Art with a story to tell in Kingston (From Surrey Comet)

Art with a story to tell in Kingston

4:10pm Monday 21st March 2011 in Exhibitions By Will Gore

A Day in the Life of Ernesto Bones is the intriguingly titled new exhibition at Kingston University's Stanley Picker Gallery.

The show is the brain child of Stanley Picker Fellow Ab Rogers and his team at Ab Rogers Design (ARD), incorporating contributions from a range of creative individuals from the worlds of fashion, advertising, fine dining and more.

Inspired by the game, Exquisite Corpse, in which a series of collaborators take it in turns to add to a drawing or story, ARD, who have previously worked with a number of major institutions including the National Museum of Science and Industry, Tate Modern and The Pompidou Centre, invited 24 people to write up to 400 words describing one hour in the life of fictional character, Ernesto Bones.

Among those who contributed to the project include experimental chef Heston Blumenthal, advertising executive John Hegarty and illustrator Sarah Fanelli. The contributions were shaped into a narrative that chart a day in Ernesto Bones' life, with the text being used as the inspiration for a series of installations.

Ab Rogers explains: “Storytelling has always been central to my practice – in many ways it is the creative starting point to all of my studio’s work. We use stories as a tool to communicate our ideas to each other, to our clients and to the users.

“For this fellowship we wanted to take this concept further – not merely to tell a story about our design for the project, but to make the story the design itself.”

Each year the Stanley Picker Fellowship Programme, at Kingston University’s Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, provides two practitioners, one in the field of fine art the other in design, with the opportunity to develop a substantial body of new work to be premiered at the Stanley Picker Gallery.

A Day in the Life of Ernesto Bones was produced in collaboration with students from Kingston University’s MA Curating Contemporary Design and BA Interior Design courses.

The exhibition runs until May 21 but the gallery will be closed from April 22-30. For more information, visit stanleypickergallery.org