I WATCHED a video a few weeks ago in which renowned Columbian sculptor, Doris Salcedo takes the viewer on a tour of her home city of Bogota, her studio and her whole approach to making her art, which exposes the inherent violence, brutality and corruption at work in her country. “Art cannot explain things but it can expose them,” she tells the camera with her unerring eye."
I have been carrying this nugget around with me ever since. It was in my thoughts earlier this week when I took a turn around the Glasgow School of Art’s Graduate Degree Show. There is a welter of exposition going on at every turn. Some pack a punch. Some hang as limply as a piece of old latex. (And, yes, there is always pieces of old latex in any degree show… it’s the law.)
A more mature creation than the art school’s undergraduate degree show which explodes across various locations every June, the Graduate Degree Show features the work of postgraduate students at the end of their studies in a wide variety of disciplines; including architecture, design, fine art and digital. The GSA has one of the UK's largest postgraduate communities in the visual creative arts and architecture. It has grown exponentially in recent years and now comprises nearly three hundred Doctoral and Masters students.
I can’t claim to have seen each and every one of the graduates' work, but I took in around 75 individual shows of those studying for an MLitt in Fine Art Practice, MLitt in Curatorial Practice, MRes in Creative Practices, MDes in Communication Design and MDes in Graphics, Illustration and Photography.
In the pack-a-punch category, one of the first shows which hit me squarely between the eyes was Liam Dunne’s Visual Sh**storm in the Tontine Building. Dunne’s work is spread garishly in white, black and red across the whitewashed walls of his "pen". Like a visual Exocet missile, he explores how contemporary art has become like fashion with new trends being merely regurgitation from the past.
There are certain themes which loom large; the digital world and the loss of freedom, violence and cruelty in the shape of terrorism, the loss of individuality and "old ways" and the plight of refugees.
On the subject of terrorism, Aly Saab has made a seven-minute long dialogue-less film which is strong on sound and big on repetition. It has a shocking denouement which I won't spoil. In the same space in The Reid Building, Krista Kreismane, has created a simple yet evocative installation which gently interrogates the business of being a refugee. On one wall there is a long black ink and wash mural which seethes with faceless shadowy people. On a table in front she has created a tented "village" from small grey notebooks. In some of the books, she has printed actual testimonies from refugees whom she spoke to in Glasgow and in her native Latvia.
Scott Smyth has created two sets of different but interlinked prints which highlight his burgeoning relationship with the Outer Hebrides. Vivid and beautiful, his screen prints examine industries which once were the lifeblood of these far-flung islands. His textile prints using the pattern chains from a Hattersley Loom (traditionally used to make Harris Tweed) brings this work full-circle.
Other shows which stood out for me included Helen Jones' meditation on decay; a mix of photography and sculpture which gave me an actual lump in my throat, Gemma Conway's crowds of silhouetted figures whose ghostly shadows loom large on the wall and Myra Ostacchini's Draw in Gestalt which manages to craft a solid form for a tricky concept.
Blair McLaughlin has made some fine paintings exploring how sex and violence is represented in the media while Vivienne Quinn's memorable painted "restaurant" (called omgvivlolz.com) consists of ersatz goodies such as "Handcrafted Donuts" made of wood and a "Trembling Pile of Love Jelly" fashioned from jelly wax.
Like most degree shows, the tasting menu on offer from this year’s crop of GSA graduates is varied, occasionally surreal, but often deeply profound.
The Glasgow School of Art Graduate Degree Show 2016 is at Tontine Building, Trongate, Reid Building, Renfrew Street, and Grace & Fyfe Clark Gallery, Bourdon Building, Scott Street, from today until Thursday 8 September.
www.gsa.ac.uk/life/gsa-events/events/g/graduate-degree-show-2016
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