Each spring, like bluebells in a wood, a host of degree shows spring up at art schools around the land. Every graduating student in every discipline in every art school creates and curates their own individual exhibition. This show is duly assessed and degrees are awarded accordingly. It's a chance for students' friends, family and the wider public to see what kind of art is being created by a new generation of artists and designers.

The Glasgow School of Art (GSofA) annual undergraduate Degree Show, which opens to the public today, features work from graduating students across the School of Design, School of Fine Art, Innovation School and the Mackintosh School of Architecture. These take place at two sites; the art school's Renfrew Street campus and The Tontine Building in the Trongate area of the city. Also running concurrently is the annual Master of Fine Art (MFA) Degree Show at The Glue Factory in the north of the city.

For this review, I am focusing on GSofA's School of Fine Art degree show. This school has many famous alumni, including Jenny Saville, whose work is currently the subject of a major exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.

Famously, almost every single piece of work in Saville's degree show in 1992 sold to Charles Saatchi, and she subsequently emerged as a part of the Young British Artists group, alongside the likes of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.

When the doors of The Tontine open to the public today, there will already be a few red dots on the walls, indicating a rash of sales. I could even take a punt at predicting which of the 139 emerging artists' work will fly. To this end; check out Georgia Green, Maya Hollis, Angus Fernie, Georgia Grinter, Molly Hankinson, Harry Clitheroe, Lucy Clitheroe, Marina Renee-Cemmick, Flora Lawrence and Rosa Quadrelli for wall-based 'sellable' work.

If I am honest, I can't see a Saatchi-style scoop-up happening. Saville and her fellow New Glasgow Girls (Alison Watt, Rosemary Beaton, Karen Strang, Lesley Banks, Helen Flockhart) and Boys (Peter Howson, Steven Campbell, Adrian Wiszniewski, Steven Conroy, Ken Currie) emerged at the tail end of a rigorous and immersive art education in the practical, technical and complex aspects of drawing, painting and mark-making.

Time and tide has moved on and the definition of fine art has shifted like fine sand. Making art in the 21st century is now about creating a visual concept which works on a host of levels, including – but not exclusively – good ole' painting, drawing and sculpture.

It's not that the emerging artists in art schools are any less creative of talented, it's more that the goal-posts in contemporary art have moved elsewhere and they aren't coming back any time soon.

Taking a walk round GSofA's School of Fine Art Degree Show in 2018, I am struck by the fact many of the graduating students are turning to traditional craft to find their voice.

The much-missed Scottish artist George Wyllie – a multi-media artists before the term was invented – was fond of the expression beautifully crude to describe work. By this he meant it was unpolished and functional yet thought-provoking with a veneer of gallus beauty. This phrased kept coming to me at the Tontine.

This year's cohort is crammed with examples of students eager to make Things. I was especially taken with Giles Watkins' Tea Culture, which builds on the idea of the ceremonies around taking tea. He has made some beautiful objects in the process, including crockery, teapots, jugs, tables, seats with ceramic shelves on which to park your bottom, coupled with beautifully crude joinery work to take the weight.

Megan Truman has created a raft of plain off-white ceramic pots stacked in row-upon-row of crude wooden shelving. Some of the pots are functional, while some are a bit askew.

Rosa Quadrelli has turned her undoubted talents as a figurative artist to a mix of puppetry and print-making with a Gothic horror twist.

Elsewhere Esther Gamsu has built a life-sized papier-mâché horse on castors (he was paraded down nearby Argyle Street minus the correct health and safety certificates) alongside a giant pair of hand sewn crimson cowboy boots made of felt. On the wall, there's an oversized print of Dolly Parton's Hands and a short film of a Dolly Parton impersonator plays in the background.

Puppetry and papier-mâché looms large. Gavin Reid has created a busy installation presided over by a life-sized doll of himself. His world is stuffed with a variety of objects; including a 'signed' copy of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, a Fisher Price cassette player playing George Formby, The Stranglers and The Damned, a globe with a tape stuck across the Middle East stating Don't Destroy My World and a clunky papier-mâché volcano with a sign sticking out of the lava stating: AN EXHIBITION IS JUST A FANCY DECORATED ROOM FOR YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS TO TALK IN.

There's something in all of the above…

Humour is to the fore in many students' work. Caitlin Higgins has created life-size squishy gym apparatus. On the wall is an oversized print of four Mortons rolls. That's the kind of gym which I'd go to.

There's real physicality in Georgia Thornton's Where I Sat installation. For this, she has made rough takeaway prints sitting on a plywood chest. On a plywood back wall, she has an array of small white painted wooden kids-sized chairs with yellow straps across the back. The idea is you take the chairs for a wee walk and drop them back.

