D O U N D O U N D O U N D O U N D O R E D O R E D O D O R E D O MA DArt O & Science D O D O D O D O MA Fine Art D O D O D O D O D O D O D O MA D O UPhotography N D O U N D O D O D O U N D O D O R E D O R E D O R E D O R E D O R E D O R E D O D O D O D O D O D O D O U N U N D O U N D O U N D O R E R E D O R E D O D O R E D O R E D O D O D O D O D O D O D O D O U N D O U N D O U N D O U N D O U N D O D O D O R E D O R E D O R E D O R E D O D O D O D O D O D O D O U N D O U N D O U N D O D O U N D O U N D O D O R E D O R E D O U N D O R E D O R E D O R E D O R E D O D O D O D O D O D O D O U N D O U N D O R E D O U N D O U N D O D O D O R E D O R E D O R E D O R E D O R E D O R E D O D O D O D O U N D O D O D O U N D O U N D O U N D O U N D O D O R E D O R E D O R E D O R E D O R E D O D O D O D O D O R E D O D O D O D O D O U N D O U N D O U N D O U N D O U N D O D O R E D O R E D O R E D O R E D O D O D O D O D O D O D O D O D O U N D O U N D O U N D O U N D O U N D O R E D O U N D O R E D O R E D O R E D O R E D O D O D O R E D O D O D O
Central Saint Martins Degree Show 2016 MA Art & Science MA Fine Art MA Photography
The work shown within this catalogue was produced by students from our MA Art & Science, MA Fine Art and MA Photography courses. It includes the work of over 60 artists from a diverse range of backgrounds working across the full breadth of media and technologies available today. The work produced is ambitious and urgent, addressing questions that need to be asked of the world we live in. Our postgraduates understand that they are not making work in isolation, and the work showcased addresses global art-worlds as much as individual concerns. This year the courses have chosen to show their work in three separate groups (Art & Science, Fine Art, Photography). Paradoxically by segregating the courses the students consider the porous nature of these divides. What should become evident to the viewer is the range of works produced within eachcourse, so that painters might be working in Photography and work that uses scientific knowledge may come out of Fine Art. Staff and students from all three courses work closely together but in selecting a course you are aligning yourself to certain discourses. What does it mean today to call yourself a photographer or an artist or an art/scientist? Certainly these are no longer medium specific terms but to begin to answer these questions is to address the significance of culture in contemporary society.
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graduates
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Aleksandra Borys Lorraine Clarke Julius Colwyn Sarah Craske Lucy Crowder Mellissa Fisher Stephanie Herbert Mandy Hreus Keun Wook Ji Silvia Krupinska Peiwen Li Mary Helen Carla Mancillas Serna Marta Pinilla Martinez Grace Stokes Jana Valencic Mira Varg Jenny Walsh Charlotte Whiston Stephanie Wong
MA
art & science
Alex Schady Fine Art Programme Leader
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graduates
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graduates
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Kristaps Ancans J.V. Aranda Iman Awadh David BethelL Rolina Blok Mustafa Boga Lise Bouissiere Catarina Cubelo Alex Dipple Alice Kemp Roshanak Khakban Yuichiro Kikuma Camille Leherpeur Nicola Lorini Jérémie Magar Alisha Mir Galina Munroe Jasmeet Singh Subash Thebe Will Thorburn Christelle Viviers Eva Wilkinson
106 108 110 112 114 120 118 120 122 124 126 128 130 132 134 136 138 140 142 144 146 148
Victoria Batt Aurelie Berry Ilayda Bilgin Maria Bilyan Sara Boscioni Juan Covelli Yaoyao Ding Alix Edwards Pearlie Frisch María de la O Garrido Ludovica Girotto Samantha Harvey Célia Hay Lena Heubusch Candice Japiassu David Jaramillo Klinkert Andrew Kiddie Federico Redaelli Stephanie Sant Mike Sung Will Webster Neale Willis
MA
fine art
MA
PHOTOGRAPHY
MA
art & science
“ SCIENCE NEED NOT BE THE ENEMY OF ART, BUT NEITHER SHOULD IT BE THE MASTER.” — Dr Marius Kwint, Room Two Manifesto. Over the past twenty years a large number of significant international artists have emerged whose work engages with science in diverse and varied ways. These artists respond critically, politically, and aesthetically to new insights and techniques in science, such as the development of the MRI scanner in the 1970s, which revolutionised our understanding of the nature of consciousness and the broader human condition. They have often collaborated with scientists through undertaking residencies in scientific or medical institutions; this has become a hallmark of their practice. However these artists’ work is not intended to be simply illustrative of the scientific activities and techniques, rather it tackles and responds to some of the most urgent and challenging philosophical conundra that contemporary science has thrown at us. These collaborations, and the accompanying exchanges of ideas, have resulted in the production of many forms of exciting and seminal work. While the relationship between art and science is a longstanding one – both in terms of the development of new techniques used in the making of work and new insights into how we understand the world – what marks out the novelty of these contemporary collaborations is a rejection of the polarisation of art and science as distinct and opposing disciplines who have nothing meaningful to say to each other. Artists have
