Class of 2019: Jacob Hoffman

BA (Hons) Fine Art, Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen

“Since my first year I have developed a much clearer understanding of my interests and the sort of work I want to make. Looking back on the last three and a half years of the course I can see my development as a creative. There has, however, been certain aspects or themes that have continued to feed into my work, such as an engagement with historical and allegorical imagery and an exploration of my own personal experiences.

For the degree show, I’m planning to create an immersive installation. I work with a variety of media and approaches, most often with digital photography, video and Photoshop collage, and I would like to collate all of these ideas together in one space. The work I’m currently doing has links to performativity and an expression of identity, so I would like the show to reflect this and incorporate elements that allow my audience to hopefully be involved too.

Primarily, I want to be able to consolidate all of the ideas I have been researching and developing and bring them all together. I also want to be able to do this on a bigger scale to the previous work I’ve made on the course. I see the show as being an important opportunity to expose my practice to a wider audience than just my tutors and my peers.

I think the show will be an important testing ground. I am interested to see how my work will be received, and whether people will feel inclined to engage with it. I hope that the process of putting it together will be a valuable learning curve and will allow me to understand how I can further develop as an artist and creative. And also, what my potential next steps will be.

My immediate plans after graduation are to take some time out and figure out a more long-term plan. Looking beyond that, I’m interested in the idea of keeping my hand in with creative pursuits in lots of different ways and having a multi-disciplinary practice in that sense. One of my main interests is in magazine publishing so I think at some stage I will look into work experience or an internship related to this field. At the moment though, I want to keep my options open.”

Degree show: 14-22 June. www.jacobmhoffman.wixsite.com/jhoffmanImages:
1. Jacob Hoffman, 2018.
2. Jacob Hoffman, Judith, 2018.

Interview by Jack Hutchinson