Fine Art Pheromones 2 – continued musings on this year’s art degree shows in London.

Royal College of Art, continued…

Other highlights of this year’s RCA show included Peter Walsh’s insane video piece Demo, a firm favourite with many, which documented his personal tour of protest sites and the media technology used to broadcast from them. Talking directly to camera is always going to result in confessional intimacy, but doing it with such gushing reverence to the things he describes is both comical and endearing. In addition, of course, there are serious issues raised by the open analysis of the machinations of the media, especially in the act of reporting on political action. Walsh’s adolescent excitement about the various models of camera and sound equipment deftly – and genuinely – balanced those out, cleverly using their weight as an anchor for his madcap monologues.

http://peterwalsh.info/videos.html

Nicholas Pankhurst

Another artist who displayed an unabashed adulation of his materials was Nicholas Pankhurst. His thick, layered paintings seem to display a deep emotional engagement with the materiality of paint and the painted gesture. Yes, they are clogged, heavy and slightly awkward- but they are snapshots of a love affair with paint which will probably only grow in its complexity and fervour.

http://www.rca.ac.uk/show.aspx?contentid=512941&dept=Painting&Level1=511825&Level2=512913&Level3=512941

Too many other interesting works were on display this year to list individually, including a great deal of confident, self-aware and smartly executed works across the ‘disciplines‘. From sculpture, Fiona Shaw’s retro art Sci-Fi cave, A Thousand Centuries ( http://www.fiona-shaw.org.uk/work.html ) and Carwyn Evans’ serene row of cast wall-based sculptures were personal highlights, as was Sam Williams’ highly amusing video work. His piece in recent show KnowHow at Campbell works cemented my appreciation of his wry, low-fi commentary on modern life and its absurdities.

http://www.carwynevans.com/

http://www.samuel-williams.co.uk/

http://www.campbellworks.org/content/knowhow

The incorporation of the Testbed space into the degree show presentation was a smart move; hopefully next year it will be less of a ‘printmaking and photography’ area, and more of a mixed show like the rest of the Battersea site.

Goldsmiths BA
One memorable piece from this year’s Fine Art BA show was a metal and corduroy structure, suspended from the ceiling. I can’t tell you who it was by, and Google was (astoundingly) unable to help, so a description will have to suffice. Part pavilion, part oversized 70’s lampshade, the piece alluded to the encounters which might take place underneath its clothy canopy, providing a space of potential communication. It seemed to imply a social functionality, in that suggestive, provisional way that much current work does, but the use of a warm and slightly uncool material such as corduroy neatly offset this.

Abigail Jones

In the same room, a series of drawings by Abigail Jones displayed in rows on the wall provided a pleasing contrast with the sculptural and time-based works on show. A scrappy, feverish intensity and richly suggestive narratives characterised these works, which were cobbled together from everyday incidents, snippets of media reportage and current affairs material, including new items, commentary and pastiche. These elements were drawn together with spontaneous and loose collage, painting and scrawled notes. This makeshift, DIY social commentary, which in places felt slightly embarrassing, seemed like a serious ongoing attempt to take control of the constant onslaught of mediated and received information and re-imagine it using very basic, handmade methods. A valiant attempt at an extremely problematic task.

http://atasteforperfection.blogspot.com/

Royal Academy Schools
It is not the first time, and surely will not be the last, that someone has commented on the ‘slickness’ of the Royal Academy Schools show. Even the ‘dirty’ work here looked clean, for example Laurence Chalk’s installation in the end room. Three fairly mundane objects, a pair of sunglasses, some tangled fishing line and an empty milk carton, were suspended in artfully distressed Perspex vitrines atop banged up plinths; the whole scene framed by a kind of stage-set futuristic apocalyptic silver flooring. A series of cast leather jackets on the wall didn’t really add anything to the piece for me, but the wilful scrappiness made the work stand out from the crowd at the RA.

http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/raschools/archive/#photos=gallery_%252Fgallery.html%253FLgalleryHandleId%253D509

Another piece which stood out for me was Amy McDonough’s presentation of bizarre short films. Refreshingly     idiosyncratic, they combined a demented pathos with dreamlike narratives, tapping in to a half-remembered cultural past and blurring it with a cleverly constructed sense of authenticity.

