After graduating from Gray's in 2011, coming back to the art school always feels a bit like coming home. The degree shows are always a high point in Aberdeen's creative calendar, being able to see the cream of the crop of new emerging talent coming out of Aberdeen. With being a graduate myself there is always an element of comparing and contrasting work up on the walls to work you did, or work that was in the same space in your year, and years past.
Being a Communication Design graduate I expected to gravitate more towards the Communication Design work at the degree show, but found myself coming back to the Printmaking work, and to my surprise, the ceramic work too.
On entering the foyer of the art school you are instantly hit with Kate's work in imposing giant squares on the main wall of the Foyer. Her prints involve a variety of different elements which seem to suck you in, and with more inspection you start picking out and noticing more and more. My favourite pieces were those in the hallway outside the darkroom, which seem to draw me in, and I found myself coming back to them several times throughout the Degree Show week.
Hatti's Alfred Hitchcock print instantly had me come over to her work and had me intrigued with the rationale behind the imagery. I really liked Hatti's greyscale colour choices which sat really well with her frames and the walls. I also really enjoyed the geometric pattens overlayed on her prints, and also with closer inspection cut out from her prints.
Gemma is a type writer artist, She states her work is '...contemporary art with the use of printmaking and manual vintage
typewriters. I hand type all my images on my manual typewriters. My
work aims to raise awareness of coastal erosion due to weathering and
chemical erosion in the Shetland Isle'. Gemma has obviously been rather busy throughout the year creating these imposing prints. All her work is built up using punctuation on the typewriter, creating large prints depicting landscapes and coastlines from Shetland.
Rachel Kerr's was situated in the hallway of the first floor. First noticeable were her laser cut and screenprinted cogs, designed with wallpaper esque patterns. What really stood out for me was her 'Happy Pills' screenprints: Similar to the cogs, they were two colour wallpaper esque prints in the shape of pill bottles, definitely something I could see on my own wall.
Anna Patterson - Three Dimensional Design
While I know little to nothing about ceramics, the 3DD room in the portacabins really grabbed my attention, and I found myself in that room longer than any others. My favourite works were by Anna Patterson who created vases that are made to look like they are melting, but with a ribbon of colour coming out of them. I really liked the combination of colour of the ribbon against the stark cream of the vase which had my eyes constantly looking at them.
My favourite work of the Communication Design hall was the work of Lorna Glencross. Her space, painted with a pink wall, and an fake grass floor, was instantly eye catching and stood out compared to all the rest of the work.Some of her illustrations reminded me of Hattie Stewart meets Kate Moross, but yet still retains something which is very unique - certainly a hard thing to find in Illustration.
I also really liked Kamilya's illustrations as they have a naive quality to them. The set of three together really works with the choice of blue, yellow and red dresses to separate them which allows them to both stand out but also look like a series too.
Robyn's work stood out for me as every element engaged with you and looked for some sort of interaction. I think the combination of the interactive element plus small facts worked really well.
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So that is my highlights of the show, As with everything else, this was my personal favourites and of course there was a lot more
great pieces of work there and if I was to write about them all I would
be here forever. I shall look forward to next years!
