Chris Jennings ARCA PhD

Senior Lecturer, Art, Media & Design

RAE Outcomes

Research Interests
I have consistently looked at the representation and "embodiment" of that which may otherwise be considered "invisible" or "intangible" but nonetheless may be experienced as having "real" presence. I have attempted to deal with these elements, not only through my insistence on the use of the physicality of oil paint, but in some works, through the paradoxical use of steel or wood panels to embody absence. I am intellectually and practically provoked by the challenge of making work which, by virtue of its specificity, its physical weight and attention to detail, will "dissolve" into itself. The power of saturated colour to hover in space and remain as an after-image, a visual memory, to reconstitute itself on top of another form, has serious potential for dealing with the immanent or numinous. Work in progress Attachments & Separations uses conjoined or juxtaposed canvases, sometimes of differing dimension and presented at an angle to the wall, in order to tackle concepts of connection, fracture and "wholeness". Here form, line and colour initiate a "dovetailing", visually contradicting the formal separation or breaking of the component elements of the work.

Academic esteem

2004/5 - invited to be a member of the Jury for Communication Graqhique course at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Visuels, La Cambre, Brussels, Belgium

2001 - member of Aesthetics programme, the School of Advanced Studies, London University

1974-76 - Artist in Residence/Fellow in Fine Art, University of Southampton

Selected recent exhibitions

2007 - Election, group exhibition, Art First Contemporary Art, London

2007 - Descriptions, Art & Design Gallery, University of Hertfordshire, part of the Experiential Knowledge Conference

2001 - Scrutiny & Immanence, Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston University, London

2000 - Rentree 2, Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston University, London

2000 - Galerie Sapet, Mirmande, France

2000 - Box Project, Museum of Installation, London, and touring (Nottingham, Manchester, London)

1999 - Rentree, Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston University, London

1998 - Boustrophedon, public audio/visual performance, Princeton University, USA

1998 - audio/visual installation (painting/video), Trinity College of Music, London

1997 - Wooden Ships in Musee Imaginaire, Museum of Installation, London

1997 - Boustrophedon, Standpoint Gallery, London: work from a collaborative research programme investigating the relationship of painting to the notation of music.

Collections

2001 - edition of silverpoint drawings Meniscus purchased by the Dept. of Prints & Drawings, British Museum

Work in collections in the UK, France, Holland, Germany, Belgium, Australia and in the Arts Council of England

Books, CDs and videos in libraries in the UK and USA

Conferences and lectures

2006 - lecture: Attachments & Separations, National Hospital for Neurology & Neurosurgery.

2006 - lecture: Music & Painting, University of Hertfordshire

1997 - Boustrophedon, audio/visual presentation, International Computer Music Conference, Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece

1996/7/8 - lectures/seminars: Cooper Union, New York, USA; Princeton University, USA; Parsons, The New University, New York, USA

1995 - lecture/seminar, Music Department, Princeton University, USA

1992 - paper delivered to Enseigner l’Art Aujourdhui? symposium, Ecole des Beaux Arts/La Commission Communitaire Francaise et de la Province de Brabant, Brussels

Selected publications

Ashton, D: Scrutiny & Immanence: Selected Work of Chris Jennings, 2001, monograph to accompany exhibition

Boustrophedon: A Book of Notations, London Metropolitan University (Research Programme), 1997

Book of Notations included in Soundproofs, MOI / Workfortheeyetodo, 1997

La Part de l’Oeil n° 8: Wittgenstein et l’esthétique, Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, 1992

La Part de l’Oeil n° 7: Art et Phénoménologie, Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, 1991