In July 2020 the Saatchi Gallery invited Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon (CCW) MA Fine Art (MAFA, MAVA MAFA and MA) students to respond to a call for work to be included in an MA showcase exhibition of work. This provided the opportunity to be part of an exhibition showcasing works by graduating students from London’s leading fine art schools including; Royal College of Art, UCL: Slade School of Art, Goldsmiths: University of London, UAL: Chelsea College of Arts, UAL: Wimbledon College of Arts, UAL: Camberwell College of Arts and UAL: Central Saint Martins.
Two works from my print series Joining Heaven and Earth were selected from a pool of over 110 applications.
BRIEF:
Exhibited works had to adhere to the below guidelines:
Priority given to painting, drawing, photography, or other flat, 2D, wall-based work.
3D work may be considered but must be free standing, very stable, and safe for mass audience viewing (and invariably: touching).
Works must be very fast and easy to install by gallery technicians.
The gallery cannot support electronic media, sound, installation, or works that need private or dark spaces.
Potential for video works to be shown on a show reel on a monitor but videos cannot include audio. (sound bleed issues + no headphones due to Covid)
Limited budget for large scale printing. No budget for framing.
The floors in the galleries cannot be drilled into or permanently marked/damaged. It is not possible to suspend anything from the ceilings.
Works were selected based on:
artistic merit
how the work could contribute to the exhibition as a whole
feasibility of execution
YEAR/DURATION:
2020 / 5-6 WEEKS
WORKS EXHIBITED:
Two works from my print series Joining Heaven and Earth were exhbitited in Gallery 1 with fellow Camberwell MA Graduates.
Installation Image, London Grads Now 3 – 25 September 2020
© Justin Piperger, 2020
Image courtesy of Saatchi Gallery London
‘Joining Heaven and Earth’ is the title of an essay documenting a seminar given by Shambala Art founder and Tibetan Buddhist Master Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche in 1979. In this seminar, Trungpa Rinpoche used spontaneous calligraphies to demonstrate the threefold principle of “heaven, earth, and human”. This principle was used to describe the psychological manifestation of the creative process, the physical process of creation, and the viewing process.
The collection of works proposed for the Saatchi Gallery exhibition embody Trungpa Rinpoche’s seminar both in method and visual references. Ink paintings were produced, photographed and meticulously selected using intuitive action and contemplative viewing. These photographs developed into the print series Joining Heaven and Earth.
These works became the subject of a mindfulness session on ‘the art of viewing’ at Brompton Cemetery Chapel, London, in 2019. Mindfulness is a translation of the Sanskrit word ‘sati’, also translated as ‘bare attention’. Viewers who give their ‘bare attention’ to a print from the Joining Heaven and Earth series are rewarded with mild visual hallucinations.