Plymouth University Degree Show

Val and I visited the university Hot '15 show on Friday June 19th starting off in the Peninsula Arts section of the Roland Levinsky building. This section had a mixture of fine arts, photography, illustration and design. On the left as you walk in is an impressive charcoal and gouache drawing by Joy Smith, called "Reverie" which probably measured around 8 feet x 6 feet. Luckily you could stand back the distance the picture deserved. The one that impressed both of us was a piece by Esme Stewart called "Earth Pigment" that used wool and three kinds of earth collected at three locations in west Devon and east Cornwall (Cawsand, Mothecombe and Magpie Bridge). The earth was ground in a mortar and pestle. The wool strands had been covered in ground earth pigments and 'twanged' against the wall creating irregular lines. the wool had been attached to nails at either end of a horizontal line. After twanging the left end of the wool had been detached and let fall to the ground. The floor was covered in the residue of the earth. The wool, still attached on the right-hand side, formed a series of curves that were left lying where they fell. A beautiful piece that, of course, will no longer exist once the exhibition is over. That, feels a bit of a shame. There is an interesting piece on Esme Stewart here.

We the looked at the first floor fine art degree show display in Room 101. Two things that surprised me; 1. That the artists were not present. Two sat at one end but given that there were probably 20  featured you would have thought that there would have been more around; and 2. Most artists work had no artist statements, details, business cards or portfolios. Speaking to artist Charlotte Price on Saturday, she said there seemed to be a growing trend at galleries like White Cube for giving no information about the work at all. To me that means that many post-post-modernism works will only be judged on visual evidence of the pieces themselves. I wonder how that will alter people's appreciations of the works. I would expect - massively.