As Andy Stark, the photography tutor puts it, several of his graduates have successfully ‘transcended art school’. Whilst it’s typical to see students taking on ‘issues’, this isn’t ‘docu-porn’ – here are people who have gone into unchartered territory, lived and breathed their subject matter and thought about relevant ways in which they might affect some change.

Go and seek out James Bettney’s work. Having heard about the plight of Nepalese widows, ostracised by their society on account of long-held reincarnation beliefs, he worked tirelessly to record their lives. These are more than just moving portraits – in themseleves first rate – but complete life stories meticulously recorded and translated, and presented here in a beautiful artists book. He’s in the process of setting up a charity and a website which will be at mutunepal.com

In a similar vein, Sarah Fishlock has worked closely with the Scottish Middle Eastern Council telling highly personal stories of isolated Iraqi’s living in Glasgow, stuck in a cultural and physical no mans’s land after working for the British MOD. Shrouded by official secrecy that prevents their faces being photographed, Fishlock instead trains her camera on incidental details that tell you much about the transient state of the lives she’s documenting.

Alec Farmer’s slick graphic work belies much earthier concerns and practical ideas. His ‘Co-ordinate’ project is one of those devastatingly simple but brilliant ideas harnessing off the shelf technology. He uses reskinned Flickr Maps as the basis for connecting world issues with problem solvers and designers, and although hypothetical it’s easy to see it taking off.

Lu Sisi (another graduate familiar to CenSta members) is a motion graphic exponent who has carved out his own niche through an exploration of the merging of sound and image. His main piece is a tribute to the Heidelberg press in the art school caseroom, which he brings alive with it’s own clanking, whirring sounds boiled down into a sort of breakbeat soundtrack for his stop motion animation. (Industry watchers should note that he recently won an New York Festival Gold, where he was entered into a professional category by mistake!).

Robb Hetherington illustration show is sublime. I initially thought it was graphics, such is the attention to typographic craft and his exploration of the printed medium. He’s reset Samuel Beckett’s ‘Krapp’s Last Tape’, his work responding to and translating Beckett’s ideas, produced as one-off monoprints. Made with an innovative technique blending black ink and golden-yellow varnish on perspex plates, each piece is singular and unique, an artwork rather than something set for reproduction. On an adjacent table a monitor showing a Beckett film is placed face down on a scanner, and new ‘translations’ of it – distorted black shapes and scan lines, are pumped out of a printer.

Sebastian Kalvik has an assured maturity about his work, an understanding of classic typography and layout with the conceptual ability to push projects. I’m making it sound dull, but it’s not, his ‘Cultural Cartographies’ and Scott vs Amundsen books are a joy, and will provoke severe designer envy.

Oliver Pitt. Illustration. I’ve used the word sublime already, and I’m not even sure how to categorise this work. Beguiling? Whetever it is it keeps drawing you back in though. And I want to own some of it. I’m also sure I’ll be seeing more of it commissioned. Tutor Dan Williams says that Pitt has ‘created his own visual language… a spiritual space’ and that makes sense when you’re in front of these largely mono works which seem to oscillate,
and describe entirely foreign shapes, objects and areas.

There’s almost too much to mention in detail, so here’s a few more in summary:

Dean Pauley ‘s delicately crafted manuscripts of of spam email;

Walter Hamilton’s ‘Last’ books – brick like documents of the soon to be demolished Foulis building;

Eva Dolgyra’s monoprints;

Rory Hamilton’s holographic type experiments;
Tau Siroko’s – Intertextual newspapers / format posters;
Lynsey Marshall’s HD films, scripted in collaboration with Louise Welsh.

–

Thanks to Steve Rigley, Andy Stark, Dan Williams, Edwin Pickstone, Kerry Aylin, Mark Baines, and various students
for letting me in and around on the day.

–

City Night Preview tonight – Thursday 9 June

Glasgow School of Art Degree Show 2011 | gsa.ac.uk  for further details.
Open: 11-18 June 2011.
Sat/Sun: 10am – 5pm
Mon – Thu: 10am – 9pm
Fri 17th June: 10am – 7pm

2011 marks a special year for the Glasgow School of Art Degree Show.  It’s the last time there will be a show in the Foulis Building and the Newbery Tower, the twin design obelisks that have faced the Mackintosh building for the past 35 years and are now to be replaced with a fine Steven Holl designed structure.

In this years Fine Art show in the ‘Mac’, there’s evidence of the fluctuating relationship between ‘art’ and ‘design’ – if not a ‘cross-disciplinary practice’ then at least the presence of parellel design languages, and design methods being interpreted. For example, Tim Savage references Buckminster Fuller geodesic domes and QR codes, and Kate Lampitt Adey and Theresa Malanay take textile craft as a starting point to explore feminist issues. Adey’s work references embroidery hoops installed as crafted collaged patchwork canvases, however it’s Malaney’s work which really engages with the internal architecture, semi-opaque monochrome hangings which drape the full double-height of the Mackintosh studios, creating a distinct ‘veil’.

