York St John University

Floors are painted, works installed tomorrow. It’s crunchtime! … All the more reason why you need your 5-A-Day!

Get your fill of today’s goodies, literally something for everyone… Plus, we’re all really friendly (as if you needed more reason to get interested).

Jonathan Haycocks

Alternate

What is real? What is unreal? And what lies on the edge of perception in between the two? All I know is the life I have dreamed and the life I have lived. I play with those experiences in an attempt to create work that questions reality or at least offers alternatives in the form of the uncanny.

Leah Sumner

How Far Have We Really Come?

Crimes against women happen on a daily basis around us, whether physical abuse or honour killings or pornographic images in media and magazines ‘ready for the male gaze’. I appropriate these media to problematising these issues with the hope to raise awareness of the unacceptable treatment of women across the world in terms of religion, culture and society.

Liam Allinson

Yorkshire Exploitation

My work centres on illustration and manipulated colour photography, I use these mediums to explore my interest in cult pop culture and regional identity. Yorkshire Exploitation is a tongue in cheek celebration of Yorkshire culture in a fake guise of Pulp fiction novel covers, comic strip art, and B-movie film posters.

Lincoln Lightfoot

Towards the Metaphysical

I want to observe the ordinary in order to uncover new meanings; initiating events and happenings that attempt to go beyond the commonplace and re-interpret it. Metaphors for both the temporal and spiritual abound in the ambiguous, faceless and shady figures of civil servants. In these times of austerity and money worries, we can pin our hopes and fears on them. Temporal are the global markets, and spiritual is our need to work.

Luc Jones

Brutal Obsession

My practice explores the structures, aesthetics, and boundaries of post-minimalist sculpture. I make drawings as three-dimensional structures, sculptures that have a dialogue with their surroundings in the gallery space. I attempt to understand my personal obsessions through working with the same simple form, the cube, over and over again as the literal and figurative ‘building block’ of minimalist sculpture.

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Despite the negative effects of gloss paint fumes (nasty stuff!) we’re still here to make sure you’re all good and well and getting your daily dose.

Here’s your next 5-a-day:

Hannah Milburn

1 Of

My work sets out to question the perceptions associated with everyday belongings as I believe that how we understand ourselves lies within the objects we choose to own. I treat everyday objects as pieces in a museum collection. Despite their similar characteristics each object is unique. This is done to highlight how our use of language and representation can lead to us to over-categorise objects and strip them of their individuality.

Helen Marie Axton

Truth Is Just A Rule That You Can Bend

Seconds ticking. Moments passing. People fading into memories as the present turns into the past. My art practice explores the notion of loss, control and the passage of time through the manipulation and recreation of nature in its many forms. Creating hyperrealistic sculptures my artwork captures loss of life and time immortalizing it into a permanent form. ‘Truth Is Just A Rule That You Can Bend’ entices the viewer to immerse into a unsettling but familiar world that embodies the essence of life, permanence and the overwhelming sense of grief.

Holly Elsdon

Presence Without Acceptance

My work concerns the acceptance of the self. We instinctively recognize the parameters of the ‘self’, but never question this conditioned response. This classification separates everything to an infinite degree until we are left only with ourselves as ‘non-foreign’. My work highlights these decisions and questions them as if they were made consciously.

Comprising of multiple wooden boards, drawings and clay statuettes, the image of the self is obsessively repeated, signifying the ingrained nature which makes these decisions unconscious.

Jessica Davies

Forms of Narrative

My work is centered on the dynamics of communication and how humans process memories. Forms of Narrative is a short film installation piece that invites the audience to imprint their own memories upon the film. The film itself then acts as a medium, providing a visible and physical form that is constant and neutral, whilst also adopting new meanings that are individual to each person who views it.

Joanne Hill

Mamma

Human forms and skulls to do with themes of life and death are the main subject of my current work. I explore body as both a living form and as a skull or skeleton. I use mixed media combining materials such as tissue paper and acrylic paint.

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GET YOUR 5-A-DAY … Part Deux!

Hello all! Here to provide your next installment of your 5-a-day of artists!

Iit’s been a hectic day here at York St John, the degree show build is well underway now (at both venues!) and the stress is definitely getting to us now. To say that we feel the pressure would be a criminal understatement. But, regardless of how much we’re feeling torn in all directions possible and pressed for time, we can still manage to give you your next peek at the artists to come! Feast your eyes on these tasty morsels.

Catherine Wood

The Secret Art League

The Secret Art League is a developing comic book series initially created around final year York St John University Fine Art students. It is an invitation to create an alter ego and imagine how life would be if one had some kind of superpower. Escapism vs. control and reality vs. imagination is the centre of the Secret Art League’s interests.

Charlotte Salt

You Decide To Stay A While

My sculptural installations combine found objects with works I make in the studio. In these staged arrangements I create a space between ‘fact and fiction’, where everyday objects lose their original functionality and find themselves embedded in new stories, new histories, new discourses; evoking memories and exploring the transient nature of life concurrent with the longevity of cultural memory.

Cherisse Brown

Narnia

Textiles have a phenomenal ability to adapt to various shapes and sizes when drawn together with thread. When combined with vibrant colors and children’s fairytales this enables me to draw links to the illogical worlds created by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland and the magic, which lies beyond the wardrobe in the stories of C.S. Lewis. Embracing these peculiar ideas I explore the world of child’s play and imagination through the portal of the wardrobe. So what will you find beyond the door?

Eleanor Banks

Falling Is Flying

My work is autobiographical and focuses on personal memory through exploring the site of an event which shaped and changed my life. I use video and performance to acknowledge, understand, and come to terms with trauma and the loss of another.

Emily Whistlecroft

Fiction Masquerading As Truth

My work explores and responds to how beauty is presented through mass media. I work with images in magazines, billboards and television which create desire for the ‘perfect body’ to investigate what impact these images have on our imagination. The piece contains natural materials cut to shape, painted yet baring little resemblance to their original state. It also includes manmade elements reflecting the harsh, brittle and artificial nature of beauty.

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