Central St Martins MA Fine Art Degree Show

I picked up cards for the following artists, the ones where something seemed to be going on:

• Francisca Aninat
• Mike Ballard
• Manuela Barczewski1
• Brtpmovs {rtrx Lst;rdpm2
• James Burke
• An-Chen Chiu3
• Tânia Bandeira Duarte
• Tariq Husein
• Yingda Li
• Sophie Loss
• Wei Luo3
• Mark Melvin
• Brendan Murphy
• Reto Scheiber
• Cally Trench
• Mary Yacoob

Tariq Husein

Francisca Aninat

Unknown

Brendan Murphy

Wei Luo

Tânia Bandeira Duarte

1. There were many pieces made up of random collections of building materials, which I kind of liked, they reminded me of Jean-Marc Bustamente’s structures (see the photo labelled ‘Unknown’ above). But there were just too many artists making these types of pieces with very little to differentiate them, and after a while this made me start to question just what it was that I saw in this kind of work in the first place. However, Manuela Barczewski’s photos of similar arrangements seemed to me to add new life to these problematic arrangements . . .

2. This artist produced a series of pieces based on confusing the written word into an unintelligable series of letters and punctuation marks, although ultimately meaning is denied the forms and arrangements serve to hint at it in quite an effective way. The conceit is taken to its logical conclusion whereby even the artists name is obscured, so I can’t properly credit the pieces here. Although it’s perhaps not particularly original—it’s a method that graphic designers work with all the time – what, after all, is “lorem ipsum” for—within this context the total effect of the various elements of the piece subtly unsettled my experience of them. Interestingly, on the world map in catalogue, this artist seems to come from the middle of the Pacific Ocean . . .

3. I’m perhaps overly sensitive to artists from the Asia-Pacific area (because of my fiancée being a Chinese artist) and there seemed to be many in this show. I’m always interested in seeing how they reflect and respond to their cultural background in this new environment. I don’t want to sound patronising, but I think that putting yourself in a completely different milieu brings to the fore innate tendencies and preferences which are then naturally expressed through your art. When you are in a strange environment, I feel like you are constantly comparing where you come from with where you are. Looking at the relevant works in this show there’s often an interesting interplay between, say, East and West. I feel kind of wary of saying that, because it sounds trite, an overly simplistic view of how artists react to their situation. But at a certain level I think it can be a useful entré into the work . . .

I’m sorry to be negative, but this was not a terribly impressive show. My friend and I spent a few hours trailing from room to room, but we agreed that there was very little that really interested or excited us.