Each year the lovely people at a-n put together a Degree Show Guide containing all you need to know for the UK’s upcoming degree shows. This year, they’ve released a 50-page guide featuring more than 75 forthcoming shows from across the UK, plus perspectives from artists including Bob and Roberta Smith, curators, academics and graduating students.
“The degree show is an incredible moment when all this expectation kind of explodes and you witness all these new voices. It’s a fantastic manifestation – a kind of passing out parade of all the work and all the students.”
- Bob and Roberta Smith
Holly Warrener, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge
Steven Bode from Film and Video Umbrella talks of moving image work putting pressure on the appropriateness of the traditionally bustling and busy degree show, while Artes Mundi director Karen MacKinnon wonders if universities could be doing more to engage with their locality and to accommodate the work of students for whom the gallery is a problematic space.
Louise Hutchinson of S1 Artspace in Sheffield, meanwhile, suggests that the degree show needs to be approached more like a ‘proper’ exhibition – and that students really shouldn’t bother with those business cards.
One thing underpins all these thoughts – an excitement and curiosity about this time of year, as new voices emerge and futures take shape. Some of those voices can be heard in the guide’s Class of 2015 series, which provides a snapshot of current thinking from five final-year students, including Holly Warrener from Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, whose work is featured on this year’s cover.
Also featured are the thoughts of practising artists, who recall their own degree shows – as far back as 1979 and as recent as 2014 – and share what the time meant to them.
Among these, Graham Fagen says the experience was similar to working towards an exhibition, even today. “You are flat out, nervous and unsure whether what you’re doing makes any sense at all – to anyone, even yourself,” he explains. Fagen is currently representing Scotland at the Venice Biennale. Read more from him on Central Station here.
Emily Speed says her degree show was when she really began to see the potential of her ideas: “I could see quite clearly that I was only just beginning to explore what I was really interested in and that I had a hell of a lot of work ahead of me,” she says.
The a-n guide is the perfect companion to the degree show season and to prepare yourself for what Bob and Roberta Smith describes as “a fantastic jamboree”.
View or download the a-n Degree Shows Guide 2015 online via Issuu here.
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