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Saturday 2 June 2012

Summertime in the art world means one thing: the annual degree shows, in which final-year art students aim to create their best work.

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In just a few days, the work of the latest crop of Glasgow art students will go on public show, writes Sarah Urwin Jones

Glasgow School of Art is one of the last to open its doors to the public – only Grays in Aberdeen is later – but with a list of famous alumni from Joan Eardley to Christine Borland, Simon Starling to Alison Watt, there are no shortage of spectators keen to spot the cream of the next generation of artists.

The finished work is still under wraps as adjudicators decide each student's degree class in a show split into four sections – Architecture, Fine Art, Design and the postgraduate Master of Fine Art – across three campuses.For students it's a nerve-wracking time, but one of immense relief. A random pick through the current crop throws up Steven Grainger, who only applied to GSA when he realised he didn't want the place he'd been offered at the then RSAMD to study Violin Performance. A former art teacher advised him to apply to the Environmental Art department of GSA. "She said it would suit the way I do things. And it has," he says. "It's pretty hands-off, but I never liked being told what to do."Grainger's show includes materials that are a mix of the found – including an old shipping palette – the traditional and "stuff I got in B&Q". He has four works in the show, three sculptures and one spoken text. "I couldn't have done any of this without the fantastic help we've had from the technicians," he says, having only learned how to weld, now a key part of his practice, three months ago.On more diminutive yet prolific scale, jewellery student Francesca Flynn – whose work is pictured above – has fielded over 30 works in her final degree show, her pieces exploring the facets of natural and constructed crystals. Both Grainger and Flynn, like many of this year's graduates, sope to make it as practising artists; both are focused on getting their own studio, although Flynn, who, with her graduating jewellery peers, will exhibit next month at New Designers in London, is "open to whatever possibilities might arise"."I'm figuring out how I can afford to keep making work," she says, adding that she plans to stay on in the city. "There's an amazing support network here in Glasgow; everyone is helping each other out. There's a real sense of enthusiasm that you can do it." That, perhaps, is one of Glasgow's greatest parting gifts.Glasgow School of Art Degree Shows (0141 353 4500, www.gsa.ac.uk) run from June 9-16 (MFA, June 7-16). Fine Art/Architecture, Garnethill Campus, 167 Renfrew Street; Design, Skypark Campus, Finnieston Street; MFA, The Glue Factory, 15 Burns Street

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