pioneered this extremely innovative interdisciplinary approach to research and ideas, which has now been taken up by many academic institutions and research bodies. The MA Art and Science at Central Saint Martins has emerged from such collaborative developments and is at the forefront of this new interdisciplinary academic practice. From my experience of teaching on this cutting-edge course, the variety of students’ disciplinary backgrounds has been particularly exciting; this diversity has functioned as a catalyst for generating new and unexpected perspectives regarding the relationship between art and science. The group dynamic of this year’s graduating MA students has been energetic and intellectually challenging. The show presents work that is thought provoking and, at times, surprising, and is a tribute to the talent and curiosity of the students, and also to those who have embraced this interdisciplinary way of working by establishing and developing this course. The emergent work challenges us to address the crucial questions about the distinctiveness of art and science by breaking down problematic disciplinary boundaries and making creative work from the heart of this intersection. Susan Aldworth Visiting Practitioner
Aleksandra Borys has a background in dance and choreography. With a fascination in space travel her work admires the beauty of planet Earth. Interested in looking at Earth from a distance, she explores how this ability influences the way life on our planet is approached. Through artistic process Aleks wishes to challenge the ways human physical existence is viewed. At the moment she is experimenting with different mediums to achieve the experience of being a part of the Universe. SpaceSnake (2015) Instant film, polyamide
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aleksborys.com aleks.borys@windowslive.com Aleksandra Borys
Lorraine Clarke’s practice, influenced and informed by anatomy and aspects of medical science, refers to the “human condition” – from the tremendous impact of biotechnology to the complexity of the psyche. It is infused with research into rites and traditions, anthropology, ancient and contemporary medical practices, folklore and belief systems. Alongside an enduring fascination with the mind/body relationship, Clarke has a particular interest in the faith that people invest in objects and in the physical relationships of these objects to our bodies. talisMan (2015) Mixed media
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clarke-art.co.uk lorraine@clarke-art.co.uk Lorraine Clarke
Julius Colwyn is a nomad scholar, in-between disciplines, walking the strange places amidst the bodies of knowledge. A thought ecologist. His work looks at how to grow an understanding, how to incubate a meaning within a metaphor, a metaphor in a pattern, the pattern within a form, the form within a structure, the structure within a space. His praxis is a process of manifest meaning, echoing thought and feeling through form and function, employing a methodology for aesthetic experiment. In recent projects, it has been used to design circumstances in which conception sustains itself, oscillating. Enabling environments in which conception gives rise to the emergent order of comprehension. The mind of the viewer reconciling the parts into the whole. Recently working with scientists of complex systems and cognition in the role of analyst, designer and communicator, the theories and methodologies learnt through collaboration are then orientated towards the creation of aesthetic experience. Axiomatic truths whittling the materials, structure and meanings of the work from nebulous potential into particular form. In the Midst of Things (2016) Birch, Acrylic Glass, Paper, Light
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juliuscolwyn.com juliuscolwyn@gmail.com Julius Colwyn
Sarah Craske is a British artist now working at the intersection of Art, Science & Technology. She is currently developing a personal transdisciplinary manifesto which she uses to govern her practice. She is specifically interested in exploring how the concept of knowledge and data, practice and space, language and method, equipment and materials transform through transdisciplinary working and is developing her own transdiscipline – Biological Hermeneutics. Her work begins with an identified question, which is then explored beyond disciplinary boundaries, sometimes in collaboration. The results manifest themselves as either research, writing, installations, performances or sculpture using a range of media including archival material, bacteria, fungi, DNA, resins & collected specimens. Her research has recently been awarded an AHRC Innovation Award, in recognition of her innovative contribution to collaborative inter-relationships between the sciences, arts & humanities. Metamorphoses in Art & Science develops shared ways of working in new & emerging fields. The Metamorphoses Chapter (2016) Archival inkjet print, silkscreen glaze, somerset enhanced satin white
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sarahcraske.co.uk sarah@meltdowns.co.uk Sarah Craske
Lucy Crowder has been exploring the processes involved in the formation of ice; creating drawings and installations documenting the ephemeral nature of water as it changes states between a liquid and a solid. A graduate of BA Embroidery, residencies in Greenland and Scandinavia have influenced her practice to examine the possibilities and effects of shorter winters and receding ice sheets, to create work reflecting on the nature of the changing climate in the North. Islands (Specimen 24) (2016) Ice, paper, pencil
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lucyruthcrowder.com lucyruthcrowder@gmail.com Lucy Crowder
Mellissa Fisher’s practice combines art with microbiology; her interests lie in the interrelationships between illustration, sculpture and living organisms. Fisher’s research is heavily based on the connections with nature and the self, posing questions to an audience regarding their relationship with their bodies as well as their link to nature. Fisher’s practice has developed through creating bacterial sculptures of her own body advancing her practice with an exploration of mycology by growing mushrooms on sculptures of the human form, to represent the idea that our bodies are an ecosystem, using the body as a landscape for growing different organisms. Immortal Ground (2016) Plaster, fungus, soil, cress, clay and acrylic paint
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mellissafisher.com mell.fisher.90@gmail.com Mellissa Fisher
