Wandering around the work of this year’s DJCAD graduates before the award plaques go up is a new and somewhat freeing experience. A dauntless spectator may attempt at a few guesses, but this year the work is so varied in media and approach that it’s even difficult to label it under course names; deep reverberating sounds and extensive processes radiate from the Art Philosophy and Contemporary Practice students whilst the Fine Art students’ work oozes complex ideologies. The Time Based Art & Digital Film work is sprinkled throughout the building, granting this year’s Degree Show a cohesive feel that fits well with showcasing such a close knit, collaborative year.

Helen King

In one of the Crawford building’s bright, open rooms, Helen King’s (APCP) immaculate blueprints peek out from behind the massive concrete slab that both greets and blocks you upon entering. Coming to notice how precariously the piece balances causes a tinge of doubt towards the supposedly stable walls around you. Combat this doubt against the blueprints, and they begin to act as a warrant for the Brutal Modernist architecture tropes; old-school, time consuming processes take precedence over new technologies and a long spent thought becomes the documentation and justification of one side of a polarized opinion. The concrete proves itself, standing tall in the foreground.

Sandra Schneider

Juxtapose King’s solid concrete slab with Sandra Schneider’s (Fine Art) evocative study on language; Schneider’s clicking tongue and slow, purposeful poetry fill the room as much as any matter, concrete or human. The vibe is more like a 70s living room and feels like a living, tactile set of a Svankmajer film. Tongues burgeon from the unassuming, floral wallpaper like moulding mushrooms and, although the soft light from the lamp and dark wood may make you feel at home, illusions of puddles and wet patches deter you from taking a seat. The subtly dominating sound of a trickling leak (or ‘bubbly saliva’) give the feel that this room, a metaphor for language itself, is weakened and weakening and the voice plays the part of the foundations and the leak causing all the destruction.

Veera Krouglov

Fulfilling Dundee’s recent appetite for graphic, psychedelic murals, Veera Krouglov’s fun-filled room contains all the characters you would want to meet on a dark night. The life-size doodles and miniature ceramic creatures invoke a childishly mature personality, as though Krouglov has managed to embody the exact behind-the-scenes sensibility of concealed adult humour in a kids TV show.

Sean Forsyth and Ewan T Gibson

Hazel Holloway deploys the term ‘physical empathy’, exploring her bodily self-awareness in restricted material work, and Eve Kerr’s filmed performance ‘Clay Kavala Graha’  displays a metaphoric extraction of artistic intuition through pure material. Shifting from materiality to the screen, ‘Elsewhere’, a beautiful short film by Sean Forsyth (Fine Art) and Ewan T Gibson (TBA), brings forth a celebration of the landscape on our doorstep through the ingenuity of unexpected interaction between a Fox and a Crow. The strong array of films this year is not to be missed on the big screen, showcasing on Wednesday the 25th of May at the DCA.

Kieran Milne and Thomas Stephenson

As far as guessing games go, the RSA Awards are a tough one to call. One room stands out as a tough competitor, housing the work of Kieran Milne and Thomas Stephenson (both Fine Art). On Milne’s side of the room, light streams in from the big old windows into a space as sleek and calm as an office in the Netherlands. Serene tones of Riso green prevail throughout the publications, houseplants and wall pieces, and exit signs act as an invitation for escape through the black kissing gate in the foreground. In Thomas Stephenson’s work, the name ‘wood burning stove’ manifests literally, at first glance beautifully and traditionally constructed, yet a strong satirical warning emanates from within; an uncompromising illustration of the destructive passivity we undertake in the daily living of our lives.

One thing that shines throughout this years’ Degree Show is an unwavering awareness of the artists’ surroundings, into which each work proclaims a corner of it’s own. An undoubtedly outstanding show from the graduates, Duncan of Jordanstone School of Art and Design will keep you roaming for hours. It’s open until the 29th of May and the work’s above are just a small selection from the many, many memorable works on show from the emerging talent that is the class of 2016.

Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design continues until  29 May in Dundee. Find out more information online here.

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See more Degree Show reviews on Central Station here.

The build up to the degree show is always an exciting time at any art school; there is a palpable mix of nervous tension and creative energy flying around the corridors. There are always tears during install week, but these are soon brushed aside as the young artists knuckle down to finish what needs to be done.

