've. As I've learned quickly over the last sort of, however many
7:01
months, it's. It is a. It's a really big, really big task,
7:05
but. But a really enjoyable one. There's nothing better than having that private
7:09
view, seeing people come through the doors and actually, you know, really get
7:12
something out of. Out of the space. It's a slightly odd space. Well, for me,
7:16
I find, anyway, it's quite. It's quite sort of narrow,
7:20
long and narrow, which I guess is. Is probably ideal for an art gallery,
7:23
but I know that we've had other events in there, like we occasionally have concerts
7:27
and, and they've been. I know the Dramatic Society have put on various
7:30
shows and things and it's. Yeah. I mean, do you find
7:34
people use the space in sort of different kind of unexpected,
7:38
creative ways? Yes.
7:41
So we certainly have had, as you say, concerts,
7:44
drama, performances and I'M always sort of.
7:47
I'm always thinking, what more can we do? How can we creatively use
7:51
that space and kind of bring it to life in a way beyond
7:54
just, you know, hanging things on the wall? So, for example, last Saturday,
7:58
September, towards the end of the Alison Wilding exhibition, we actually
8:01
had a dancer come in. She came in with a troupe of six
8:05
performers and she had several rehearsals in the space.
8:09
And her rehearsals were basically. They basically involved her looking at the
8:12
artworks, working with her troupe to sort of create kind
8:16
of bodily responses to what she saw in the space. And then
8:19
they had a couple of public concerts that were just open, I think they were
8:22
on a Saturday afternoon. People just came in and they saw this dance happening,
8:26
that directly in response to the artwork on
8:29
the wall. So, I mean, for me, that's sort of exactly the kind
8:33
of thing that an art gallery should be doing.
8:36
It can obviously help bring in new audience who don't necessarily see themselves
8:41
as particularly interested in the visual arts per se, but it
8:44
can also help you get
8:48
a sort of a different perspective on the art itself and perhaps
8:51
relate to the artwork in. In a different way.
8:54
Obviously with dance, perhaps in more of a kind of literally embodied way.
8:58
I'm doing one of the things beside my French stuff.
9:01
I'm working on a project on gesture in the arts, which is obviously
9:05
a massive topic, but it's. It's really interesting.
9:09
Sort of organizing conferences and things and getting choreographers together,
9:13
even literature people, people who are interested in the sort of the gesture of the
9:16
poetic line. Art historians who are looking at the
9:20
trace of a gesture in. In terms of the mark on a canvas.
9:24
You know, everyone is kind of thinking about gesture in different ways.
9:27
And it's just really fun to kind of bring. Bring people together
9:31
to think about these big, big concepts that are applicable
9:35
to everybody's lives in a sort of creative,
9:38
culturally enriching way. So. So I do think the
9:41
hyeong has a place within college for. For promoting those kinds of
9:45
ideas and that sort of. That fun sort of play
9:49
between disciplines, I suppose. Yeah. And of course there's lots
9:53
of different ways, as you say, of doing sort of cross arts pollination
9:57
or collaboration. And I know we've done some.
10:01
I mean, we're going to hear more about this later in the show, but I
10:03
know we've done some events for the wider community, so there have been
10:06
school kids coming in and out. And do you have any plans for more
10:10
of that sort of thing in the coming months? Yes, definitely.
10:13
So quite often we get contacted by local Schools or
10:18
even sort of art communities wanting to come in and
10:21
either have a tour of an exhibition or organize their own
10:25
thing in the space. But I think the outreach potential of the
10:28
gallery is something that can definitely be tapped into further.
