Newcastle University Master of Fine Art Show 2017

Newcastle University
Master of Fine Art Show 2017


Preview 18 August 6 - 9 PM



The show continues
19 August – 2 September 2017
Free admission
Open daily between 10 AM and 5 PM
(10 AM- 4 PM on Sundays and bank holiday)

Fine Art Department,
King Edward VII Building
The Quadrangle, Newcastle University NE1 7RU

This year’s Newcastle University Master of Fine Art Degree Show 2017 will see MFA students present a dynamic range of work, including painting, sculpture, video and light installations, photography, print and sound.

The artists exhibiting are Shaney Barton, Hannah Cooper, Mehan Fernando, Elizabeth Green, Peter Hanmer, Paul Jex, Hania Klepacka, Jim Lloyd, Anna MacRae and Gill Shreeve.

Work on display explores a range of themes and ideas including social politics, our connection and relationship with the natural world, investigating the everyday and commonplace, human consciousness and perceptions along with light, space and time.

Newcastle University Fine Art Department continues to have an outstanding reputation and has been ranked top in the country by the Sunday Times University Guide 2017. The department was key in radical developments in art education in the 1960s and some notable alumni includes, Richard Hamilton, Victor Pasmore, Sean Scully and Susan Hiller.

Taught by leading art professionals who nurture creative innovation and rigour, the Master of Fine Art programme supports emerging artists who wish to extend their existing practice within the contemporary art field.

The MFA Degree Show coincides with the Creative Arts Practice Degree Show ‘Lost Ontologies’ which also previews on 18th August and runs through until the 25th August.

http://fineart.ncl.ac.uk/ma2017

In times of need

EVERYTHING_WILL_BE_ALRIGHT_AUDIO from Helen Shaddock on Vimeo.

Check out the straight lines!

It's those finishing touches that make the difference.

That's why I spent a good few hours meticulously painting the rim around my room! The joins between the grey floor and the white walls used to be messy and uneven causing ones eyes to focus on this unsightly detail. 

Hopefully this is no longer the case!

MEANWHILE - Newcastle University 1st Year MFA Exhibition

Last night was the preview of the 1st Year Newcastle University MFA exhibition, MEANWHILE...

The exhibition is located in a number of the exhibition spaces within the Fine Art department of Newcastle University.

Each artist has contributed a number of works and a variety of media are used.

Hannah Cooper's manipulation of materials produces beautiful results. Threads of delicate melted glue hang from the ceiling of the Atrium. In the Long Gallery Hannah exhibits a couple of works made from creased paper (the description does not do it justice-watch out for photos in later posts), a paper sculpture with feathers pierced through, and a clay sculpture. There is a sensibility to the way that the materials are manipulated.

Similarly, Mehan Fernando's exquisite photorealist oil paintings are positioned carefully on the smooth  surfaces of the pieces of wood, with the figures aligning with the natural wood grain or markings on the surface. It is hard to be disgusted by the deformed specimens that feature in the paintings because of the demonstration of immense skill in the way he paints. In the Tic Space Mehan has ventured into less familiar territory and installed a number of objects on the wall and a few clay sculptures that resemble spines.

A couple of Anna MacRae's small creatures are sneakily lurking in the Long Gallery and Tic Space, but her larger sculptures occupy the Project Space. In contrast to Mehan's highly controlled and precise oil paintings, Anna's work has a more immediate and experimental appearance. That said, the care, attention to detail and rigorous thought that goes into making the work is evident. The lighting plays a huge part in setting the dramatic scene for the monochrome forms made from materials such as cardboard, parcel tape, foil, latex and paint. The three components have a relationship with each other, taking on different characters.

Pipi Lovell-Smith exhibits a sound work in the Tic Space and has two flat screen monitors playing her work in the Long Gallery. One monitor shows a collaged stop motion animation in which the background scenery resembles a tourist attraction. The action comes from birds flying overhead, a tourist dancing and people taking photographs of the monument in the background. The other monitor has two screens, both showing the same couple in a rowing boat, but from different perspectives. The boat in one of the screens moves from left to right and the boat in the other screen enters the screen on the right and travels to the opposite corner of the screen. Something fascinating happens at the end; a kind of reversal. 

