A building is a series of spaces whose features (walls, doors, window, tables, lights) determine how the body moves between its zones. A painting is a pictorial architecture, the specifics of which determine what when and how spaces within an image are experienced. How can we employ a reading of a painting to influence our embodied spatial experience?
How can we use the spatial/architectural features of a building to create an immersive painting experience?
Eight-Week Site Specific Painting Elusive Interiors | By Ian Bottle and Benjamin Jenner
Course details
Dates
Tuesday 21 April – 30 June 2026
Times
5:00 pM - 8:00 PM
Cohort size
Up to 10 places
Fees
£255
Location
The Margate School of Art
Duration
8 taught weeks running over an 11-week period
Overview
In this course, students will engage with the architecture of the TMS building as a three- dimensional inhabitable painting. Beginning with close observation of the ways in which the building invites and resists movement through its spaces we will generate plans that diagram our findings. These plans will form the blueprint for a series of technical workshops into different painting techniques that experiment with methods for altering the space; and a seminar that contextualises the project within existing fields of enquiry. Students will use this knowledge to produce a painterly intervention that alters the spatial experience in a chosen
area of the TMS building.
This course is open to anyone interested in the material and philosophical potential of painting in an architectural or environmental context (the expanded field).
By the end of the course, students will have:
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Contributed to conversation on the key themes of the course.
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Engaged with key theories and texts from the expanded field of painting.
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Learnt or refreshed knowledge of a number of painting techniques
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Produced a painterly intervention.
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Students at The Margate School of Art benefit from:
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Group and individual tuition and feedback
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10% off at TMS’s cafe, ‘Coastal Art Coffee’
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Students will need access to basic painting and drawing materials, brushes, pencils etc.
Course tutors
Ian Bottle's work spans painting, sculpture, drawing, photography and artists books. He completed his MA in painting at Chelsea School of Art after studying to BA at Newcastle Polytechnic. Originally from Kent, he returned to the coast to set up a studio and work as a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art in the School of Further Education at University for the Creative Arts in Canterbury. Ian has continued to show work throughout his career whilst participating in a variety of research projects that have continued to shape his practice.
Benjamin Jenner Through a variety of movement practices (walking, blindfolded exploration, cycling) explores how reflective thinking is altered by moving between places. They are interested in the challenge movement poses to the positionality of the writing subject and the precarity of their authorial voice, charged as it is with shoring up a constantly shifting position in a changing perceptual field. How this voice interfaces with other media (drawing, photography, audio recording, citations, book arts) is considered a question for performance, and is often shared through guided walks, performative presentations, and workshops. Benjamin studied Fine Art at Wimbledon School of Art (BA) and The Slade School of Art (MFA). In 2024 they completed a practice based PhD at the University of Leeds that employed an action research methodology to explore the relationship between non-visuality and textual forms of subjectivity. They collaborate and exhibit with a number of groups including Drawing as Slow Conversation and Words as Matter.
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Image credit: David Babaian