A Degree of Uncertainty

A Degree of Uncertainty

21 August -5 September 2009

A Degree of Uncertainty showcases the work of recent fine art graduates from Universities in the Northwest including Liverpool John Moores, Liverpool Hope, University of Central Lancashire (Preston) and Manchester Metropolitan.

Featuring an eclectic range of work from photography, illustration, painting and sculpture, the exhibition is the largest exhibition held so far in Arena Gallery featuring 12 artists.

Selected from their respective 2009 degree show exhibitions A Degree of Uncertainty is for the majority of the artists exhibiting, their first post University exhibition and the departure point for their artistic careers.

The exhibition is exemplary of Arena’s ongoing commitment to providing a platform for emerging talent.

Artists

Amelia Collingwood, Hannah Cox, Dominic Foster, Madeline Hall, Robert Hunt,  Adele Kirby, Christy Leigh, Salma Noor, Craig Oates, Olga Rozenbajgier, Carolyn Russell, Angeline Smith

If the public at large does have an image of art schools, it lies somewhere between envious fantasies of student promiscuity and fear of having the wool pulled over its eyes by privileged narcissists escaping from the real world. (1)

The current state of higher education in the arts has been the subject of vehement discourse recently. The subject seems to have struck a nerve across the arts, provoking intense debate. The seeming catalyst of this recent focus, Royal College tutor and artist Graham Crowley’s open letter to Art Monthly attacking the current state of higher art education, has spurned hundreds of responses ranging from undergraduates penning their rage at the lack of tutors in their inadequate facilities to module leaders defending the institutions in which they work.

Overall these debates have painted a melancholic landscape that is current arts education in England.
Alongside rising tuition fees and the limited prospect of employment as graduate numbers outstrip graduate jobs, the position of the recent arts graduate is as precarious as ever. It is true that the modular content on these courses are often woefully out of touch with reality and do not equip artists with the vital skills they need to succeed outside of the safety of the studio. That being said, arts education is still intrinsic to the development of artists early in their careers offering the chance, possibly for the first time of meeting peers and having to the chance to experiment and form their ideas and interests as artists.

A Degree of Uncertainty aims to celebrate the fundamental outcome of art education – the ideas of the blossoming artist. The artists in the exhibition have been selected by Arena from viewing their respective degree show exhibitions held this summer. For the majority of them, it is the departure point of their careers after degree level education.

The School of Art has always been an anomaly in relation to its counterparts across campus. Perhaps this is why it has generated so much passionate debate; art is just not like any other course or field. Studying art and developing your practice is an autonomous journey that must be undertaken with dedication, grit, open mindness and patience. The uncertainty that awaits after education must be embraced and challenged, if this exhibition offers a platform for the exhibiting artists to do this then they must push on.

 

Jack Welsh, August 2009

(1)    Paul Wood, Art Monthly’s special issue on art education, October 2008/ Issue 320, p10-11.

 

Artist profiles


Amelia Collingwood

Graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University

Amelia Collingwood’s images consider the idea of authenticity and tangibility in photography. Referencing traditional notions of landscape in the spirit of romanticism, Collingwood’s photographs present landscapes that echo a time when nature was seen as an object of admiration and the experience of place heavily related to a transient experience of place and travel. Collingwood seeks to replicate this experience for a contemporary audience through her photographs.

With this series of work, Collingwood focused on the concepts of geography and navigation, using a creative methodology to explore unknown terrain. She constructed journeys using any accessible maps of her chosen area, and followed the routes faithfully, documenting the landscape as she walked. Collingwood then drew her own maps containing a fictional route for each image, altering their identity. The factual nature of cartography promotes the viewer to trust in the identity of the photograph, as chosen by her. This tackles the authenticity of the image, and challenges the identity and existence of the subject matter. The notion of the photography as a document is abandoned

Hannah Cox

Graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University

Hannah Cox’s work is an abstracted expression of her passion for landscape.  She utilises motifs derived directly from her own experiences in her work, these motifs being recorded through different processes such as drawing and photography.

Her interests lie with natural landscape and how society attempts to tame nature.  This is reflected in her approach to painting where Cox employs a range of varying painterly techniques but the aesthetic outcome is left to chance, gravity and nature. Days or weeks may pass between each application on the canvas, each mark immediately an intrinsic part of the work. Cox invites the viewer to engage with the canvas not as an abstracted landscape but as a space, to explore its forms and colours and to question the relationships they pose.

