- Venue
- Wolverhampton School of Art
- Location
- West Midlands
The Wolverhampton School of Art is a vibrant, working art studio where the students practice alongside the staff, in a sort of West Midland’s Bauhaus. The key ethos is exploration. An iconic, concrete blot on the cityscape (a blot I have grown very fond of over the last ten months) the art building may look grey on the outside but inside it is an animated, colourful hive of creativity. It is a building that outsiders either love or hate, but insiders only love. The Wolverhampton School of Art would not look out of place in East Berlin circa 1965. But is it ugly? Not to the bees: the students and staff, past and present.
For two weeks every year, this art-student hive is transformed into an art gallery, when the graduating students get the chance to show off the fruits of their labour.
The degree show’s Private View was last week, the culmination of many stressful but creative weeks. This is the night when every year students are allowed to show off like peacocks: ‘Look what I have been thinking about!’ and ‘Look what I can do!’. My memory of the night is now a blur of people and colour amidst a buzz of excitement.
The phrase that best describes this year’s exhibition came from one of the graduating students in a recent interview: ‘I wanted to colour outside the lines’. To me, there was a lot of colouring outside the lines. Even though I have worked alongside these students for ten months and know them well, I was struck by the diversity in their final pieces, and by how far the boundaries of fine art were being pushed. One of the most difficult aspects of being an artist is knowing how far to stretch acknowledged concepts of art without losing credibility and I think that credibility here has not only been maintained, it has been built upon.
The show presents an interesting balance between traditional and contemporary takes on that oft-asked question: is it art? It includes works of installation and performance, responses to the environment and what it means to be human, and thoughtful examinations on the notions of drawing, sculpture and painting. I felt a sense of looking back as well as looking forward in all the works, alongside looking at the outside world or the inner one.
Melissa Brooke’s constructed natural heterotopia, positioned in the aptly-named ‘greenhouse’, provides a living, breathing pocket of nature which questions the power the pull nature can have on our lives. Melissa had successfully moved her allotment on the outskirts of the city onto the 7th floor of an art school. By its existence in the gallery setting it raises that question: is this art? If it provokes thought, changes behaviour and causes an emotional reaction then the answer surely is yes. Melissa invites viewers to continue their engagement with her work through taking a little pant home to nurture to its full growth. One element of art is having that continuing relationship after the event whether it be through something tangible or otherwise.
Just around the corner the viewer can enter a different kind of heterotopia, created by Debra Arrow. Her piece, ‘Other Land’, is a real labour of love, and a truly magical fantasy land which needs to be experienced rather than described here as words do not do the piece justice. She has transformed a darkened room into what feels like the inside of someone’s soul. It plays with the notion of representation and illusion and strongly defies anyone to doubt that it is art. It lies in a curious place between reality and imagination. It is hard to classify, it is a category of its own.
‘Painting’ is not just a noun, it is a verb, and the relationship between the act of painting to create, reflect and represent as a verb and the aesthetic of the painting as a noun is examined throughout the show, most notably in the work of Matthew Walsh whose large imposing stretched canvases loom heavy with paint and emotion on one of the exhibition walls. They are still, yet they seem almost organic and alive, bursting to escape. Traditionally, we are more likely to think that art is found in the noun of the painting, but art as process and performance in the verb should be afforded just as much importance.
Leah Porter’s work, which constitutes miniature painted animal sculptures, is hard to place: is it painting? Is it sculpture? Is it an installation? It would be easy to miss her work yet once the viewer spots one of her pieces, it gives them a jolt of the uncanny: familiar yet not quite right. She doesn’t have an exhibition space as such, unlike the other students. She has placed her animal sculptures in various locations around the exhibition, each one in their own way responding to the artwork it sits, hangs or lies next to. The work is quirky and original and difficult to pigeon hole into a category. What is it? What is the message? Does it matter? It incites a response and thought and that is enough. By rebelling against the need to have a ‘space’ in the exhibition, Leah Porter is also painting outside the conventional lines of art.
I felt inspired and energised walking around and I can’t wait for next year to begin so I can work towards my final show. I hope that over the next few days many people go to see the work. The exhibition runs until the 23rd June. A lot of hard work and thought has gone into the pieces on display, everyone who is graduating deserves attention. I wish them well in their future careers and I will miss them next year. I think the right title was chosen for the show, for impact has most definitely been made.