James Joseph Lloyd has a projection in the Tic Space, a painting in the Long Gallery and a painting in the Atrium. I have been used to seeing the two paintings in close proximity to each other in the studio, so they are seen very differently when separated and exhibited in different rooms.    

It is obvious that the group have worked together to curate the exhibition, and the negotiation of space has been carefully considered.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Skimmer

Brass Skimmer

Rice Paper

This is probably the most minimal artwork that I've ever made. I saw the skimmer in an Asian supermarket and felt an urge to buy one and admire its beauty. I had also picked up some rice paper, and so cut it into strips and soaked them in water prior to then laying them over the dome of the skimmer, ensuring that they neatly cover the surface. When it was dry I carefully removed the cast from the mould. I hung the skimmer on wall and then balanced the rice paper on the wire skimmer part. Over time the rice paper moulded itself around the skimmer, and as it dried out it began to crack.

Here it is in stages

Some thoughts on my first year of the MFA

Yesterday I took down my exhibition and continued to sort out my studio space. As I look at all of the things I have in my studio, I realise how much work I made over the past year, and the wealth of materials that I have collected. I'm trying my best to reduce the amount of things I keep in my studio so as not to clutter it, but it is challenging given that I work in such a varied way and make use of lots of materials, both found and made. I often have materials in my studio for a while before I decide what I am going to use them for. It is almost like I am getting to know them and try to understand their properties before I make use of them.

Going through my year's work also made me realise how much I have embraced the course and really challenged myself, and I feel as though my work has moved in a different direction, and into the a place of possibilities. I have grappled with the notion of play and playfulness. I started out thinking that in order for artwork to be playful, it had to be fun and look cheery. I now realise that this is not the kind of work I want to make as it often appears childish and is very literal. What interests me much more is how artists can be playful in their approach and process. These ideas are going to be explored further in my dissertation.

My work started out brightly coloured and made of art materials such as plaster. Over time I begun to move away from what had become a somewhat familiar way of working, into the unknown. I introduced found materials, and begun to use materials not usually associated with art such as jelly. This made the work less predictable. Who knows where my work will be in another year?!

Newcastle University MFA Summer Exhibition 2015 - Nigel Morgan - Hiraeth

"In Welsh the word hiraeth offers a way into understanding our yearning for the elusive something that nature and landscape means to us; analogous to an unattainable longing for a place, or perhaps a person, the language of landscape becomes metaphoric to an emotional language of the soul. The language of landscape is a language of loss, of distance, of longing, and the more we try to define it the less clear it becomes."

"Landscape is made and it is the mediator by which nature has been perceived as something other. This continues to be a cultural problem:the measurement and technological representation of landscape reinforces an anxiety over our distancing from nature; however now, in the Anthropocene, everything is landscape and landscape can re-connect us to nature, it is a real material connection."

"This work is an attempt to understand this longing, through the use of nature, the matter of landscape."

Being Landscape: The Landscape is a creation of and by ourselves and our imagination. It is ‘the peculiar moment of being present to perception [the] ‘matter of experience’… the materiality of what is otherwise an ephemeral and contingent snatch of lived experience.’ J. J. Marshall, p202, Landscape Theory. 2008.

Newcastle University MFA Summer Exhibition 2015 - Sarah Dunn

Sarah Dunn is an artist whose practice focuses very clearly upon the observation and consideration of her immediate cultural and natural landscape. Through a process of careful documentation and patient archiving a catalogue of elements is built, within this, its many indexes may now evolve and shift. This ‘catalogue’ may be regarded as an accumulation of stimuli, one in which objects transmute sensibilities; buildings become new habitats, patterns become language and books become birds.

The work uses drawing and writing to begin, it is sculptural, sensitive to changes, personal, social, political, but firmly rooted in the traditions of form, craft and observational relationships.