Approaching both the design/fine art and gender politics paradigms in an equally refreshing way is Hells Gibson, whose beautifully understated letterpress posters pepper the vertical slats of the Mac with hard hitting sloganeering. Great graphic design, let alone art.

Hannah Brackston’s “Nomadic Workshop” – featuring a bike pulling a trolley with a tent and tools looks like it’s bumped into graduating visual communication student Alec Farmer’s Nomadic Shelter.   (maybe they could go on a tour together).

There’s plenty of enjoyable spectacle where the artists – perhaps in reaction to the nature of the degree show itself and the pressure to be ‘discovered’ or ‘make it’ – explore a self-exploitative side. The basement of the Mac this year at times resembles a tongue in cheek fetishistic dungeon. Alicia Mathews leads us, via a concealed door and Leonard Cohen, into a sort of onanist’s screening chamber complete with sticky cinema seats and red-lit flock wallpaper, whilst she writhes fully frontal and awkwardly humps a mattress. 

Max Prus manages to combine a vertically challenged scottish actor playing ‘Mark Chapman’ (“you might know me, ahm famous fur killin John Lennon”) in a time travelling fridge, and some rather explicit ‘love’ scenes with himself a friend in a Yoko Ono mask, whilst Ono’s “Mrs Lennon” plays in the background. He’s also aiming to catch Modern Institute curator Toby Webster’s attention by implicating him in Amazon shopping reviews of used pantyhose. “I’m disappointed, these are woolen, not opaque as advertised, this is not the first time…”.

In another darkened cove Claudia Nova invites us to “Applause” [in neon] for her absent self, and signs-off with a Warner Bros. cartoon style “That’s all folks”.

Meanwhile Beth Dynowski simply has a sign-up promising us that she will essentially be installing herself in her space all next week as a performance work. Insert art jokes about ‘absence and the self’ and ‘escaping the confines of the gallery space’ here.

Escaping the basement, there’s still much to seduce you in the large open Mackintosh gallery up the main staircase. You won’t really fail to spot the Alice Metila Steffen’s Essex inspired light installations, made up of white stilettos and a crude sunbed tube table. A must-see for all you TOWIE fans.

For the sheer aesthetic pleasures of good old paint on canvas, there’s Gillian Anderson’s marbled glories, tastefully tonal yet rooted in the process of alchemy and Rorsach ink blot tests.

Meanwhile, one to watch might be Silja Strom, who has a prolific output of intense collaged works

featuring strange distorted mystical creatures. Always great to see development of this type of work too (pictured).

In the same balcony space, Thomas Hatton provides possibly the most assured of the Fine Art Photography bunch, with a ‘barely there’ sort of a show, bleached out desert topographies with painstakingly dodged elements, a nod to a pre-digital craft yet stunningly contemporary.

If, after all this, you feel your senses have been barraged to the point where you can no longer think for yourself, Romany Dear’s installation will happily wrench the balance of control from the viewer back to artist. ”For the next eight minutes I would like to encourage you to fully embrace absolutely everything” a text on the wall instructs.  Dear’s retro cassette tape and headphone audio tour guide then proceeeds, in a Miranda July style deadpan naivety, to gently poke fun at the whole experience of viewing art as it implores the listener/viewer to stroke his chin or ‘become part of an art piece’.

—

Glasgow School of Art Degree Show 2011 | gsa.ac.uk  for further details.

Open: 11-18 June 2011.
Sat/Sun: 10am – 5pm
Mon – Thu: 10am – 9pm
Fri 17th June: 10am – 7pm

Last week I walked to London in order to, amongst other things, see the Royal College of Art graduate show (2).

The show was a highly polished affair, a topic i’ll return to later, but as a result it made me think more about whether this type of exhibition is the best vehicle for communication art and design, product and interaction design, and so on. What the alternative would be, i’m not sure, but i can confirm that spending a week looking over the Communication Art and Design (CA&D) publication and associated websites (not a solid week, obviously, as a clarification for any pedants out there) proved a far more interesting experience than the show itself. However I’m not denying that it was a very pleasant day out, and perhaps as good a route into the work as any other.

