DEGREES UNEDITED

Sparking self initiated debate within the Degrees unedited blogs the blogger profiles are your port of call for in depth and individuating conversations on art practices surviving and thriving during studentship

Submit yourself for profile, email: richard.taylor@a-n.co.uk

John Harris

The sculptural quality of a one-liner, text appropriation and working towards his degree show piece. We catch up with. Read on »

I've always been aware that sculpture is a three-dimensional entity, which forces the viewer to spend time, walk around, observe and make judgement. So when considering the classic term of sculpture in a structural sense, I do not think it can avoid being a one-liner: but I always get mixed up in defining what this term 'sculpture' is, I think more in objects, arrangements or even in props. Read and comment on John's blog »

Antonia Dewhurst

Antonia Dewhurst talks to Degrees unedited Online editor Richard Taylor during her final year at Coleg Menai, Bangor, North Wales. Read on »

"I make work that feels right. In retrospect I do justify certain decisions, but usually at the time I did it because it felt like the right thing to do. An example is the video of a shelter building against the clock in the studio: I can see now that it is an encapsulation of the Ty Unnos idea of constructing a house overnight, but that wasn't in my mind consciously when I made the video..." Read and comment on Antonia's blog »

Janet Hollins

There's a fine line between art making for its conceptual purpose and for its commercial value. Janet Hollin's MA seems to offer opportunities to pursue both, but how does her blog tell the story? Richard Taylor investigates. Read on »

To compliment my work in stone I use ceramics to experiment more freely with form: I hope to continually explore and investigate alternative mediums to employ new forms of artistic expression and experience." Read and comment on Janet's blog »

Emma Phillips

We talk to to the artist about her teleidoscopic focus on human characteristics and the notion of a blog as a tool to translate. Read on »

With a particular dive in to the notion of human choice Emma's work questions influence, its role in shaping character, and whether genetics really does fill in all the details. Read and comment on Emma's blog »

Gonny van Hulst

At the dawn of her third year at University for the Creative Arts glass artist Gonny van Hulst tells us about responding to the city of London and approaching craft as a conceptual art form. Read on »

"Working with glass is a means of dealing with a turbulent past. I've always been drawn to the random, chaotic, absurd and unfixed nature of urban life and the diversity it presents, especially for those who exist on the edge of society..." Read and comment on Gonny's blog »

Ryan Hughes

Graphic design supplied an impetus, as skateboarding provided public space for experimentation. Ryan Hughes continues the transformation with durable objects and textual intervention. Read on »

In 2008 Ryan started his BA in Fine Art at BIAD. His practice focuses on the notion of 'play', where skateboarding, graphic design and text are used as methods to reach a larger audience. Now he seeks to transform public spaces, using interactive objects and sign works, rendering them as more enjoyable places with additional models for experience. Read and comment on Ryan's blog »

Marion Piper

From carpet design to a downsized practice exploring the boundaries of paint as a versitile medium for creative truth. Read on »

"The subject of my work is place filled with experience, abstract space and colour sensation. During the first level of my course I worked in collage overloaded in abstract imagery. Then, in one project we produced the work of someone with a different identity..." Read and comment on Marion's blog »

Craig Hudson

On the skills to learn, the ideas to express and how the human sculptural form embodies the materiality for both. Read on »

The human form is not always telling of its conceptual context yet Hudson's sculptures and his forthright explanation of their histories and personalities go beyond three-dimensional form. But how to tackle this head on, how to add or take away elements to or from works that rely on material process to 'stand alone' as objects in their own right? Read and comment on Craig's blog »

James Clarkson

The mid point and coalescence between artistic display and minimalist textual reflection. Read on »

The platform provided with blogging becomes something of a new field of relational display for James' work. From photographs illuminating structural domestic displays through to textual arrangements transferred to the screen, new moves are being made in the space between idea and reflection. During his bursary with S1 Artspace James tells us more. Read and comment on James' blog »

David Riley

Applyinhs a microprocessor past to a visual future and engineering the final result within the experimental process known as art making. Read on »

Art process is something of an engineered course of action, fused by language inputted to something made, through carefully balanced models of communication. David Riley, the artist, arises from over thirty years of specialist experience and self-taught knowledge, the veracity of which invents an embedded and systematic creative practice. Read and comment on David's blog »

Kim Walker

This Scottish born artist finds herself at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, diversifying a sound art practice between the US and her homeland. Read on »

"Consider audio from two pieces competing with one another and one becoming the dominant sound within a space." (Kim Walker, December 2009)
In this case sound is mirrored by architectural surroundings, reflecting dichotomies between one city and the next: but can two sides to one idea coalesce to make one practice? Read on and find out how Kim develops her practice in relation to 'alien' surroundings... Read and comment on Kim's blog »

Nathalie Bouleau Chabot

The artist on utilising the 'blogosphere' as a medium, with which to create avenues and ideas: sustaining a practice for graduation and beyond. Read on »

Nathalie permeates her practice with meditative ease. Here she discusses the duality in time spent mark making and reflections made or transformed through the 'medium' of the blogosphere. By retaining an inward and tactile quality to her practice, sustained by a concentrated length, her work looks towards a virtual and altered future. Read and comment on Nathalie's blog »

Thomas Darby

The artist discusses his 'objective structure' and how it moulds paradox and uncertainty in the pile up to degree show completion. Read on »

Thomas Darby collages with elements of paradox, evaluates his working structure within the technological sphere and emulsifies his artwork towards something resolute - but that is not the degree show 'result' - rather more the past, present and future all rolled in to one. There's something more metaphysical with how he approaches his work: I take this opportunity of conversation as a point of enquiry... read on!! Read and comment on Thomas' blog »

Bernice Wilson

Writing styles, working environments and the dual character of the blog as a silent yet active listener. Read on »

The toils and tribulations of balancing both sides of the academic scales: Bernice Wilson discusses how she coincides visual practice and with written dissertation. In negotiating notions of 'self' by taking on different personae, she realises the potential of working space: whether virtual, private or shared. Read and comment on Bernice's blog »

Christine Gray

Developing conversations, in which to forage and plan the next move. Read on »

At the beginning of her MA, Christine toils with working patterns through conversations and within linguistic forms, finding her place beyond undergraduate study to present a new visual language. By way of corresponding to how artists interact with one another, she also explores how they relate to the 'outside-world': inevitably this contorts the artist's own personae.

Victoria Coyle

Cutting & pasting practice from research and modelling a proposal statement. Read on »

Victoria discusses the balance between dissertation proposals, negotiations with subject and dealing with pre-graduation expectation: finding that using her previous experience in professionalism gives her new avenues in working as an artist today. Read and comment on Victoria's blog »

Karen Howse

The artist and her onsite-responsive practice and negotiating the 'final-piece'. Read on »

Karen, a final year student of a two-year part-time MA at University College Falmouth: residing in Launceston, artist and mother of two spends her time in the locale of The Woods: finding what is to be found and then deliberating what she can do. How does this relate to a research based practice? Read and comment on Karen's blog »

Carolyn Shepherd

Introducing Carolyn as she embarks on the final year of her degree at Wirral Metropolitan. Read on »

Heavily research based, her site-specific practice replaces that of the written dissertation. So as she winds her way towards a 'with honours', are there similarities between her investigative practice and the research that that otherwise makes up a word-count? Read and comment on Carolyn's blog »

First published: a-n.co.uk March 2011