10:32
And I think, particularly with the kinds of exhibitions that form part
10:36
of the visual inquiry strand. So Magma Rising, you know,
10:39
there really is a kind of. There's an educational aspect. It isn't,
10:43
as I've said, it's not. It's not just about, you know, sort of art within
10:46
its aesthetic realm. It's about art as being
10:50
part of a wider sort of intellectual,
10:53
scholarly conversation. And Magma Rising has been lovely
10:56
because it's very. It's very family friendly in a way that I
10:59
don't think we've actually really had in the history of the Hyung. Kids love
11:04
volcanoes. Well, exactly, exactly. You know, I mean, I love volcanoes
11:08
and if there's a chance to do a volcano Sudoku, then I'll. I'll be there.
11:13
So. So, yeah, definitely. I think. I think it's been really nice
11:17
to see. To see a different kind of demographic come into the space and to
11:20
see. To see families coming back as well. Actually, you know, some kids,
11:24
they leave and they say, oh, I want to come back or I want to
11:26
watch this video again. Oh, let's come back. And it's, you know, that that's what
11:29
you want. That's a sign of. Of doing something right, I suppose,
11:32
is when people want to actually come back and experience the
11:37
show again. So, yeah, so credit to
11:40
Nick and Sarah for the Q and Team Rawlinson
11:44
as they've been. So we've got
11:48
Twining Eggington happening and then what's the next show after that?
11:52
Yes. So the next one is our big summer exhibition. This starts
11:56
in early June and it will run all the way until the end of August.
12:00
And this will be an exhibition of work by the British abstract painter Gillian
12:04
Ayres. So she was one of, I'd say, one of the 20th
12:08
century's most kind of prominent female abstract painters.
12:11
She's particularly known for her, like, really bold use of paint and her
12:15
vibrant colours. This show is curated by Martin Gayford,
12:18
who some of you might have heard of. He's written quite a lot of books.
12:21
He's on David Hockney and, you know, lots of contemporary
12:24
British artists. And the show is taking a deep dive
12:27
into her work from the 1970s. So it's a period that's been
12:31
pretty much overlooked in previous exhibitions of her work.
12:35
And as part of the show, we've managed to unearth two massive
12:39
canvases, each seven metres in length and
12:43
one of which has never been shown in public before. So last week we went
12:46
to the workshop where a lot of her stuff is stored.
12:50
We unrolled some of her canvases to decide which
12:53
ones we wanted. And then Gillian's son who was with us, he said,
12:57
oh gosh, I've never actually seen this one before. Or oh, this isn't
13:01
what I was expecting. Wow. So it was a kind of, it was a revelation
13:04
even to, even to Gillian's son. So. So that's going to
13:08
form a part of the show which is really exciting. We've also
13:11
got some of her ceramic tiles that are going to sit nicely
13:15
above the fireplace in the sort of the kind of cosy
13:19
domestic corner of the gallery. It felt quite fitting
13:22
to put some ceramic stuff there. And again, those have never been shown
13:26
publicly. So I think essentially it'll be just a
13:29
really kind of amazing, colorful experience and a sort of, I suppose an
13:33
immersive experience as well. I like to think of it as,
13:36
you know, Monet's water lilies, the massive ones
13:40
in Paris in the L'Orangerie, this kind of semicircular
13:43
gallery. You go, you sit there, you just sort of absorb
13:47
the colors. It'll be a little bit like that, only abstract,
13:52
1970s exuberant and on a slightly smaller scale.
13:56
But yeah, should be really fun. Amazing. Well, thank you
14:00
so much Rachel for chatting today and giving us a glimpse behind
14:03
the scenes of the Huon Gallery. Thank you so much, Louisa. It's been
14:06
great to chat. We'll be hearing from the curator of Magma Rising
14:10
in just a second.
14:16
Very exciting. I have with me in the studio Nick Rawlinson and his wife Sarah
14:21
and they've both been pivotal in the Magma Rising
14:25
exhibition in the Hyun Gallery. Welcome to you both.
14:28
Thank you, Louisa. So can you tell us
14:31
about Magma Rising? So this had its origins
14:35
well over a year ago when an email was sent out asking
14:39
for fellows to propose exhibitions for the yong
14:43
under the new regime of having more fellow led exhibitions.
