- Venue
- Nottingham Trent University
- Location
- East Midlands
Fine Art Degree Show Review 2009
It was hard for me to decide which piece of work I wanted to focus my review on because unfortunately, I was distinctively unimpressed by the fine art degree show as a whole, this year. Walking through the show, I felt quite uninspired and slightly deflated by my lack of excitement for the work being presented to me as a collection. I was not sure if this was because I had seen the work in progress, so it was not as fresh and exciting as it would have been to someone else, or perhaps I just did not encounter that ‘wow factor’ that I had experienced at the previous years exhibition.
There were elements of the show that I found very clever and original (or certainly something that I had never seen or experienced before) such as the life size, Jesus like, gingerbread man, lying face up and horizontal on the long white tomb styled plinth in the darkened corridor. This was the work of Samuel Read- Jones ‘Ascension’. I had no idea what this work was trying to say to me or what it represented but could not help wonder how it was made and how it kept such detail even though essentially it was just a piece of rolled up doe, or was it?
In addition, the work of Sarah-Jane Macdonald titled ‘room’, was literally sensational. As I stepped through the thick black curtains into the blinding darkness of the abyss that lay ahead of me, I suddenly felt a panicking sensation. I was very quickly made to feel incredibly unsettled. Trying to feel my way through the shrinking corridors, whilst attempting to contour my body around the decreasing maze was one experience of the show that I did not by no means want to try again. This room certainly is not for the nyctophobic or claustrophobic and as I am neither, it certainly is not for the easily panicked.
So navigating myself around the exhibition, I was told to put on a mirrored sandwich board on before I entered the room holding James Huyton’s work entitled ‘Me, Myself and Them’. Curiously, I did as the note had told me to and entered the room wearing my sandwich board. On first encounter I felt some what disorientated and was not quite sure what it was that I was supposed to be experiencing. First, I heard the audio of a couple talking, it appeared to be their first meeting and it was a minute or two until I noticed the projections on the wall. It was longer before I realised that the projections were of me. And it became increasingly frustrating as I tried to view my own reflection, one that I was used to seeing, only to be met with the reflection of my behind? And the more I spun around to try and capture my face on the walls projection, the more frustrated I became when I realised it could only be viewed via the jacket. Intriguing…. and very clever!
So finally, the one that I think I get. The one that I think I like the most. The one that I can look at over and over again. The one that makes me question life and the world around us. The one that I don’t physically experience but mentally blows me away and makes me question so many things, not about the work as such but what it actually speaks to me and me alone. Is the one that I don’t want to explain and the one that I feel you need to experience yourself? So please go to the Fine Art Degree Show 2009 to view Efy Zeniou and Loucia Serghiou’s work and experience the many other wonders of this years show. Because although at first I was not blown away by the work, given thought to it, each piece in its self is something that needs to be viewed by the individual. As it is all so different, just as we, our opinions, thoughts, feelings and experiences are. Don’t be afraid to think differently.
