Joanne Dawson is a final year student of the BA(hons) Painting and Printmaking course at The Glasgow School of Art, graduating from the School of Fine Art a year after the fire of the Mackintosh Building. She is currently working up to the 2015 Degree Show using a variety of video, sculpture, screen-print and installation. She tells us more about what this year’s graduating Painting & Printmaking students have planned.

47 graduates from the Glasgow School of Art Painting and Printmaking course will exhibit their work in London at the Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane on the 2 – 6 July, as part of The Free Range Show. With the destruction of the Mackintosh Building, we lost a valuable platform for showcasing the culmination of four years hard work. We were in third year during the fire, so our work was not personally damaged, but we worked very closely with graduate students during that time, and we know how much it affected them along with the following repercussion that impacted ourselves in our final year. ALL YOU CAN EAT is the perfect opportunity for us to take our work beyond Glasgow and to exhibit to a wide new audience in a location central to London’s art scene.

Image of Rosie Swan by Ewan McCaffrey

Image of Nathan Cook by Ewan McCaffrey

ALL YOU CAN EAT is more than a painting show. We are an eclectic group and we will be running community workshops, performances, poetry readings and other events throughout the week in London. There is very little restriction on what will come out of the show, however we want to project how strong we have all been as a year together. We initiated this project entirely off our own back, and have been fundraising ourselves over the past year. With huge support and with much gratitude, our Kickstarter raised £3000 in just over a week (here is a link with a video by Gary Zhang). £3,000 is only half of the full cost. If we do not reach our target the show must and will go on. The cogs for potential resolutions to a lack of funding are already in motion. We are trying to supplement our funding through other avenues, writing proposals to different arts charities, throwing club nights, events, and bake sales.

After the funding is fully realised our largest challenge will be safely delivering, curating and installing the best possible show. The event, in the Old Truman Brewery in London, takes place between 2 – 6 July, a fortnight after the official Fine Art degree show in Glasgow will be held in Tontine House, off Trongate Cross in Merchant City from 13 – 20 June. The building surrounds a public art project of Douglas Gordon – his EMPIRE sign.

Image of Jude Hagan by Ewan McCaffrey

Image of Lewis Prosser by Ewan McCaffrey

Image of Jessie Whiteley by Ewan McCaffrey

You can follow our Instagram account here @gsa_painting with regular updates throughout our degree show and lead up to ALL YOU CAN EAT Graduate show. Preview students’ work on The Free Range Portfolio site here. Information will also be posted on The Glasgow School of Art’s website about our upcoming Fine Art Degree Show in the new Tontine Building.

More: Website | Facebook | Twitter

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Find more events in our weekly bulletin here.

“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.

More: Website | Twitter

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Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJCAD) will showcase work from some of the country’s best young creatives later this month when the annual Degree Show season gets underway.

The DJCAD Degree Show is the first of the flagship exhibitions held by Scotland’s four main art and design colleges each year. The traditional Preview Evening for the students, their families and invited guests takes place on 16 May, with the city’s largest annual exhibition of art and design, featuring the work of some 245 final-year students, opening to the public the next day and remaining open until 25 May.

Students from all 11 undergraduate programmes will exhibit their works across the two buildings and fourteen floors that comprise DJCAD. The show attracts thousands of visitors each year and is seen as a springboard for some of Scotland’s most exciting emerging artists.

DJCAD has a reputation as one of the leading art schools in the UK and many of its students go on to be world-renowned artists. Turner Prize winner Susan Philipsz and nominees David Mach, Louise Wilson and Luke Fowler are all DJCAD alumni. The standard of DJCAD students has been borne out by the number selected for prestigious prizes and exhibitions, such as the New Designers, New Blood, FreeRange and New Contemporaries on the basis of their Degree Show work.

Jeanette Paul, Acting Dean of DJCAD, said, “Over the coming months, thousands of talented artist and designers from across Scotland will be exhibiting the fruits of their training over the past four years and our graduands consistently prove themselves to be among the best in the country.

“This is demonstrated by their strong performance at New Contemporaries last year. This illustrious exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy brings together the best work from all Degree Shows and the number of awards given to DJCAD graduates shows how skilled and creative the artists we produce are… Degree Show is always a special time for the University community, and indeed the whole city, and I’m sure the thousands of visitors who flock to DJCAD will once again be impressed by what they see.”

The exhibition will be open to the public from 17 – 25 May. Admission is free and the exhibition is open from 10am – 8pm (Monday to Friday) and 10am – 4pm (Saturday & Sunday).

The DJCAD Degree Show is one of the highlights of the city’s cultural calendar, attracting some 10,000 visitors each year and generating in excess of £1 million for the local economy in the process. It is part of the Ignite Dundee festival, which runs from 16 – 31 May and showcases the very best of Dundee’s creative talent.

Further details can be found on the DJCAD Degree Show website.

More: Website | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube

For more events, see our Weekly Bulletin here.

Illustration by Ben Aslett (Just Us Alumni)

Set up in 2009 by three final year graphic design students, with the aim of promoting the work of and aiding young creatives in making that giant leap from student living to working life – the collective is now run by freelance designer/illustrator Mark Grant.

Each year Just Us changes its collective members, bringing in new young creatives, working with them over the course of the year and giving them opportunities that will help for when they graduate. Previous members of the Collective form the Just Us Alumni and are called on occasionally for live briefs and projects.

Illustration by David Biskup

“From the outset our aim was to showcase young and emerging creative talent from universities and colleges across the UK – through exhibitions, live projects and online presence. We wanted to give students the confidence to network with industry creatives, whilst encouraging integration; boosting communication and collaboration.”