http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/raschools/amy-mcdonough,520,GAS.html#photos=gallery_%252Fgallery.html%253FLgalleryHandleId%253D520

Slade BA
Some years gel together more than others, and I suspect that this was a year that worked well together. Similar concerns were visible throughout the show, but one felt that they had been approached from a decent scope of viewpoints, rather than a cul-de-sac of self-referentiality. Large sculptural installations and small, careful drawings, for example, seemed to be de rigueur. The obligatory art clichés were present and correct, (welded steel frames, potted plants, blobby formless lumps of clay, crystals..) but in some cases has been deployed effectively as well as knowingly. One mixed-media installation (unfortunately I didn’t note the artist’s details), contained a good example of this. The piece included a large flat screen monitor in a horizontal orientation, with a dirty great splat of clay dumped on its screen. The cracked screen showed a sort of dysfunctional jerky LCD nightmare of seemingly random pattern and colour, which was in itself a rather beautiful subversion of our dominant culture’s obsession with high-end media technology.
Finally, Heidi Smith‘s work was my personal favourite. Her pimped-up makeshift glamour wagon was amazingly flamboyant and over the top; the accompanying photographic works, an interesting body of work in their won right, might perhaps have been better shown separately.

http://heidismith.co.uk/art-work/

Goldsmiths MA
Throngs of shiny-faced, self-aware and talented young people, most of whom are not only to cool for school, but probably too clever as well – all rammed into the exhibitions spaces at Goldsmith MFA show private view, beer in one hand, vintage leather in the other. The rooms were hot; corridors were navigated using the classic PV shuffle and a tight-lipped smile of acknowledgement to your fellow art viewer as you squeeze past them, as close as you would on the tube at rush hour. Under such conditions, it is almost impossible to get a favourable impression of all the work on show. A sound strategy might be deploying a human shield or two, positioning yourself between them and spending a maximum of a few minutes on each work.
Despite these circumstances, and thanks to a friend with a nose for what might interest and/or distress me, I managed to get round the whole show and to develop a serious art crush on one artist’s work. The artist in question is Lisa Selby:
http://www.lisaselby.com/
Her work consisted of some concise and knowing mediations on the age-old format of ‘objects on plinths in white space’. They seemed to function as an open eulogy to sculptural processes and the sensuality of materials, evident in the gorgeous ridges on the clay animals, residues of the casting process. In addition, the work neatly cross referenced mass-produced objects and materials, such as toys and upholstery foam, with the human body and a more traditional sculptural language. Both Karla black and Samantha Donnelly spring to mind.

IN CONCLUSION

Having had more time to digest the sights and sounds of this year’s crop, and to catch the Goldsmiths MFA show, I feel I have a fairly comprehensive overview of the emerging London art scene.
I say emerging, but what does this really mean?  J.J. Charlesworth has written an incisive and irreverent essay for the ICA, which deconstructs our accepted idea of the ‘emerging artist’.

http://www.ica.org.uk/18217/Essays/Not-about-institutions-but-why-we-are-so-unsure-of-them-by-JJ-Charlesworth.html

Two major points from this text are better summarised in his own words:

“…the paradoxical aspect of such formulations of art as ‘emerging’ is that responsibility for art emerging is assigned to itself, or to any other agency other than the institution which in fact enables its emergence… Emerging art only emerges if powerful institutions allow it to”

He goes on to state:

“…the case should be made for an institution which is argumentative, that openly discusses the choices it makes and the art it chooses to represent.’

He was, of course, referring to the ICA itself and to the gallery system in general, but shouldn’t we apply the same level of critique when discussing our art schools? How can the same criteria apply to the evaluation of the work from different institutions, if we fail to acknowledge the differing circumstances under which those works were produced? In acknowledging those circumstances, we may well expose information and interests, which it might be more convenient to quietly ignore. But in doing so without judgement or bias, as far as this is possible, we may be able to get closer to a form of critique which transcends, or at least encompasses, institutional specificities such as location, reputation, branding and use of language.
In light of the current prevalence of institutional critique in art theory and practice, it seems appropriate to call for more awareness of such issues in the annual deluge of criticism and commentary surrounding art degree shows.

END