Art reviews: Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design Degree Show 2025 | The Wonder Store, Lundin Links

This year’s Duncan of Jordanstone Degree Show demonstrates the many different ways in which the next generation of artists are finding their voice, writes Susan Mansfield

Degree Show 2025, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design ★★★★

The Wonder Store, Methil Heritage Museum ★★★★

It must be nearly summer. The sun is shining and degree show season is upon us, beginning in Dundee, where more than 450 students are presenting their work to the world at the Duncan of Jordanstone Degree Show, including more than 90 graduates in Fine Art disciplines.

While the studios are peppered with posters protesting the proposed staff cuts at Dundee University, of which Duncan of Jordanstone is part, (it took me a while to work out that they weren’t part of someone’s degree show), even this doesn’t dampen the general sense of celebration. The arrival of Jeremy Deller, working with students to create Bacchanalian festivities in the city as part of his National Gallery Meet the Gods project, could only add to the party.

Work by Tom Speedy at the 2025 Duncan of Jordanstone Degree Show | Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design

Dundee’s art school has long had a reputation for skill, and this is a highly skilled degree show, including in painting, which is ubiquitous. This cohort of students, who began their courses in the late stages of the pandemic, wasted no time getting into the college’s workshops, from ceramics to printmaking to 3D modelling, and learning skills to apply in their work.

In a show with comparatively little lens-based work, Christopher Adam’s 45-minute film An Guth/The Voice is both a satirical depiction of a small Scottish town and a deep-dive into language, belonging and traditional song. He also paints and makes prints. At least as ambitious is Robin Faye, who has made a partially devised 30-minute opera based on Kafka’s Metamorphosis, making the costumes and sets, recruiting the singers from Dundee University’s Opera Society and capturing the whole thing on film.

Women now outnumber men significantly in art schools, and there is a strong strand in this degree show which addresses issues of gender equality, beginning with the history of art. Eilidh Pirie’s outstanding pastel drawings on fabric reclaim the trope of the reclining woman, affirming that her “room of her own” is a place for contemplation, solitude and fun.

Rachel Herd experiments in her paintings with revealing the nude form and concealing it with draped fabric, while Emma Pirrie chooses to paint the nude figure and the fabric separately, letting each evoke the other. Her subjects are very much themselves, ambivalent about our gaze on them.

Nicky Riding engages with the invisibility of menopausal and midlife women with verve and not a little anger. As well as overturning stereotypes like “crone” and “old bag”, she has made a rather beautiful visual poem using the names of B&Q paint colours. Amy Lorimer paints thoughtful portraits of herself and her mother in a series called “A Woman’s Work is Never Done”, while Clover Christopherson embraces “hydrofeminism” with her cyanotype-on-silk portraits of women in water.

Some students dive deep into ancient myths. Claire Black is inspired by the ancient Hindu texts, the Upanishads; her work makes particularly effective use of the imagery of the horse, and asks questions about ritual in today’s world. Dee Atkinson draws on the myths attached to constellations, and on female figures in ancient Greece, making very accomplished white-on-black works using drawing and stitching.

Others embrace popular culture. Hannah Maguire set out to explore the downside of fame using a fictional pop star called Roxie Burns, but Roxie soon took on a life of her own. The show ranges from publicity photos and record sleeves to tabloid front pages. Jodie Couper is looking at celebrity too, making vividly hyperreal paintings inspired by the stories of pop stars and influencers.

Kayley Mullen is a fine traditional painter. She has painted landscapes en plein air in Spain and Scotland, and studio portraits inspired by mythical figures like Pandora and Persephone. Jenna Donald’s paintings are more informal, quietly illuminating everyday tasks.

Poppy Gannon works with dried leaves, cutting and stitching them with what must be an incredible degree of patience and intricacy. Sometimes she places these tiny, delicate sculptures in her own bespoke ceramic vessels, accompanied by haiku-like phrases and, in one case, the sound of water in the trunk of a eucalyptus (surely a kind of haiku in itself).

Work by Joy Jennings at the 2025 Duncan of Jordanstone Degree Show | Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design

Joy Jennings encourages visitors to play with her multitude of tiny figures, The Formables: little human beings made in a range of materials, heavy and light, textured and smooth. Her work is highly sensory, as is that of Leah Macmillan who has made a range of “touchable” pictures inspired by watching her grandmother lose her sight. The result is a series of three-dimensional landscapes which are interesting, whether one is sight-impaired or not.

There is some accomplished printmaking: Stephanie Livingstone’s etchings of poisonous flowers, which, depending on context are a threat or a source of life-saving medicine; Lisa Speirs Fleming’s linocuts which mix the real and the surreal to tell a story of the strangeness of early motherhood; Yerin Kim’s etchings from Scotland and China, which are a vehicle for her superb draftsmanship; Cameron Tucker, who relishes pattern, and prints prolifically on paper and textiles.

Tom Speedy’s paintings are about drifting and displacement. His figures in landscapes are a kind of symbolism, worked in thick paint, then washed with spirits and materials like sand to create textures. Each canvas is square, measured from the width of his armspan. Finlay Warner has foraged across the buildings sites of Dundee for cast-off materials, and builds sculptures which lean, tilt or hang, not disguising his materials but making us see them in new ways.

Pippa Carter’s immersive three-screen film, Return to the Land, is a kind of contemporary sublime, while a second film, Dream of the Raven, explores her own journey to being at ease in the mountains. Nina Price paints small expressive landscapes of Shetland, where she grew up, experimenting with a bright palette of yellows and reds.

Molly Smart takes over part of the canteen for a clever, ambitious show taking in Freudian psychology, consumerism, fish fingers and death by a ham sandwich. Afton Dick uses a mix of sculpture and 3D modelling to celebrate overlooked creatures, among them the dog tick and the bed bug (arachnophobes should steer clear of this space). Maeve Callister-Wafer’s film Yn Sheenan (The Sound) explores the renaissance in Manx Gaelic, both spoken and sung. It’s possible to give only a taste here of the different ways this newest generation of artists are finding their voice.

Work by Ailsa Magnus at The Wonder Store | Contributed

Meanwhile, in Methil, some local artists have put together an exhibition called The Wonder Store to help raise the profile of the local Heritage Centre. Fife being something of a mecca for artists these days, the line-up includes David Mach and his brother Robert, Kate Downie and Phil Jupitus, as well as others who grew up in the area, including the late Jack Vettriano, and the abstractionist William Gear.

The result is a show which really does live up its name, encompassing a wonderful variety of styles: David Mach’s large photo-collage portrait of Eduardo Paolozzi, and coat hanger sculpture of his father; Robert Mach’s Tunnocks wrapper Buddha (The Buddha of Methil?), Koons-esque balloon dogs and a hen wrapped in cream egg foils; Downie’s charcoal drawings of a freight train on the Forth Bridge and a radio mast in Rosyth; sculptures by Ailsa Magnus; graphics and ceramics by Susan McGill; pieces made from objects found on Buckhaven beach by Gillian McFarland.

My visit coincided with workshops for local P7s delivered by two of the artists. How good is it that these young people, some of whom have never encountered contemporary art before, are seeing it explode with possibilities, made by people who grew up, or have chosen to work, within a few miles of their homes? I hope seeds of inspiration were sown, and I might see some of their work at a degree show in the future.

The Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design Degree Show runs until 1 June; The Wonder Store until 26 June