Dure Exhibition
Dure the name traditionally associated with Korean farmer's cooperatives. It brought together work by many Korean students from across the School of Art and Design. Using the same idea for the exhibition, members of the Korean Student Society draw on expertise and individual interests from across the School. Dure is still seen in farm villages and is a way of bringing people together. Likewise Dure exhibition brought the small community of Korean art students together, enabling them to learn and receive encouragement from each other just as the farmer's co-ops in Korea would do. Our purpose of the exhibition is to show all Korean students co-operating with each other in the same way that the Dure is supposed to function, combing teamwork with promoting their own strengths and skills. In addition, it gives individuals from different disciplines the opportunity to integrate and communicate together and to find a common identity as international students within the Nottingham Trent University. There are myriad ways of interpreting a ‘circle’ as a title of 5th Dure exhibition. If we draw a circle with black crayon on a blank sketchbook, we can distinguish the inner-circle from outer-circle. Or if we look at the circle as a figure, it could have connotations that imply an ‘assembly’ in mathematical ways. This is surprising as a circle resembles the society that we are living in. It is often difficult to judge whether we actually belong to an organization. This could mean the grey, or a racial mixture - the shaded area that does not follow the black or white principle. Circles when gathered in one place can represent a certain pattern- artistic expression of a beauty from a designer’s point of view. Also, a circle could mean ‘Vanity’, as emptiness in Laotzu’s word, or as ‘zero’ or ‘none’, depending on different perception. It will therefore be an error if you and I are to judge and generalise the meaning of the circle, disregarding other people’s views. For example, there is a Korean traditional dance called ‘Kang Kang Su Wal Rae’. People hold hands in a circle, sing and rotate whilst doing this. This shows one individual, ‘me’, cannot draw boundaries from others and live alone. We therefore need to hold hands with people from different ethnic background, and also with people that have different ideologies and visions. Do you ever wonder how a ‘circle’ will be viewed through ‘our eyes’, a unified vision that allows us to share our thoughts? Circle starts and finishes at the same point. If we start off by understanding each other, we will finish at the same point. What does ‘circle’ means to you? Due to the positive feedback from those who attended and those who took part, a 6th Dure exhibition is now planned for 2009.
Address: Edwards House, 2 Alric Avenue, New Malden, Surrey, KT3 4JN United Kingdom
e-mail) newdaysgallery@gmail.com
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