14:47
And so I thought, well, since I studied volcanoes,
14:51
I'll say that I'll volunteer to do something that involves volcanoes.
14:55
Although I didn't have really much of a thought beyond that. So I submitted the
14:58
idea and it was duly accepted and I
15:02
formed a small committee to get it going because initially we
15:06
only had about a two week window of September last year.
15:10
And so there's myself, there was Clive Oppenheimer who's quite
15:13
a well known person in geography, and then a few of my Colleagues in
15:17
the Department of Earth Sciences, including Marie Edmonds, who's the current head,
15:20
John McLennan, who's a petrologist, and Sergey Lebedev,
15:24
who's a colleague of mine in seismology.
15:28
And we also had Nicholas Bell from Trinity,
15:31
the librarian at Trinity, joining us. And that's how
15:35
it kind of, kind of started. But soon after that, we got told
15:38
that actually we could have a two month exhibition starting
15:42
in February this year, which is obviously a much longer time,
15:46
so a much bigger deal. And that's when essentially
15:49
Sarah came on board to take on the task of curator,
15:54
which, as I'm sure Luigi, you know, is a big job.
15:58
And so we started really to accelerate from.
16:02
From, I guess, sort of early to mid last year. So maybe I
16:06
should pass over to Sarah to say a few words about how she managed
16:09
to get everything together and convince so many artists to come and be involved in
16:13
the exhibition. Sure.
16:16
Thanks, Nick. Yeah, so I came on board and we
16:20
had started thinking about kind of the initial
16:24
concept. And as soon as we realized it would be a lot
16:27
larger than two weeks time, we started to put more effort into
16:32
finding artists and artists who wanted to work with
16:35
the seismic data, rather than just putting some data on the wall.
16:39
And then so as we found and discovered
16:43
artists who wanted to work with the data, we also discovered artists who
16:47
were working in Iceland, irrespective of seismic data,
16:51
but still looking at volcanism itself. So through
16:55
that, we kind of amassed this collection of
16:58
20 different contemporary artists who are involved.
17:02
And it was really important to me to get a range of art
17:06
forms. So we have traditional oil painting all the way up
17:10
to people who illustrate maps and topography
17:14
maps. And we have a furniture designer, and we have
17:17
a conceptual shoe designer, and we have
17:21
some film props, and we have heritage objects from
17:25
different museums of three different museums involved.
17:29
And as we were developing, the concept, the scope
17:33
and the breadth of the exhibition just kind of kept growing
17:37
and mushrooming a bit. So in the end,
17:41
we asked a lot of artists whose
17:44
work we came across, either we knew of or we found when we were
17:48
looking for the subjects. But as we
17:52
were asking them, we were delighted that everybody said yes.
17:56
And so for me, kind of one of my personal artistry heroes
18:00
is Bjork the singer. Bjork, she's an Icelandic singer.
18:04
She's quite well known for being a bit avant garde.
18:07
And she has fantastic dress and costume design
18:11
as well. And I learned that she had recently
18:15
made a video standing in front of one of the active eruptions on
18:19
the Ray Canas Peninsula. And we saw the video on her website and I thought,
18:22
well, she should be involved in the exhibition. So we gave her the opportunity to
18:26
say yes, which is what I like to say when I ask people.
18:30
And she did. She said, yeah, she was delighted to be
18:34
involved in our exhibition. So we got to. We have the privilege
18:37
of showing a Bjork video, for example, alongside all these
18:41
other lovely artworks. It's a really amazing exhibition. I mean,
18:45
you've got so many different things. There's the.
18:48
There's a mural on the wall which is. Well, not just on the wall,
18:51
it seems to spread throughout the whole gallery. And yeah, as you said,
18:54
you've got the videos and then there's also the area of all the
18:59
equipment that you might need. And then there's. You've got soundscapes, there's just everything.
