Joshua Y'Barbo

Interview conducted  with BYOUNG UK JEON  on Dec 10, 2021 at 10:00 AM London / 7:00 PM Seoul I had the pleasure of interviewing Byoung Uk Jeon, a recent graduate from Chelsea College, who is living and working in Seoul, South Korea. He finished a degree in Fine Art over the summer of 2021. Jeon was in the second year of his course when the pandemic started. His end-of-year exhibition was all online, which was launched after he completed his course. Jeon returned to Korea to finish his degree due to difficulties caused by the pandemic when his landlord asked him to leave his flat. I talked to him about his experiences studying at Chelsea College of Art to gain an understanding of what it was like for him and his peers at UAL.   JY : Would you mind telling me about your experience’s studying fine art and Chelsea college, considering the pandemic disrupted your learning?  BJ : I had to finish my work in Seoul. When I was in London during the pandemic, I felt incred...

Interview with Sarah Tibbles (Dec 10, 2021, at 12:02 PM London) Graduate from Chelsea College of Art in 2021 with a BA in Textile Design. Halfway through her second year at Chelsea, the pandemic shut down the university and moved everything online. So, the two halves of Sarah’s experience of Chelsea are markedly different.  JY: Tell me about your practice and the work we’re showing in particular? ST: I specialise in weave, and I started to develop a growing interest in slow design as a sustainable design strategy to tackle the negative impacts the textile industry has. Slow design centres around localism, craft, the longevity of use, and consuming consciences. I see it as a counterbalance to more technocentric solutions. It started collaborating with Khadi London (?), a social enterprise organisation, that works with various textiles suppliers in India to celebrate their artisan skills and sustainable production methods. They came to college and gave a few talks and launched the Kh...

Interview with Katerina Mimikou (Dec, 23, 2021 at 09.35.56am) The Greek-London based artist, Katerina Mimikou, sat down with me to talk about her creative practice of collecting images and videos and piecing them together through initiative and subjective aesthetic inclinations. Mimikou talked to me about the positive and negative effects of the pandemic on her work, while offering some insight into her creative problem-solving through artistic practice.  JY: You’re back in Greece, you’ve just finished your degree, you spent half of second year, and all of your third year during the first lockdown?  KM: yes!  JY: how was the first half of your studies compared to the second half?  KM: Very different! Each year was different from one another. COVID made studying very difficult for me.  That’s when I came back to Greece and I had no space, I was trying to study with other people who were also working online/remotely. For the third year, the final one, I returned t...

(RE)Connecting You(ths): Monument to the Job Centre An Exhibition Proposal Date of document:  November 29th 2021  Jobseeker (2016) by Sleaford Mods  Exhibition Concept In Chaosmosis, Felix Guttari (1995) stated, ‘[…] how do you bring a classroom to life as if it were a work of art?’ This exhibition asks: How do you bring a jobcentre to life as if it were a work of art?  Inspired by Hirschhorn's monuments and personal involvement in Critical Practice's #TransActing: A Market of Values (2015), this exhibition turns the gallery into a monument to the jobcentre, which will playfully connect people and provide real support by using booths, screens to show films made during the preparation of the exhibition, a stage for dramatised re-enactments of research material, and a public programme that includes performance lectures, presentations, and open discussion.  According to Bishop (2012, p.260), Thomas Hirschhorn’s large scale social projects in the form of 'monument...