Art reviews: Gray’s School of Art Degree Show | Glasgow School of Art MFA Show
The best work in these graduate shows ranks highly both in ambition and technical skill, writes Susan Mansfield
Gray’s School of Art Degree Show, Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen ★★★★
Glasgow School of Art MFA Show, The Glue Factory, Glasgow ★★★★
The Gray’s School of Art Degree Show marks the beginning of a new chapter this year with all fine art disciplines being taught under a single banner (this is due to happen at Edinburgh College of Art next year). We will see, in time, what effect this has on the different disciplines. This year, painting predominates, as it does at the other schools, with a corresponding reduction in sculpture, installation and lens-based work.
What is clear from the off is that Gray’s students have thought long and hard not only about the kind of work they want to make but how to create an exhibition. They have also worked hard on the artist statements which accompany each show, in most cases providing information which improves one’s appreciation of the work.
Nearly half the 50-strong cohort are painters, and some are outstanding. Nicole Mackintosh’s figurative paintings capture moments in time - family celebrations, friends’ birthday parties - moments which matter, but which we rarely take the time to value. Anna Swapp does something similar without the people, painting the rooms in her late grandmother’s house with fond attention: the chair with its imprint of the sitter, the clothes hung on the back of a door.
Ellie McAllan ponders a different family home, its wallpaper and objects, as well as Aberdeen itself. She combines painting and digital print, which can be tricky to pull off, but she does it seamlessly. Mairi Blair’s paintings are self portraits from different points in her life, exploring how ballet became important to her having battled childhood cancer. They are poignant and well executed.
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Sophie Scott picks out details from Victorian and Georgian portraits - a gesture of a hand, a piece of jewellery - thinking about the subtle nuances of female experience. Marisa Parker is inspired by the women of Hollywood’s golden age, and the uncomfortable territory between beauty and exploitation. Some of her paintings are on vintage furniture.
Faith Woolsey paints people and still lifes, exploring how memory works by creating two slightly different versions of the same scene, or blurring certain parts of a composition. Yasmin Brown homes in on the smallest of details - a ribbon, a piece of masking tape - investing significance in the tiniest of things while hinting at larger meanings.
Hollie Stitt paints on laser cut MDF, using irony and a touch of humour to challenge perceptions around addiction. Amie Paton takes on American politics, using collage, satire and the inspiration of street art to offer critique, defiance and even optimism. Emily McLatchie paints lovely abstract works using earth pigments.
Several students are deeply concerned with the human impact on the environment. Lisa Caddell shows humanity’s rabid consumption in the form of an open mouth, while depicting threatened species on beautiful tear-shaped ceramic discs. Leona Andrew’s “eco prints” look lovely hanging from tree branches, while Kiera Walsh’s impressive and intricate textile mobile celebrates all species, down to the tiniest amoeba.
Claire Maria Carey’s film Always Threatened, Never Bitten succinctly explores toxic relationships by showing a young woman being lunged at by a barely restrained German Shepherd. Another three-screen work, Just Breathe, is equally powerful, exploring the shower as a private space to recover and regroup. Keira Cormack’s work talks about brokenness - the audience walk over a film of smashed china - and about her distance from her Russian heritage.
Matthew Urquhart is one of very few sculptors. He is interested in how we inhabit architecture and how it shapes who we become. The works in his show are theatrical and thought-provoking, making use of wide range of materials. Arabella Joy Sciallo seeks to make breath tangible through line drawings and hundreds of delicate ceramic pebbles. Visitors are invited to linger, listen to breathing exercises and balance them on top of one another to make their own towers.
Meanwhile, the graduates of Glasgow School of Art’s international, interdisciplinary MFA course presented their show at the Glue Factory, which has evolved over the years from a grungy post-industrial space into a grungy post-industrial space with white cube galleries attached.
The MFA course is celebrated in contemporary art circles and draws students from around the world, some of whom are coming to art from different educational disciplines. Hwa-jin Seo is a literature graduate and a published novelist in Korea. She has developed a visual art practice in part inspired by her writing. Her impressive paintings have words woven through them and each is accompanied by a prose poem.
Adia (Xinyi He) is an economics graduate from China. She uses tactile materials like tempera and plaster to create small, expressive semi-abstract paintings.
American Matthew Kriske is a skilled painter in watercolour, capturing “memories, real and imagined” presented in the style of polaroid photographs. His paintings are accompanied by a fragmented first person narrative playing on an analogue tape recorder. Sophia Arcontis works with photography, writing and electronic music, but it is the quality of her hand-written texts which really make her work stand out.
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Isaac Willis has an intriguing painting language which draws on a range of source material from art history to cartoon characters. Sarah Palmer paints large stylised landscapes, apparently exploring what it means to look at landscape in a world saturated by web-based imagery. Han Chen Liu works with a mixture of oil paint and Chinese ink and is a superb painter of animals.
Richard Domenico Ehlert is principally a printmaker. His work for the MFA show combines prints with dried flower petals; it’s a reminder that it’s okay for art to be beautiful. Douglas Rogerson works with printmaking and found materials. His weathered tones and textures fit in so well in the grungiest part of the Glue Factory that you have to look more than once to see them.
William Armstrong is interested in the urban environment and has a practice of walking - more unusual in Canada, where he is from, than in Glasgow. He often paints on materials he finds, such as discarded road signs, framing the pedestrian as the interloper in environments of urban wasteground and character-free retail parks.
Sophie Stewart’s work explores the contemporary work environment. Her wheatpasted prints of back alleys and bins are olefactory too, with the addition of cigarette essence and beer. Nidhi Bodana, originally from India, is interested in unheard voices and has made an impressive installation from materials such as facial wipes and hair extensions, called Erased Layers: A Landscape of Hidden Stories, which is accompanied by a performance and text.
Katie Grenville’s work celebrates crafts and traditions with painting, sculpture and a film featuring a haunting folk song. Julita Hanlon’s thoughtful work about communication, being a stranger, and the meaning of home can be found throughout the space.
The distance between these Masters students and the cohort of new graduates seems less of a chasm this year, not because of anything lacking in the MFA course, but because the best work in the graduate shows ranks highly both in ambition and technical skill, not just in Glasgow but across the country.
Gray’s School of Art Degree Show runs until 15 June with an online showcase at www.gsamfa.com; Glasgow School of Art MFA Show, run ended, with an online showcase at www.gsashowcase.net
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