19:02
It's really, really engaging. And you've had loads of events and things as
19:06
well. And one of the ones I came to was the.
19:10
Oh, I forget his name. Now, for the chap speaking about Ninja Theory,
19:14
could you just explain a little bit about that? Because that is really, really cool.
19:17
Yeah, sure. So the one that you were at, we had a panel discussion about
19:22
basically how two different ways of filming active
19:25
eruptions. So we had two very different perspectives.
19:29
One is a filmmaker and volcanologist local to Cambridge, named Clive
19:33
Oppenheimer. And he has
19:37
kind of turned into a filmmaker through his years of study. Study being a
19:40
geographer and a volcanologist. And he does work with
19:44
Warner Herzog. They've done quite a few documentaries together which you
19:47
can see on Netflix. And so we put him on stage
19:51
with one of the creative designers
19:55
and artisans at Ninja Theory, which is a video game company here,
19:59
local again in Cambridge. And they're just based out on Newmarket
20:03
Road. It's lovely to have them as art kind of neighbors, as it were in
20:07
Cambridge here. And they're well known for.
20:11
They had a game come out about two years ago, a couple years ago
20:14
called Hellblade and they won BAFTA Best
20:18
Video Game. And that's how they came to my attention
20:21
was, you know, in Cambridge, this award winning, BAFTA winning
20:25
video game studio. And then I heard in the news that they
20:29
were developing Hellblade 2 and this one is set in
20:32
Iceland. And so they use photogrammetry techniques
20:36
and other aerial photography, trying to map,
20:39
successfully mapping out the,
20:43
basically at thumbnail resolution, the topography of Iceland
20:46
and some of the lava flows. So when I heard this, I was delighted
20:50
again and wanted to give them the opportunity to say yes. And indeed they did.
20:54
They were delighted to Be involved. So they came as well. They have
20:58
a bit of a. A game capture, it's called, where they've played the game.
21:01
And they turn into a video for us for about six minutes, which is on
21:04
display in the gallery. So when I
21:07
realized that we had these two completely different types
21:11
of filmmakers coming into the exhibition, we wanted to put them
21:14
on stage together to talk about how their work is similar
21:18
and differs and the different techniques that can be used in
21:21
order to take active volcanism and turn it into
21:25
these gorgeous pieces of film. Wow, thank you.
21:29
And, Nick, has any of this kind of artistic engagement had
21:33
any effect on the way that you approach your research or
21:37
the way that you think about volcanoes? Yeah, well, that's a good
21:40
question. I suppose one thing I should mention,
21:43
just to give some context, is why we chose
21:46
Iceland. Because originally the plan was just to be volcanoes.
21:50
But we soon realized that that's a very broad subject area.
21:54
And since I work a lot in Iceland and
21:58
my colleagues in the department and indeed Clyde, you know, go to Iceland
22:02
and put out instruments and try and understand what volcanoes are doing,
22:05
we thought we'd. Iceland. And so I think that
22:09
was a very good idea and it
22:13
was a good connection for me as well. And I suppose one thing that this
22:16
exhibition has brought is I now now know a lot more Icelandic people
22:20
and in particular, artistic Icelanders.
22:23
And it's really interesting to get their sort
22:27
of artistic perspective on volcanoes in Iceland.
22:31
And if you go into the exhibition, you'll see some of the pictures
22:35
date back to the early 70s, I think. Sarah. I don't know. And so,
22:39
you know, people have been fascinated for a long. By it for a long time.
22:42
And just seeing the way it's represented in
22:47
paint and then in drawing and other other things in the
22:51
exhibition include a volcano table which is made
22:54
by local artist Peter Harrison. To me,
22:58
that's sort of one of the highlights because he took one of my or one
23:01
of my students images of the sort of architecture of
23:05
this volcano that we image using seismic methods, and he kind of converted
23:09
into a table. And he did a great job, of course,
23:13
and it looks amazing. And, you know, just getting
23:17
that sort of different perspective or view on
23:22
the science. I do, I think, you know, it makes you think a bit more
23:25
broadly, which I think is only a good thing.