For an overview of individual students work, these reports offer more detail. Plus: (Interaction Site / C&AD site)

A hot topic of debate around CA&D at the RCA is the imminent arrival of a new head of department. Readers of Creative Review (amongst others) will be aware of the art vs design rumblings (aside: probably best steer clear of the detritus in the comments section, a more accurate analysis of blog-comment-structures here) and the machinations about big-names vs unknowns and false dicotomies of practitioners vs theorists. There are various sides to these arguements, but one thing they possibly have in common is to locate the head of department too centrally (or at the top of a big pyramid) in the eco-system of this course. Interaction design is an interesting case-study at the RCA, as though much of the work is intriguing and engaging and does open up questions of sorts, this year it all felt very much in the mould of a particular type of critical-design, as practised by the course leaders, and though my visit was brief, I didn’t see much which challenged this world-view. Another point to return to later.

Tucked away, and modestly presented, some very interesting projects were on view as part of the RCA/V&A MA History of Design Course, and I’m interested to know how this course interacts with the others.

On that note, I was also very interested in Department 21 which was in evidence at different points and in different departments in the show. A student-led initiative, it took a temporarily empty painting studio and used it as the focus for an ongoing programme of inter-departmental projects, talks and events. This for me is another ‘indicator’ of a desire acrossformal and informal educational experiences for a inter-disciplinary approach. I am not trying to claim that this is a new or radical thing, but am suggesting that the desire is strong and does exist, and that institutions (in their heirarchical, top-down mould) seem incredibly ham-fisted at delivering them, prompting interesting experiments like this one to spring-up.

One particular aspect of dept21 that interested me was a workshop and seminar on ‘de-skilling’. I’m fascinated by the idea of amateurism (in the best sense), and the prospect of an ‘amateur masters course’ (or masters in amateurism) is one i’d (perhaps mis-guided) sign-up for.

In a circular fashion, this brings me back to the emphasis placed on the new head of C&AD, the professionalism of its show, and a wondering about whether the significant developments in the course are likely to happen at its boundaries, and away from any one individual.

With the appointment of Neville Brody, I would hate the CA&D course to come to mirror its leaders. There are already enough supersonic ego’s in design education, and the star-cult of the individual is writ large. Thankfully there are those challenging this view, and even if the appointment was made on that basis, hopefully Brody will fall into this latter camp— I suspect he’s well aware of this potential pit-fall, and am interested to see what happens.

Images: RCA show2, Printers: ©Xavier Antin, and various, and Those that Move, off-site exhibition of Camberwell BA Graphic Design, at the Rag Factory, off Brick Lane.

P.S: Thought this RCA project was good, in relation to Central Station.

Anyway back to the work and graduates that grabbed my attention.

Colin Wilson

More of Colin’s work can be seen here at his website.

Lyndsey Redford

Unfortunately I couldn’t find links to more of her work which is a shame as this scanned image of her postcard does not do it justice. She is one of the artists mentioned in The Skinny review.

Naomi Archibald

Once again I can’t find links to Naomi’s work, but she is mentioned in the Scotsman review.

Sinéad Bracken

I particularly liked Sinéad’s animated artwork – which you can enjoy by visiting her website although you won’t get the same scale as you did at the exhibition.

By visiting the Dundee Degree Show 2010 website you can see the work of some students whose work is being showcased and who have also been reviewed in the two linked articles I have mentioned.

Please visit the links and post or blog your comments regards the student’s work on display.

Lale Arikoglu’s installation combined found images and footage with her own photographs; framed work with loose sheets and Post-its; tiny, meticulous ink drawings of natural forms with handwritten and printed matter; and elements that could have been works in their own right with ones that, removed from the installation, might simply have been research.  Modes of doubling, recurrence of subjects and materials, and cross-referencing across the body of works tied them all together with a delicate balance that commanded the viewer’s scrutiny a second time, in a manner reminiscent of the Icelandic conceptual artist Hreinn Fridfinnsson.

In a similar vein, Lisa-Marie Reynolds’ work on negative body image combined drawings, ceramic body casts, and other text works in a skilful, coherent way that allowed her to incorporate very slight, lo-fi pieces without them paling into insignificance, such as a wall-mounted, finger-sized piece of glass with a crack in it, bearing the label ‘No fingertips.’

Another photographer, Thomas Horák, ventured further into the 3-D realm, with a great assortment of objects including motorised ferrets, end-to-end pint glasses containing confetti, bunches of nails soldered together, a film playing on a TV monitor, and an electric motor which provided a constant hum.  With an almost too numerous and wide-ranging collection of scientific and domestic items, and small motorised furry things flying around, it had the feel of an interactive science museum, but without the interactive element.  Inspection of the list of titles proved enlightening, but also limited some of the works to one-liners. 

Horák did, however, negotiate his awkward corner space by leaving a circle of the floor unpainted and arranging his works around it.  As ever, appraising the show meant having one’s judgement coloured by how well the artists had managed the lack of space, before one even began to assess the work.