In Between Fear and Mother Love is an entry into the index of observation. It uses the three totemic birds, the Bittern, the Woodcock and the Nightjar as symbolic chapter headings into which the objects, textiles and elements within the work are placed. These objects carry more than the sum of their parts. However, The canny observer will also find memories, emotions and experiences. The library of these birds is an echo chamber, a place of responses.

Newcastle University MFA 2015 Summer Exhibition - Paul Martin Hughes

"My current work explores the interactive qualities of kinetic sculpture. I am interested in creating a direct interactive response that is individual, rather than generic, exploring themes surrounding childhood fantasy and the limits of an imagination long since lost to adulthood.My work relies heavily on pre-existing relationships with objects associated from my own and the viewers past. Writing fictional stories combined with pictorial narratives and producing simple CAD designs, my studio work has evolved to focus on precise draughtsmanship and experiments with new media and technology." 
Paul Martin Hughes

Newcastle University MFA 2015 Summer Exhibition - Soonwon Hwang

Leaves, thread, light installation

Newcastle University MFA Summer Exhibition 2015 - Yein Son

Over the next couple of weeks, as the Newcastle University MFA Summer Exhibition is running,  I will be blogging about each of the artists exhibiting (in no particular order). 

Today I would like to introduce the work of Yein Son.

Yein writes, "My work is the trace left by my responses, experimental yet respectful, to this space in this time in this place."

Chasing the Light is like a race for drawing the shapes and lines of the light coming through the windows into the space every moment in a day. I chase and trace the silver lining of sunlight.

Nocturne 3.12: Every night after work, the nocturnal air inspires. In this city of wind and clouds, the sky is creating different textures and changing quickly each time. With this, I am expanding the energy of the nature of painting through my improvising gestures by using ink marks and experiments within painting.

 My painting is also closely connected to my investigation into the possibilities of what I call the multiple picture planes where what is seen occurs simultaneously on the surface, in the surface and the reverse of the surface."

Julie Robertson writes about her visit to Newcastle University MFA Summer Exhibition 2015

Thanks to Julie Robertson who has written a blog post about her visit to the Newcastle University MFA Summer Exhibition 2015.

Read the full blog post here: https://craftyfrayededges.wordpress.com/2015/08/24/helen-shaddock-at-hatton-gallery/

Finishing touches

Over the past week I have been curating the work in my exhibition space as part of the Newcastle University MFA Summer exhibition 2015. It has been an enjoyable experience, and one in which I have really challenged myself, surprised myself, and explored all kinds of setups.

I feel as though I am working in new terrain and speaking a new language, and that is exciting. After all, I embarked on the MFA knowing that I wanted to push my work, move it forward and challenge myself. I feel pleased to have used this first year of my course to work in new ways and go out of my comfort zone. The work that I have made, and the way it has been exhibited is certainly different to what I was doing a year ago. I wonder what I will be doing this time next year!

It's hard to believe how much the exhibition has evolved over the past week.

I knew that I wanted to introduce something with height, but felt that the material used in this case (rubble bags) was not right.

I considered different ways of displaying the seaweed, including on a roll of lining paper, on the floor, in a non-grid pattern, but decided to opt for 121 pieces of seaweed in a grid on a large piece of fabric hanging against a wall.

A number of works have gone through a shift of materials, for instance the seaweed in the skimmer was replaced with the same shape made from rice paper. Also, the shredded cardboard on the aluminium rod was changed to the lotus leaves.

I considered drawing more attention to features in the space such as the taps and plug sockets. I decided to keep a more minimal aesthetic and focus the attention on the work as opposed to the space per se.

I was thinking about using a strip of lining paper on the wall which showed traces of where objects had been placed on it due to the faded patches, but decided not to include the paper as it wasn't really adding anything new to the exhibition.

I tested various methods to display the same items. For instance, the screen prints were once pegged onto a large board with brightly coloured pegs, and propped against the wall.

I gradually decreased the number of works in the space, and therefore left out some works that I had originally intended being in the exhibition. I am pleased to have included less because it gives each of the works its own space in which it can be appreciated with few distractions.

In addition to the carpet underlay, I tried using different materials to put on the floor on which different works. In the end I just kept the carpet underlay as the other things were adding nothing more.                                                                                                  ,