- Venue
- Trinity Gallery
- Location
- South East England
A review of student work might not differ from any review of any work. Powers of imagination, execution, the capacity for surprise, the place of the work in relation to other art, all are subject to comment. But what is imaginative, exciting, enjoyable and so on in the work of a ‘student’, considering that, in the main a ‘student’ as such is to degrees unformed, incomplete, in pursuit of experiences and insights that are formative of the becoming artist and his or her engagements with the world, exhibits an involuntary rawness that with the lessons of experience can later be intentional. There is no experience beyond the transformative powers of the artist, and no insight that is without potential for artistic work.
The contributors to this exhibition are engaged in a broad world of the visual, narrative, technique, serendipity, self, through a wide range of media – photography, painting, fashion design, experimental glasswork, graphics, drawing, printing, sculptural forms and combinations which push at boundaries, busily questioning and responding through nerve endings and minds. Materials range from polystyrene foam to petri dishes to calico to bones. Themes from love to war, social class to recycling, gender fluidity, the boundaries between painting and sculpture, decay and growth, wit and sadness, attest to considerable breadth and depth of imaginative play.
Workbook pages swell with the recording of experience, with the searching of experiment, collage, annotation, development of theme and technique. There is a strong sense of individuals searching for experience and simultaneously finding themselves; what am I to make of this, who am I, what will I be? Art and the artists are works in progress. References to exemplar artists abound, technical and conceptual quotations echo in final pieces.
The work here demonstrates admirable qualities of energy, commitment, imagination, liveliness, hand in hand with the tentative, unsure, speculative, all revealed through the touch of a brush, the tension in a stitch, the stroke of a shutter, the narrative of illness, the uncertainty of seeing, which accompany the quiet pleasures of doing.
Next year will see the students dispersed around the country – Brighton, Norwich, Manchester, Nottingham, London, as well as progression to local Kent – based courses.
Michael Bailey, Liam Boggis, Hannah Broom, Alison cole, Georgina Collins, Nick Corden, Shaun Croucher, Stephen Curtis, Sam Dauncey, Emma Garraway, Kim Goff, Jack Griffin, Emily Harris, Evie Hawes, Owen Herbert, Christina Kellett, Louise Kift, Abigail Lee, Natasha Lowther, Nick Massey, Christie Monahan, Matt Murphy, Siontia Myrie MullingsCameron Rayner, Briony Piper, Ellie Pitt, Lizzie Pitt, Jodie Playfoot, Alice Skellern, Molly Styles, Rachel Torry, Tyler Townwer, Tom Warner, Felix Wolfe, are the students.
David Minton