This being so, one might expect the large-scale sculptures to be at a particular disadvantage, and indeed they were.  Susanna Olczak, Naomi Bell, and Tim Pulleyn were three who showed impressive execution and attention to finish in their formalist structures, but clearly could have benefited from a little extra space.  In the Mackintosh Gallery, Bell’s sleek black lines referenced the architecture of the building, and also literally reflected it in the Perspex sheets on the floor; thus, although the viewer may not have been able to step back to apprehend the piece fully, her mental image was filled in by peering directly over the base to see the reflection of wooden beams looming overhead.

Lyndsey Wardrop’s wall intervention showed a lovely, sensitive engagement with the fabric of the building: blue-grey metal slats had been inserted into the wall like an oversized air vent, and the crumbling, imperfect texture of the surround resonated with that of, well, the artschool.

As with the sculpture, the most interesting of the Painting and Printmaking works had gone for big and bold, and were a welcome antidote to the dense, involved, studies of gothic subjects that seem to be recycled year after year.  Shaun O’Donnell’s twisted, fleshy humanoid lumps stood out vividly against surreal, brightly coloured wastelands, although some of the most interesting of these, depicting the fleshy forms interfacing with foreign objects, were stacked to one side on the floor.  Solveig Settemsdal’s works similarly stood out for their bold, luscious, impressionistic style. 

In a different strain entirely, Tilde Engstrøm’s brilliant existentialist portraits of faintly absurd characters seemed at first glance to belong in the realm of witty caricatures in a Sunday paper supplement.  In fact, they covered conceptual as well as aesthetic bases, the texts and quotes accompanying the drawings designed to manipulate a predictable response in the viewers, and to purposefully distance them from the subjects so they remain “consciously critical observers.”

Two works that rendered this impossible were Paul McDonald’s affecting but humorous exploration of living with disabilities associated with thalidomide, and Gitte Hansen’s absorbing photographs, which deservedly won the Alice Duncan prize.  After watching Hansen’s film of two young goats head butting each other for longer than I care to admit, I concluded that the better new work by this year’s graduates was definitely to be found among the Photography department.

The Degree Show runs from 12 – 19 June 2010.

Interactive Media @ Dundee Degree Show via imd.dundee.ac.uk

Being a fellow graduate this year – eca, sculpture – this was me checking out the competition. (This is unbiased, promise). Having not been before, I didn’t really have any expectations – these are usually dangerous things to have anyway.

So, after last years expedition down the steps and towards the Tay (I have connections) the degree show is back within the college grounds, swallowed up by the winding corridors and studios everywhere that – my stupidity aside – were rather difficult to negotiate.

(Rather than giving a room-by-room, department-by-department run through of the show, this is my overview of the exhibition, taking into consideration that I’m horrible with remember names, details and everything else that would be useful to anybody.)

Primarily, I was disappointed with fine art as a whole. As I have found with other degree shows – gsa, eca, london schools etc – there are usually a few works/people that either stand out or at least have something interesting about them. Though, to say everything was uninteresting within Fine Art would be a rather harsh and sweeping statement, but generally nothing excited me. There was a slight un-polished finish to a lot of the work – generally a degree show trait – like they were expecting to be down the road again, but didn’t quite make it. (I don’t know the story here, so I’m only guessing).

Brushing this department aside – and again taking my forgetfulness into considerations – the highlight/redeeming part of the show was the Interactive Media department that, though off my tracks somewhat, provided design that was thoughtful, interesting and engaging. (There’s a link at the bottom; they’re all worth a look).

Overall, it was a bit disappointing, suggestive that the design departments of Dundee are producing students who are in turn producing work that is more deserving and demanding of attention.

Interactive Media

Since around 2005 Degrees unedited with http://www.a-n.co.uk has been supporting the critical context of degree show season through a platform for review as well as one of the first blogging communities to hit the web, designed especially for the student voice. We have students stretching their virtual thoughts from all over the UK and beyond so, talking of diversification… there’s voices from universities and colleges in London, Wales, Devon, the midlands reaching up to Northern England into Scotland.

This group on Central Station is great, it’s pulling in so much more interest! Degrees unedited (i.e.Richard Taylor) is happy therefore and would like to say thank you to the drive of Central Station!!!

If any more of you are visiting degree shows make sure you get on Twitter and either use #degreeshows hash tag or #degreeshow hash tag to recommend your pick of student work. a-n Magazine is pulling from your interest to get a student image on the cover or featured in the summer issue…

Its nearly degree show time at GSA, which is exciting. Opens 10th/11th June (Please note: tickets required for entry), then open-access for the following week.

image: lizzie malcolm, work in progress. vis com 2010