Jonathan Kirkwood has collaborated with his autistic brother to create an oddly-affecting show made up of a wall of posters which merge text with crude drawings. Other posters and objects are dotted around the space. One depicts a wonky ball and the words germs from a sneeze. Underneath, there are objects which take the germ theme further into 3d form. Again, he has used old-fashioned joinery skills to make 'plinths' for his work.

Politics is not hugely to the fore in the show as a whole. That being said, there are several references to the #metoo movement dotted around.

The most powerful voice belongs to Lucy Lamort. Outside her show, she has posted a disclaimer notice, stating it contains: "… some scenes/themes that some viewers may find distressing".

Simple and affecting, Lamort has created three text-based wall hangings, three text-based prints – all in bright primary colours. There's also two separate films featuring news coverage involving sexual assault and clips in which women tell their own stories. I have seen it several times but the footage of MP Mhairi Black telling her story of online misogynistic abuse at a Westminster debate was profoundly shocking, surrounded as I was by the simple "text messages" hung around the walls. These include; RAPE TAUGHT AS A FORM OF FLATTERY, MEN "EXPRESS CONCERN" WOMEN WHINE AND YOUR SYMPATHY IS PERFORMATIVE.

As with any degree show, I will add my own disclaimer. Everyone sees the world differently. Take a chance and see if there's anything here which floats your boat. To that end, there IS actually a boat on show, made of wood and canvas by Paul Gallagher. Accompanied by a sound piece, it is beautiful and crude at the same time.

The Glasgow School of Art School of Fine Art Degree Show 2018, Tontine Building, 20 Trongate, Glasgow, G1 5NA, www.gsa.ac.uk/life/gsa-events/events/d/degree-show-2018/. From today until June 8, Sat-Tue,10am–7pm, Wed & Thur, 10am-8pm

CRITIC'S CHOICE

Having visited CAMPLE LINE outside Thornhill in Dumfries and Galloway a few months ago, I can't recommend this new arts space enough. Its programme is carefully curated by Tina Fiske, a former lecturer in contemporary art at the University of Glasgow. The space is currently home to an exhibition of new and existing work by filmmaker and sound-artist, Mark Lyken.

A new work, New Town New Wave, is on show alongside Lyken’s 2017 film Táif?ng and the Motorway Saint. New Town New Wave was developed by Lyken following the Namwon Sound Art Residency he undertook in November 2017 at the former KBS (Korean Broadcast System) building in Namwon, South Korea.

The work is installed together with Namwon Broadcasts, 2017, a new 20 minute soundwork recorded during an improvised performance in the KBS basement machine room, comprising sounds and field recordings gathered in and around the building during the residency.

New Town New Wave includes a two-channel film installation and related three-part photographic work. The film installation comprises two screens, each showing a fixed camera shot of 20 minutes duration. The first shot frames a high window situated on the stairs leading up from the basement level of the KBS building and through which a Korean Maple sways in the wind. In the second shot, afternoon light falls across the foyer leading through to the empty KBS theatre.

Lyken, who lives locally, will give a live performance followed by a Q&A on Sunday June 10 and lead a sound workshops for young people the following weekend.

CAMPLE LINE, Cample Mill, Thornhill, DG3 5HD, 01848 331000, https://campleline.org.uk. Until Saturday June 16. Open Thur-Sat, 10am –3pm. Free

DON'T MISS

Robin Hume was a quietly towering figure in arts education in Scotland in the second half of the twentieth century. Born and raised in Clydebank, he was a star pupil at the Glasgow School of Art (GSA) during the 1960s, and went on to teach in schools around Glasgow before becoming the art school's resident warden at Culzean Castle in Ayrshire.

He held this position until 1989 and went on to teach first year pupils at GSA until his retirement in 2003. In these roles he influenced several generations of artists, including Kelpies sculptor, Andy Scott, who said of him recently: "Robin was 'old school', could really sculpt and draw."

A long-term member of Glasgow Art Club, Hume was planning a retrospective exhibition there when he died suddenly last year. His friends, Hazel Nagl, Ronnie Smith and Chris Allan have mounted this memorial exhibition in a bid to consolidate Hume's reputation as a master sculptor of portrait heads and as a painter.

Robin Hume RGI: A Memorial Exhibition, The Glasgow Art Club, 185 Bath Street, Glasgow, G2 4HU, 0141 248 5210, www.glasgowartclub.co.uk. Until Saturday June 9. Open daily from 11am-5pm (closed Sundays)