The Masters Degree show is currently running at Grays School of Art and features a huge selection of work. Running til the 11th September, the show is a mash up of ideas and styles, from highly detailed paintings to stuff that might have been painted by school kids (that's not a slight, I love Aiden Milligans paintings by the way), ceramics, textiles and photography also play a part and lots of lovely vegetable arrangements.
I managed to get along to the opening night, an evening of free booze and lots of busy booths, admittedly not the best context for seeing the culmination of years of work and research. I'd also invited a friend along who holds a highly critical eye of most artists and listened as he ripped into the majority of the show. Although he made some valid points a lot of the work he dismissed I found quite fresh and exciting. However I still think its impossible to form any kind of judgements about the work when half of it is obscured by patrons and you spend less than a minute looking at what's on display as we did. So I decided to head back for a proper look!
And what I saw was an incredibly diverse and comprehensive set of art works with the freedom to walk around uninterrupted completely changing my view on a lot of the work I'd seen only a few nights before. Small details became more apparent and the freedom to fully explore the show is important, especially if you want to get critical about it. I prefer to focus on the things that I enjoy or the work that draws my attention and often this changes on the second viewing as the ideas behind the work start to reveal themselves. Even being able to appreciate the small details, like the smell of savlon in one space, or the massive endeavour of creating a metal table cloth sort of passed me by first time around. Imagine sitting having to tie each piece of metal together or the hundreds of failed experiments that led to the perfect blob forms that you want to hang on the wall.
I guess whatever the viewer might think of the work, in this age of keyboard critics (I've never been a critic, if I don't like something I just don't put any time into it) its important to see the whole picture and not just the surface value. David Iain Brown, one of my highlights from last years degree show is a great example of this, an artist who's developing his own voice, exploring the materials and tools at his disposal and trying to make something of it, if he likes it that's good but if the viewer enjoys it too, well that's a bonus.
So what's the next steps? I guess some of these students will find other educational opportunities, some will go into desk jobs and others will fly the nest and head South in search of something new but hopefully well have a few stars who will continue to shine bright in the North East. To the artists, dilettantes and masters students of 2018, I wish you well and thanks for a fantastic degree show!
I managed to get along to the opening night, an evening of free booze and lots of busy booths, admittedly not the best context for seeing the culmination of years of work and research. I'd also invited a friend along who holds a highly critical eye of most artists and listened as he ripped into the majority of the show. Although he made some valid points a lot of the work he dismissed I found quite fresh and exciting. However I still think its impossible to form any kind of judgements about the work when half of it is obscured by patrons and you spend less than a minute looking at what's on display as we did. So I decided to head back for a proper look!
And what I saw was an incredibly diverse and comprehensive set of art works with the freedom to walk around uninterrupted completely changing my view on a lot of the work I'd seen only a few nights before. Small details became more apparent and the freedom to fully explore the show is important, especially if you want to get critical about it. I prefer to focus on the things that I enjoy or the work that draws my attention and often this changes on the second viewing as the ideas behind the work start to reveal themselves. Even being able to appreciate the small details, like the smell of savlon in one space, or the massive endeavour of creating a metal table cloth sort of passed me by first time around. Imagine sitting having to tie each piece of metal together or the hundreds of failed experiments that led to the perfect blob forms that you want to hang on the wall.
I guess whatever the viewer might think of the work, in this age of keyboard critics (I've never been a critic, if I don't like something I just don't put any time into it) its important to see the whole picture and not just the surface value. David Iain Brown, one of my highlights from last years degree show is a great example of this, an artist who's developing his own voice, exploring the materials and tools at his disposal and trying to make something of it, if he likes it that's good but if the viewer enjoys it too, well that's a bonus.
So what's the next steps? I guess some of these students will find other educational opportunities, some will go into desk jobs and others will fly the nest and head South in search of something new but hopefully well have a few stars who will continue to shine bright in the North East. To the artists, dilettantes and masters students of 2018, I wish you well and thanks for a fantastic degree show!
