The annual Master of Fine Art degree show has opened at Newcastle University and is full of surprises
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| Liying Zhao and Mehan Fernando preparing for the MFA Exhibition at Newcastle University |
People cross continents to study for a masters degree in fine art at Newcastle Universityand for the next couple of weeks we can see what they get up to.
The MFA exhibition 2016 features the work of 13 artists who have a passion for art and could go on to great things.
I was lucky enough to get a guided tour before the official preview.
“Edible sculpture, fantastical beasts, illuminated mountains and a working film set” were promised. Who could resist?
My guide was Pipi Lovell-Smith from New Zealand who has just completed the first year of the two-year course (first and second year students are represented in the exhibition along with three PhD students).
Each student on the MFA course gets a studio in which to work and exhibit. This is an exhibition of mini exhibitions.
Pipi’s is called The Perilous Cliff and it features a video shot in the North East and Switzerland where she ventured earlier this year on a Bartlett Travel Scholarship.
“I got really bad vertigo the whole time,” explained Pipi who suffered for her art.
She said she had bought an album of photographs from an antique shop in New Zealand which appeared to chart an Englishman’s grand tour in the 1930s.
“I bought it years ago but I was keen to find the exact locations that he went to. He went to other places, France and Germany, but I decided to focus on one country.
“It took quite a long time and I was hiking through forests to find the exact spots. Some were easier to find because they have been tourist spots for a century but there was a glacier that no longer exists.”
Who was the mystery man? Pipi has a name but isn’t sure if his identity is the point of her interest. As she explained, the MFA course was a chance to explore.
“It’s a great opportunity to push yourself and try new things. I applied with my paintings but when I got here I started making films.”
Pipi worked in TV production before deciding to push her creativity in a different direction.
But why Newcastle University? “Because the art school has a really good reputation. Coming from a creative industry I was keen to make more of my own work and this course gives me time and space to explore ideas.”
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| Hannah Elizabeth Cooper with her paintings in the MFA Exhibition at Newcastle University |
Hannah Elizabeth Cooper is a painter from Ohio whose exhibition of abstracts in oils is called Cope.
She came here for different reasons. “I’ve always had a taste for foreign culture and as I only speak English it would have to be an English-speaking country,” she said.
“I’m from a village of 3,000 people. I’m a small town girl and coming to a city, even one the size of Newcastle, is a big step for me.”
Hannah said she had enjoyed her first year. “The instructors are very helpful and want you to succeed.”
She had worked in the past with mixed media, notably glass and sawdust, but was currently using oils.
The paintings, she said, were a sort of coping mechanism and she saw them as having personalities. “That’s the obnoxious one,” she said. “It just didn’t want to cooperate.”
The paintings were “not supposed to be anything that you can recognise”. People would see in them what they wanted to see.
Hannah said: “A lot of the time I paint in the moment. Sometimes I’m confused by the colours I use. They come about in such a strange way.”
Jim Lloyd lives in Hexham and for 18 years has worked at the RVI in its nuclear medicine department, a branch of radiology.
“I’m a scientist by background but one of the things I’m interested in is how science and art interact,” he said.
He took the science route, taking a first degree in physics and then studying for an MSc in medical physics and a PhD.
But he is the son of a distinguished artist, RJ Lloyd, who was a friend of sculptor Henry Moore and also of Ted Hughes whose poems he illustrated.
“Probably I went into science because I could see what a precarious life it was but I’ve always had an interest in art and I’ve dabbled over the years.
“I started to take it more seriously in 2007 when I began studying for a BA with the Open College of the Arts.”
At 56 he is planning a change of direction.
His contribution to the MFA exhibition is We Have Never Been Modern, the title taken from a book by French philosopher Bruno Latour.
He has made a corridor entrance to his darkened studio with draped sheets bearing various painted marks, some mimicking the texture of the floor.
A video charts a mysterious journey, made more eerie by music and voices (actually those of late scientists David Bohm and Francesco Varela) heard through headphones.
Jim said the filmed journey was actually his daily commute from Hexham. There were “lots of different strands,” he said, adding that there were perhaps too many. It’s intriguing, though... and he’s learning.
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| Liying Zhao with one of her projections in the MFA Exhibition at Newcastle University |
Liying Zhao, from China, deftly uses projections to wonderful effect in her show, Nameless Wild.
She said her initial idea had been to add nothing to a room containing just a sink, a radiator and a table. “I wanted to build up a zoo in this human space, this architectural environment.
“I wanted to pose a question to viewers about human activities and nature.”
The result is magical – a projected ‘flower’ of human hands on one wall and, apparently balancing on a tap, a little person with a hippo’s head fishing in the ceramic sink below.
There’s a projected tiger-headed woman watering real grasses arranged in the radiator.
“I like to keep my work in between the real and the imagined and I like to put my own narratives into the actual space,” said Zhao.
She considered engaging a model but then decided to pose as the animal creatures herself.
Coming to the end of her two years, Zhao is going home for the first time next month. “I’m so excited,” she said. She will go home and, I suspect, go far.
Other exhibitors are Anna MacRae, Harriet Sutcliffe, Michael Mulvihill, Yein Son, Bex Harvey, Helen Shaddock, Mirela Bistran, James Quin and Mehan Fernando.
The exhibition is on at Newcastle University fine art department until September 3 (closed Sundays) and admission is free. Find details at http://fineart.ncl.ac.uk/ma2016/
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