23:28
Absolutely. And excuse me,
23:31
Sarah, I noticed in the gallery there's a, you know, a piece of art that
23:35
you've done yourself. And of course, you're a very, very skilled photographer.
23:39
Do you want to just tell us a little bit More about that? Yeah,
23:42
sure. Thanks, Louisa. My photography is
23:45
very. It's. It's very ephemeral in
23:49
the way that it looks. And a lot of people first
23:53
think that they're paintings, especially when I print on canvas, as this one has
23:57
been printed on canvas. And I've. People have come up and
24:00
tried to convince me that my work is painting, not photograph.
24:03
They're always quite surprised to learn it.
24:06
So when
24:10
I think about spaces, when I'm in a space,
24:13
I actually. I have this sort of a funny way of
24:17
visualizing things. When I close my eyes, I don't see
24:21
pictures. A lot of people see images and pictures
24:24
when they close their eyes, and some of us don't. And I'm in the some
24:27
of us that don't category. So I see blurry blobs
24:30
of a bit. So my photograph that I talk about
24:34
is indeed a landscape photograph of the eruption vent and
24:37
then the lava rivers through the valley floor with some rolling
24:42
hills in the distance, ash cloud in the sky, and it's a blue sky day.
24:46
But the way that I see it when I close my mind is
24:50
I see a little red blob in the corner and some little streaky bits
24:53
coming along the valley floor and some hint of hills in the distance.
24:57
And so I try to represent this in my
25:01
artwork and I try to use this, the camera,
25:05
in that I actually. I slow down the shutter speed
25:09
and I drag the camera along. So in this instance,
25:12
I was tracing the horizon, and that gives a sort of stripy,
25:16
sort of dry brush look to the photograph.
25:21
But it is just a single exposure photograph,
25:25
just that took me over half an hour to make just the right one.
25:28
Wow. It's really amazing.
25:31
And there's also some artwork by a mouth painter.
25:35
Is he local to Cambridge as well?
25:38
Yeah. So the origin of this comes back to the research
25:42
that I've been involved in in my predecessor in
25:46
the role of head of the Cambridge Volcano Seismology
25:50
Group. That was Bob White. So he's been doing Icelandic
25:55
research since the 90s, really. And when
25:58
he retired in 2019, I took over. But his collaborator,
26:02
who's called Brenda's Brandstotter, she. She has a
26:06
son who is a quadriplegic. And one
26:11
of the activities he's taken up is mouth painting.
26:14
And so in the, you know, last five or six years
26:17
that I've been to Iceland to do fieldwork, I've met him on a number
26:20
of occasions and seen his artwork. And so it was very natural
26:24
to ask him to be part of the exhibition since much of his artwork was
26:28
based on volcanoes and painting volcanoes
26:32
erupting or not erupting, with lava flows coming down at night,
26:35
during the day. So he had a huge repertoire.
26:39
And being able to do it entirely by holding the paintbrush in
26:42
his mouth is really amazing. And so that's why he
26:46
features so prominently in the exhibition. We often talk about people
26:51
being photogenic or not. I think volcanoes are definitely
26:54
very photogenic, very kind of lend themselves to sort
26:59
of representation in different media, but different art sort of ways.
27:03
I think that's one of the things that the exhibition does really, really well.
27:06
And another thing that's been happening is this engagement with
27:09
the wider community. I know you've had lots of school children in doing activities and
27:13
so on. Sarah, do you want to just explain a little bit about what's
27:16
been going on there? One of the things that was really kind of at
27:20
the forefront of our mind, I mean, I used to be an educator myself.
27:23
I used to run a master's program. And Nick obviously still is an educator.
