I was so impressed by the quality and depth of this year's undergraduate show at Wimbledon! It was great seeing everyone's work, but a bit daunting to think I'll have to be exhibiting to this standard next summer. The first thing I saw walking into the corridor was that it had been painted green and populated with lovely little potted plants. This was definitely the cutest part of the exhibition, and a great example of the fairly simple ways it is possible to create your own world with an installation.
I loved the submerged look of this beautiful watercolour painting. I really like things that look damaged or waterlogged. There is something fascinating about fragmented or ruined things to me, and
I've experimented before with degrading inkjet printed images with water, and found the results pretty pleasing!
This drawing is exactly the kind of ordered scribble that makes me really happy to look at. It's the perfect balance between carefree doodling and thoughtful layout, and as a result of this balance takes on an air of simultaneous humanness, fun, and skill.
I liked this painting and others by
James Morgan Taylor because the abstract compositions give way to total focus on the texture and other formalistic elements of the pieces. I like to pay attention to formalistic choices - brush strokes, pen marks, viscosity, etc - so I have a soft spot for work which gives those elements its total attention.
Amelia Durie's work caught my eye straight away as I also intend to show a book project in next year's show. Looking through
her blog I found her discussing the appeal of the book as a form:
"I love books and working in a book. Cutting, sticking, scribbling and being totally creative without worrying about the outcome as ‘it’s only a sketchbook’. It just seems to remove any limitations you might put on your own work or creative drive."
I definitely agree with this comment. Books have a certain ease of creating to them. They offer a little paper world for you to dive into - a world that's irrecoverably yours. I feel that maybe little mistakes don't matter inside a book because a book is a continuation, a sum of its parts, and more precious as an object composed of multitudes and mistakes. Everything is equalised in the world of the book. You can make no true mistakes, only progression page by page.
Some of my favourite parts of the book are pages which are cut into in order to house panels of photos printed on tracing paper. In Amelia's book world, there are lots of delicate, miniature stained glass windows. These are so dreamy, and the translucency of them brings an additional layer to the book's ability to interact with itself.
In addition to her book, she exhibited an intricate web of plexiglass photographs, expanding the translucent dream world of the book to a larger space in a way that still offered interactivity as the panels can swing back and forth and even, theoretically, be walked through.
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| Antonia Jackson |
I really liked the thick, subtly textured colouring in
Antonia Jackson's paintings. They're so bright and colourful, and just like Amelia's work, they convey their own magical world, this time through the saturation of colour and the semi-flat and slightly watery painting style.
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| Natalia Boteva |
As for these last two art pieces by
Natalia Boteva and
Rosa Nussbaum, I thought these were so atmospheric. I found there was something mesmerising about them that made me want to stare at them for a long time.
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| Rosa Nussbaum |
A lot of the work in this show has used light in really effective ways. I'm struck by how much light can affect work and perceptions of it. Clearly there are many components to think about when making and exhibiting work. I hope I can be as successful in constructing my own little world this time next year as this lot have been!
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