- Venue
- University for the Creative Arts at Farnham
- Location
- South East England
On the final day of the show, when it was quiet, I allowed myself a proper look around.
The bright and airy Hockey Gallery serves as the showcase arena displaying selected work from the artists collections whilst the rest are to be seen around campus.
A cracking painting by Deme Georghiou ‘In every home a heartache’, was for me, the show highlight. A smiling, starey doubled over skeleton rendered in fresh pastel shades made me think all our bones should look like this. The bundle of bones winces ‘ta da!’ in a broken back back-flip, for our entertainment. Is it pain or performance? (A note to self; when hands or feet prove difficult, slide them out of the frame.)
Alisha Duncanson’s‘Is this me 1 -36’, is a floor to ceiling 4×9 grid display of torn advertisment pages from magazines, the women blocked out in sillouette with black marker. That’s time consuming. I should know because I’ve done it. Cast your mind back to when you were ten and colouring in, it was mindless but meditative. Black holes render the women now invisible and easy to ignore, we pay all our attention to the surrounding image. ‘Good’ art gently shifts accepted norms slightly out of context. Then we squeeze out a thought.
Richard Goold’s superb collection of paintings appear to render popular images as if in neon light. He’s cranked up the electricity to distort images into protracted graphic simplification, but as is true with neon, best to keep your distance, too close and your retinas will burn.
Benjamin Chramin’s installation is housed within the sculpture studio’s box room – an array of cool monsters, that look like 1950’s B-movie film props, yet strangely collectible and homely. I could only imagine these as boy monsters.
Lucy Kinsella’s quiet as- a- mouse oil painting ‘Matchstick’on scrappy newsprint, requests your time please, just to stand and soak it up amongst all the noise and grand gestures. Did she paint it with a matchstick? It’s shakey up close, and becomes streaks of rough paint. This is definitely a painting of a matchstick.
Is Holly Walker a heavy smoker? I’d like to think for her own health she isn’t. Did she really pick up all those fag butts off the floor when no-one was looking? A 100 piece post it sized drawings of cigarette butts are nailed to the wall, documenting 9 days of smoking. I spotted Marlboro, Lucky Strike and Silk Cut. I desperately want them to smell.
Lorna Mavradas‘ Act 1/ Act 2’ is a curtained off empty box room, inside with a chair complete with bum indents. Walk round the other side to find a mirror opposite room this time with a TV inside – realisation you were filmed just then, but thank goodness not recorded, (the face I pulled). So you get to watch others on the monitor – being confused, doing nothing?
Degree shows will trick you into believing they are a gallery show. Remind yourself that they are a finalised collection of individuals work that has been marked to be graded to culminate in a degree. The collection is on another plane altogether,inherently new, fresh, (a little naive and predictable sometimes, true) but free from gallery and commercial shackles.
Purposefully, all information placards were minimalised to just names, titles of work and media. We have been left to contextualise the work all on our own, our thoughts flapping wildly in the wind. What is it – what are you’re trying to tell us, Lassie? Should we have to addresse the gulf of disparity between what the artists want to convey and what we as an audience actually experience? Does it matter?
Perhaps this is where the value of a show catalogue comes into play (whatever form it takes, paper or digital) – a permanant place where we can read, digest and revisit work and contact artists because we want to buy their work.