Illustration by Mariana Labao

The Just Us website also has a blog which is a place where you will find the latest news, events, and goings on from the collective and alumni, coupled with inspiration and anything we find interesting; providing a helpful resource for designers and illustrators alike.

Over the course of the years Just Us has worked on a number of projects from desktop wallpaper projects with art & culture blog Kitsune Noir (now The Fox is Black) to tent designs for Field Candy.

No Hats Indoors by Jamie Jones – Just Us x Evermade ‘London Etiquette’ project

This year the Just Us Collective had a project with Evermade.com in which 3 designs were chosen and produced for sale online and around various locations in London.

At the start of August the Just Us Collective will be exhibiting at Beach, London in Shoreditch. Titled ‘Pick & Mix’ the show will feature a mix of some of the collective’s latest work. See here for more details.

Pick & Mix is a collective exhibition from members of the Just Us Collective

Look out for ‘Just Us Editions’ in the near future, featuring a series of t-shirts and prints from members of the Just Us Alumni made available online through the Just Us Shop.

KKareer Centre, a Just Us Collective exhibition at KK Outlet, Hoxton Square (July 2009)

If you would like to be a member of the Just Us Collective next year and will be studying during 2012/13, keep posted in September for information.

Find Out More:
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Tumblr | Pick and Mix

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See here for more Collectives featured on Central Station.
Contact us to talk about a feature for your Collective.

In their first four months they’ve worked for clients ranging from local arts organizations to massive corporations, providing all kinds of creative work from drawing and writing to video and web branding. Originally Young Pines was going to be a 4 month long zine project but the project has mutated and evolved over the past 15 months into something much bigger.

The Shipping Forecast Murals by Young Pines

The Shipping Forecast approached Young Pines to liven up their outside smoking area. Sticking to the nautical theme of the bar, but with no set brief, they went to town on the back wall. Armed with buckets of white and black masonry paint and brushes, they decorated the smoking area with sea critters great and small, along with the seafaring wisdom of Hemingway.

Young Pines have had the opportunity to build extremely strong, close bonds with some insanely talented emerging talent and they are genuinely attached to them all now in a way that makes it difficult for them to end the project (hence the fact that its dragging on into its 16th month). Young Pines have had the opportunity to identify firsthand what happens when you give a creative mind a completely open brief and an extremely modest budget to work with. Also, some of the participants have hunkered down and created their own new exciting things.

One of these projects is Deep Hedonia formed by Thom Isom and Jon Davis. Their remit is to produce intelligent, worthwhile music happenings that combine artists booking with the perfect venues, artwork and eventually installations. Thom is one of the most driven Young Piners, pouring bucketloads of energy into every project he tackles.

Thom worked with Christine Gore, Will Daw and Greg Gibson to build a post apocalyptic hotel installation. No Vacancy was the third piece of work delivered by Young Pines (after a book and exhibition of mythological creature pornography).

Mermaid Octopus by Michael Cottage

They’re still to produce their final round of Young Pines work, with Jon Davis, Emily Salinas, Jonathan Summers Muir and John Biddle and who were finishing their degrees until last month. It’s exciting to see what they come up with and how they learn from the past two groups.

Michael Cottage | Young Pines project- Dream of a Fisherman’s Wife. Worked alongside Milos Simpraga, Svea Carney and Emma Hammond:

“Being part of Young Pines gave me the opportunity to work with like-minded people, combining our creative strengths, whilst working with the lovely Mercy crew. What initially started as an exciting brief, evolved in to a group of mates getting together to produce numerous given and personal projects, which both Young Pines and Mercy could be proud to put our name to.

The internship has given me the opportunity to meet a group of very talented people who serve as a constant pool of inspiration to me, and to work with an agency of industry professionals, who I would be ashamed to introduce to my nan.”

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For more creative delights we’ve Spotted on the web take a look here.

With this year’s a-n Degree Shows Guide, guide editor Chris Sharratt and designer Alan Ward of Axis Design have tried to reflect a little of the energy and anticipation of this time, both for the graduating students and the rest of us. The guide also looks to the future and what happens next, once the shows are over and the real world beckons. There are tips on life after graduation, but also advice on buying work at degree shows.

Francis McKee, director of the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, offers his take on the wider significance of the degree show, and we talk to four a-n Degrees unedited student bloggers about their work and shows. Elsewhere, Northern Art Prize winner Leo Fitzmaurice picks his top three a-n student blogs, and four established artists – Michael Fullerton, Emily Wardill, Rachel Goodyear and Phoebe Cummings – talk about their first steps after graduating. And of course, there’s a wealth of information about degree shows the length and breadth of the UK.

Did we say we had a spring in our step? We’re positively bouncing…

Find a-n Degree Shows Guide 2012 here.
Read more about a-n and their projects here.

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When browsing through a blog, you often find yourself having to either remember the work you saw, or simply ‘bookmark’ it. Over the past year or so I’ve grown accustomed to the world of blogging, and have really seen how beneficial it is. However, I always found myself wanting to take a piece of that work with me, to have it in my hands, instead of it just being a url or reference in my browser.

Since being at University, I realised that there was a staggering amount of great student artwork flying all over blogs. It really began to frustrate me that some of this work could just get forgotten about and some would not get the full appreciation it deserves. I guess that’s how Plog was born. I thought it was time to give students the opportunity to share and showcase their work in a physical form.

Issue three has changed a lot since our first, it’s packed with more stunning, thought provoking content than ever before, with special features ranging from interviews with recent graduates, Kimvi Nguyen and Antonia Sullivan, to a refreshing insight behind a project from Winchester School of Art’s Rob Newton.

Check out the issue here and make sure you submit your work to us!

Son Emirali
Plog Magazine
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