27:26
I'm a full time artist now. But in terms of putting together
27:29
an art and science exhibition, we thought it would be wrong
27:33
to do it without having a lot of engagement with the
27:37
wider community. So we put together a series of
27:40
events, 10 of which were open to the public.
27:43
And then there are almost another 10 that were private for
27:48
different school groups and things like that.
27:51
So we really wanted to make sure to also have a wide
27:55
cross section of events. So we had, for example, the one you came to which
27:58
was about filming active volcanoes. We had one
28:02
of our artists is she draws and
28:05
often works with volcanic ash. And so she did a
28:09
drawing workshop, how to draw volcanoes and use volcanic ash.
28:12
And that was for adults. And then the next morning she did something for kids
28:16
workshop for kids about how to draw and keep a field notebook.
28:20
Basically we had a flute concert,
28:23
we had. We had some poetry readings and
28:27
quite a few other shiv programs for
28:31
both kids and adults, really. There's some lava
28:35
flow modeling that was done, that was in collaboration,
28:37
well, in conjunction with the Cambridge Festival. And that
28:41
was targeting like the youngest kids trying to, you know, talk about
28:44
the viscosity of different material. Racing honey versus
28:48
bubble bath. Which one is going to win when you put it down a slope?
28:51
So all these sorts of different things. It's been quite fun,
28:55
quite full on. Almost two events per week for the
28:59
last six to eight weeks. Yeah, it's certainly been very busy.
29:02
Yeah, I'm in awe of how you've put it all together. I mean,
29:05
it's yeah. The kind of vision behind it is wide reaching
29:09
and broad and deep and yeah, it's just been great.
29:12
So having having worked together on this project,
29:16
do you think you might do anything similar in the future? Yeah,
29:19
so it was good fun, I think. What do you think, hubby? Yeah.
29:23
Yeah. Well, I mean, I have to admit that Sarah, as curator has done most
29:27
of the work. So if, if that happens in some future occasion,
29:30
then I guess, you know, that's nice of me. But I mean, seriously,
29:34
seriously speaking, I think it's worked very well and she's
29:38
done a great job and I think she was a perfect fit because she
29:42
spanned this science to art range very well
29:46
given her background. She used to study seismology
29:49
like myself, and she's also seen some active volcanoes both in
29:53
Antarctica and the Marianas. So it's quite exotic.
29:56
And so I think that sort of broad perspective really helped make this
30:00
exhibition as good as it is. And as to whether we do anything
30:04
into the future, that's a, a great question, but I'm certainly open to it.
30:07
Brilliant. Well, thank you so much. It's been really great hearing
30:10
about your thoughts behind the exhibition and what it's involved
30:14
and so on and yeah, thank you very much for chatting today.
30:22
Coming up, this week in college, Coral Evensong begins
30:25
again on Sunday at 6pm in the chapel featuring Handel's famous
30:29
Hallelujah Chorus. And and if you need a break on Monday, come along
30:33
to the chapel for half an hour at 5pm Everyone is welcome
30:36
to come and let off some steam. This week we are going to be singing
30:39
hits from the musical Miss Saigon. Whether you can read music or not,
30:43
just come along, have some fun. Take some time out.
30:46
On Thursday 8th May there's another opportunity to take some time
30:50
out. 6 till 7.30pm in the Huon Gallery there is
30:53
a Creativity for Stress release session. For more information,
30:57
please see the show notes. Looking ahead and further
31:00
afield, alumna Savannah Patel is producing work in progress
31:04
at Theatre Peckham on Tuesday 13th and Wednesday 14th
31:08
May. Again, you'll find details in the show notes.
31:15
If you'd like to get in touch about any aspect of the podcast or arts
31:19
in college more generally, please email me on artspodcastao.cam.ac.uk
31:26
and join me again next week when I'll be talking to alumnus Adrian Choi
31:29
about his musical experiences in Hong Kong. Thanks for listening.