Dominic Foster

Graduated from Liverpool Hope University

Dominic Foster appropriates the overpowering sense of detail, available via High Dynamic Range photography, to produce cinematographic visuals that represent what he sees as the “widespread plague of creative stagnation and apathetic degradation that is present within the contemporary socio-political milieu.”  Foster often utilises a noir aesthetic within his work which acts as a visual mechanism for interpreting these joyless conjectures in a perceptible sense, thus presenting them in a form that has a definable point of reference.  He also frequently employs the process of digital photomontage within his work; Foster sees the technique of compositing separate imagery to form a single artistic representation as a felicitous metaphor for contemporary social cohesion or lack thereof.

 

Madeline Hall

Graduated from Liverpool John Moores University

Madeline Hall is interested in the way time, memories and events are represented. The main body of her work explores narrative that she harnesses through drawing upon memories of the walks she took around her home as a child in the Scottish landscape. Recollections, some vague and some still budding, are the precursors of the images that Hall creates

Robert Hunt

Graduated from Liverpool Hope University

Robert Hunt starts every painting without a pre-conceived idea of how the finished piece will result. In the first instance forms are improvised and colours are arbitrarily chosen, the canvas is covered. The process dictates the form and relationships within the work until a composition emerges, usually with the effect of disrupting the figure/ground relationship. Hunt believes that there should be no contrast between the technique of representation and creative intention and that the content or meaning of a work of art is bound up with the forms and with the act of making these forms.


Adele Kirby

Graduated from University of Central Lancashire

Adele Kirby creates work that references cultural associations such as mass produced goods in a unique and well crafted manner. Her work for A Degree of Uncertainty forms a part of large installation that incorporates sculpture, installation and video work. Presented as a component of a whimsical narrative Mr Cheesy Puffs and The Chips features characters devised by Kirby that are components in a larger project which act as props from her animations.

Christy Leigh

Graduated from the University of Central Lancashire

Christy Leigh’s work challenges preconceptions of the presentation and dissemination of artwork. Leigh is interested in themes associated with popular culture and youth culture, and the subsequent avenues that this is distributed. She cities the example of social networking websites as well as blogging, where the exchange of private and personal information can be easily accessed in a variety of ways. Leigh is fascinated in how these sites can be constructive and critical in a way that organised mainstream media and news media could never be.

Salma Noor

Graduated from Liverpool John Moores University

Salma Noor’s work for A Degree of Uncertainty is a site specific piece and informs her artistic concerns that are based on reconstructing elements of derelict buildings, while also deconstructing and manipulating the materials to fit and reference the chosen environment.

Craig Oates

Graduated from University of Central Lancashire

In his series of paper sculptures, Craig Oates created work that adhered to a set of rules set by the artist himself that observe themes centred around industrialisation and standardisation. The rules all applied to packaged sheets of A4 paper and Oates is interested in the works as propositions, with the results often playful and geometrically engaging as individual forms.

The set of rules, or ‘rules sets’ used, consist of a variety of techniques including folding, cutting and adhering. The work had to start from A4 sized paper and had to be purchased from a retailer. These were the only two rules that applied to every sculpture and each ‘rule set’ creates problems and forces solutions to be reached, the sculptures display these results.

Olga Rozenbajgier

Graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University

Olga Rozenbajgier’s current work explores documentary portraiture, which specifically captures the moments captured within life that shape and define who you are and the people who share these times with you. This body of work was shot in Poland where Rozenbajgier was born and where the majority of her family still live. Her family are the primary subject in these images. Rozenbajgier states “I wanted my presence as the photographer to become absent and create images that display family activity as it is without any pretences and hidden agendas, showing close family bonds and the relationships that have formed in the family unit and my own relationship with the family that I see so little of.” These immensely personal images invite the viewer into her world, a world that can seem distant yet incredibly relational.

Carolyn Russell

Graduated from Liverpool Hope University

Carolyn Russell’s work attempts to add illusion and mystery to painting and sculpture. The means by which these objects are made is hidden and the audience is only given a glimpse of ‘what lies beneath’. Rooted initially in the corporeal body, the work led to more abstract concepts about the human condition in philosophical terms. Although the materials I work with are under enormous physical tension, I also want to make an audience feel this tension in the air.

Angeline Smith

Graduated from Liverpool Hope University

Angeline Smith will be performing at Arena Gallery on Friday 4 September as part of A Degree of Uncertainty.

Next exhibition

We are currently developing an exciting and dynamic programme of exhibitions and events for 2012.

Past exhibitions