The opening night acts as an orgasmic release to the weeks of tension. Results are in, awards are given and the newest crop of emerging artists take to their favourite drinking holes and clubs to celebrate the last four years of hard graft.

Daniel Dowling’s (fine art) sculptural work on show comprises a delicate balance of a keen aesthetic eye and a mature material sensibility. Dowling’s use of ceramics, casting and delicate pigment powder evoke natural textures and forms. Strange twisting forms bring to mind branches or antlers and sheets of textured plaster scales conjure up the rough surface of pine bark. Dowling’s work manages that intangible quality of drawing inspiration from an idea or form but not seemingly being “about” that thing, leaving space for personal interpretation and room for thought.

Struan Teague

Struan Teague’s* (fine art) dynamic range of works takes this to the next level, his combination of monumentally large paintings, smaller prints and artist books are a more than competent exercise in pure abstraction and beautiful, gestural mark making. Really great painting is hard to find these days but Teague has seemed to nail it. Flicking through his various books and publications it is easy to see why, this young man is incredibly prolific in his field and his range of experimentation with his work bodes well for the future of his practice.

This example of masterful handling in a chosen medium is continued in the short film Solium by Michael Hunter and Robbie Gray (Time based art and Digital Film). Solium consists of several short vignettes linked together by a man and his bathtub. Odd as it may sound, the rich, all encompassing soundscape and beautifully directed shots combine into a magic and surreal journey through various landscapes including a fantastical mist filled forest, a lonely beach and a hilltop in the grips of late winter.

Lewis Bissett

Another from the Time Based Art crop is Lewis Bissett’s tongue in cheek ode to the freemasons by way of the Scottish young team subculture. Bissetts’s work consists of an abstracted shrine setting with plaster cast footballs painted in popping primary colours, a strange eye at the top of a pole, conjuring images of the all seeing eye of the freemasons, alongside three stained glass windows and a banner depicting the insignia of the “New Young Masons”. On the ground are strange marks reminiscent of football pitch markings. Bissett’s work seems on one hand to build up the glory of his invented narrative but on the other highlights the faded grandeur of Masonic Lodges with faux-marble decorations and reclaimed church pews.

David Mackay

One of the standout sculptural pieces on display is David Mackay’s Standing Reserve. This formidable sculptural work consists of a monumental electricity pylon fabricated in wood, its form twisted and drooping in a state of impotency. The structure is accompanied by a twisting rope protruding from one of its arms with a wax-cast insulator attached to the end. In the background a soundscape plays, an electrical distortion and low hum building up over the ten or so minutes it lasts to a crescendo of bleeps and buzzing, it evokes imagery of this structure twisting, bending and creaking. The ambition in this piece and its command of the space it inhabits is what makes it stand out in the show and will no doubt make an impact in the RSA New Contemporaries exhibition next year for which it was selected.

Another of this year’s crop selected for the New Contemporaries, alongside Teague, Hunter and Gray is Fine Art’s Koren Dumbleton**. Her macabre installation Lavinia consists of an atmospherically lit space inhabited by a number of abstract torsos suspended from two sets of monkey bars. The grim spectacle brings to mind both an abattoir and a children’s playground and the result is unsettling.

Koren Dumbleton

Lotte Fisher

Amongst the other awards and opportunities up for grabs at the degree show is the Scottish Sculpture Workshop’s Graduate Residency award and this year it was granted to Fine Art’s Lotte Fisher. Stepping into Fisher’s space you are confronted by a narrow corridor flanked by wooden panels, the low ceiling forces you to stoop slightly as you emerge into a bright space occupied by miniature houses and the small figures who seem to occupy them. As you turn around to observe your entrance to this fantastically whimsical world the bulk of Fisher’s work is revealed in what appears to be a hillside growing out of the gallery wall. Dotted with more small scale structures, sculpted animals and mounds of moss this work was definitely a crowd favourite on the opening night.

There are many and more works on display which are worthy of their own reviews and these are but a small selection from them. The show is on until the 31 May and I would urge you to go along and take in all the hard work these talented bunch have put in over their four years. For more information, visit here.

For more about Kieran Milne, view his website here.

*See more work by Struan on Central Station here.
**Koren wrote last year’s DJCAD Degree Show review which you can view here.

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