Postgrads’ work to go on show at Northampton’s newest arts space

Three students from the University of Northampton are set to be the first artists to display their work at the town’s new £14m cultural hub.

Postgraduate artists Georgia Watkins, Gillie Masters and Natasha Toms will have a year’s worth of work on show at Vulcan Works – a conversion of a disused ironworks that’s just opened between Guildhall Road and Fetter Street in Northampton’s Cultural Quarter.

“It’s really exciting to be involved in one of the first few projects at Vulcan Works,” said Georgia about the event, which forms part of the three artists’ guest residency at art space NN Contemporary Art.

NN Contemporary Art became the first tenant at Vulcan Works, in July, while refurbishment work to its Guildhall Street base is completed.

The fruits of the students’ work and research will go on display at Vulcan Works for a week, from Thursday 23 September.

Georgia added: “The residency has given us the opportunity to share what we have been working on over the last year and it will be great to get out there and make connections with the community of Northampton.

“Visitors will be able to see what us three postgraduate students have been inspired by and how we have found a relationship between our practices. NN is a great resource for arts in Northampton and we would love to see the local public getting involved.”

The event, called Beforetime, will comprise a mix of print, paint, and photographic practices which speak to ideas of a connection between what we conceive to be real, and what is constructed.”

Georgia added: “The images we deal with seem to form a visuality of time, one’s own time, somebody else’s time or the time of another dimension.

“This, we feel, inevitably invokes a sense of memory and imagination, of remembering one’s own time (the past), remembering someone else’s time through their own reflection or through imagination. At this point, the image becomes a vessel, or a portal to another dimension, and through memory and imagination the image becomes fragmented.”

Beforetime is open on Thursday 23, Friday 24, Saturday 25, Wednesday 29 and Thursday 30 September, between 11am and 5pm. It’s located in St John’s Building, Vulcan Works, Fetter Street, Northampton, NN1 1EW.

Booking in advance is essential, via the event website.

Pictured from left are Gillie Masters, Georgia Watkins and Natasha Toms.