Out and About: October Gallery and Gamelan Festival
Becca Horton and Jessica Juckes, International Training Programme
Jessica – October Gallery
I recently went to the latest private view at October Gallery – a London gallery some of you will have visited with the ITP. October Gallery works with non-Western artists, and a number of their represented artists are in the contemporary collection of the British Museum’s Africa Gallery. The current exhibition is Alexis Peskine: Power Figures, featuring portraits inspired by Kongo minkisi.
Georgie Fay, Education Manager at October, is centring the schools programme for this exhibition on portraiture and the theme of identity. October Gallery Education has a really wide and exciting programme including schools and family, a youth collective and career development for volunteers. Check it out here!
Rebecca – International Gamelan Festival, London 2017
This year Hafnidar from Aceh Museum was the first Indonesian Fellow to attend the Summer Programme. As a result of this new network the Indonesian Embassy invited the ITP team to attend a special performance of Setan Jawa at the International Gamelan Festival at Cadogan Hall in South Kensington, London.
Gamelan is a traditional ensemble music of Indonesia, made up predominantly of percussive instruments. Live Gamelan music was played during the silent black and white film Setan Jawa, inspired by German films such as Metropolis and Indonesian shadow puppet theatre.
This was a unique experience, watching a film that was at the same time embracing tradition but also contemporary in style.