The City & Guilds MA degree show takes place from 10-14 September 2014. We catch up with two part-time students on the course, for a unique perspective on post-graduate study grounded by other career paths, attitudes and experience.
Lorraine Fossi notified us via Twitter about the City & Guilds show. She trained as an architect at Beaux Arts in Paris in the 80s before moving to London with her family. She is about to begin her second year of part-time study on the City & Guilds course and will continue to strengthen a painting practice, which focuses on landscape and environment on a project to project basis.
“When I left the Beaux Arts I was working with small groups of architects, responding to competitions with sharp deadlines. It was about drawing and sketch models, sharing big ideas with little money. I arrived in London with my family in 2000 and computers had already invaded architectural practice. My English was poor and I somehow knew I would not get the same freedom and reward I had enjoyed with architecture back in France. Architecture never really left me and never will. This permanence of my grounding training as an architect is a matter I wish to research during my second year.”
Already exhibiting her paintings in London upon entering the MA programme at City & Guilds, Fossi approached the course with the fear of her art practice becoming unrewarding: “I entered the MA at City & Guilds because I knew I could make better work as a painter. I was confident as a trained architect but as an untrained artist I was defensive and afraid. So far it has been an amazing experience… amazing but not easy!”.
Fossi kindly put us in touch with Luke M. Walker who has also studied the MA part-time, is set to graduate this year and is exhibiting in the MA show.
“I studied the MA part-time as I also work for myself as an Interior and Spatial designer, and teach at Chelsea College of Art.” explains Walker, “The work I have produced for the MA show is invested in the material exploration of paint on canvas. This exploration is informed by an archive of photographic material collected on a circular walk around an area of London, which I have repeated (almost) weekly since last autumn. During this time I have seen many things change in this particular environment. Demolished buildings replaced by new constructions for example, which relate to negative and positive space on canvas.”
Walker embarked upon the MA course to gain a new set of tools, technical and theoretical, to apply to his practice: “It started off as a hobby, I then got a studio and started to show my work – but it got to the point where I could no longer articulate what I wanted to.”
Walker will exhibit his body of work alongside seventeen other graduates in the MA show. For more information see the City & Guilds website – http://www.mashow2014.com
For more information on Lorraine Fossi’s work see – www.lorrainefossi.netFor more information on Luke M Walker’s work see – http://lukescape.com
