- Venue
- Southampton Solent University
- Location
- South East England
Siting the degree show in a deserted shopping mall placed it in the now – the use of ‘empty spaces’, particularly retail units, places the work in a political arena, commenting on the climate in which these new art makers need to find a way in which to flourish. It presents challenges of curation and viewing – a multiple site show can be difficult to negotiate. This was overcome at the private view – the inevitable crowds of enthusiastic well wishers acting as the much needed signage that was sadly lacking at a subsequent visit.
As a whole, the show felt diverse, yet coherent; the spread of quality reflecting an encouraging degree of engagement within the student body. My own practice is centred around the moving image, so work in this medium drew my most focussed attention.
Sarah Cornforth’s blacked out space invited me to lose my body and become a slowly revealed or disappeared ‘spindle’ subject of her exquisite film of that name. The bandages moving from one turning body to another question the way we cover our own psychological and physical wounds, and how and to whom we reveal them …
The single screen projection of Karen Jenkins’ ‘Escape’ foregrounded our bodiliness – simultaneously consolidating our existence, with the sound and vision of breath, and our transience, as the sheet of ice onto which the breath falls melts away in front of our eyes.
Walking into Lydia West’s ‘A Punched Judy’ with grass underfoot, a rural smell, indistinct soundtrack and traditional theatrical motifs, I was immersed in a space begging for deep contemplation. As the female film subject attempted to maintain a smile through relentless control and attack, we wonder about the agent of her subjugation and the motivation for her brave face. I enjoyed this return to frank feminism and psychoanalytical query working in parallel, evoking Hannah Wilke’s confrontational stance.
Meticulous attention to form, consistent through presentation and content, made Ieva Sulca’s four screen projection the stand out work for me. Powerful rhythms pervaded the space: the four soundtracks evolved, as they were not synchronized, and seamlessly incorporated the white noise of the projectors; the visual rhythm of the identically constructed, placed and spaced units holding the equipment reiterated the perfect spacing of the projections themselves. This complimented and supported the simple but compelling videos from the everyday that constituted the content of the piece: the costa coffee cup rolling endlessly on the top step of a down escalator; the perfectly manicured hands playing diverging chromatic scales on a keyboard; the cars on the train that pulsed by the open window; and the abstract record of keys in a pocket, whose running wearer imposed her own rhythm on their colour, shape and sound. I spent a long time with this work and it grew more enthralling as time passed.