Stephanie Herbert explores light phenomena – reflections, para-reflections and shadows – and how our mind interprets optical signals to construct meaning. During the MA, Herbert has experimented with reflective and shadow-creating structures to create images. Her dissertation investigated the neuroscience of perception, specifically “ensemble” or “gist” perception, testing the mind’s continuous task of sorting and decoding incoming information; this research is drawn into her art practice as puzzles and enigmas. Most recently, Herbert has returned to painting for its versatile, tactile and immediate dialogue between mind, eye, and created image. Herbert’s focus on imaging light has produced Subtle Bodies, a new series of paintings on copper, using a 500-year old technique which allows the luminous metal to glow through thin glazes of oil-based paint. Herbert etches through these glazes to the copper beneath, leaving some areas raw to develop, in time, a beautiful blue-green verdigris patina, while protecting other copper areas with a thin veil of linseed oil to keep them reflective and bright. Subtle Bodies (2016) Copper, steel, self, other materials, immaterials, painting oil on copper
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stephanieherbertart.com stephanieherbert12@gmail.com Stephanie Herbert
Mandy Hreus explores virtual and physical art forms that embrace the concept of space and the electromagnetic spectrum. Inspired by alternative medicine and quantum physics, she is intrigued by light, colour and sound and their effect on body, mind and consciousness. Mandy creates immersive sensory environments that invite the viewer to become part of the art experience itself. She is particularly interested in the perception of the “here and now”, experiencing the moment of pure expansive awareness. Lumanota – “Lightmusic” is a synesthetic sculpture which dynamically transforms heart rate variability (HRV) measurements into colour and audio frequencies. The sounds and colours continuously change and reflect the frequencies of the heart. Visitors can see and hear their own frequencies and become both the conductor and audience of their own individual light and sound orchestra. Green and Blue (2016) Light photograph on 3mm transparent acrylic
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lumanota.com info@lumanota.com Mandy Hreus
Keun Wook Ji focuses on the collision mechanism that particle physics takes and expresses in painting the abstract motions of elementary particle movements. Each painting becomes a partial visual data of particle collisions, and when they are combined, one large visual algorithm is created. He formulates these to scatter again and then recombine them to explore the visual possibility of realistically perceiving the movement of elementary particles. Ji’s visual attempts to approach the essence of matter begins from the ceaseless associations of the actual vibrations from the subject and this is expressed through the dynamics of images in his work. Actual Dynamics (2016) Colour pencil on canvas
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keunwookji.com gurnugi@gmail.com Keun Wook Ji
Silvia Krupinska is a process-based artist/sculptor focusing on how we relate to water environments, taking her inspiration from natural textures and experiences. Krupinska explores the element of “usefulness� in her work by trying to understand our daily lives, our local surroundings and how we can affect the change, for better or for worse. She has been investigating how art and science can work together in interdisciplinary collaborations with London Wildlife Trust, Hydrocitizenship, Thames21, and Dr Richard Bater. Krupinska is currently undergoing a self-initiated art & research residency in Walthamstow Wetlands, which had become her living lab since August 2015. There is an important process and material based component in her work, underpinned by using photography and sound notes, all of which are later reinterpreted into the outdoor/indoor installations and sculptures in steel, paper, brambles and found objects. Studio Hide (2016) Mixed media installation
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silviakrupinska.net silviakrupinska@gmail.com Silvia Krupinska
Peiwen Li considers himself an experimental photographer whose practice is strongly related to light and forms, the emotions expressed through abstraction. For its unconventional application of analogue photographic processes, camera-less photography offers the chance to peek into human consciousness, providing a new way of seeing. Combining the surrealist approaches in camera-less photography and modern technologies, his experiments are conducted to render the forces behind the norm, amplifying the abnormality, surfacing the regularities hidden in the chaos beyond human constructs. In a world with fewer certainties, his works – prints, photographs and moving images – aspire to provoke intellectual thinking and bring out a more personal, psychological and spiritual consciousness in response to the contingent nature of the present. Crumpled Chance (2016) Chemigram on photo paper
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donnne.com don_lee@me.com Peiwen Li
Mary Helen’s work predominantly revolves around human anatomy and physiology, exploring the external beauty of the human body while exposing its equally beautiful functioning mechanisms lurking under the surface. Fascinated by cosmetic surgery, Helen also explores the way in which the human form can be manipulated on the surface and what the pursuit of human beauty in our society can mean. Working with pencil, charcoal, ink, and water-colour as her primary media (although exploring many more), each piece is hand drawn/painted, making each distinctive and one-of-a-kind, just like the human subjects she captures. You Are the Reason my Kids Were Ugly (surgical marked face) (2015) Pencil on paper
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maryhelenmack.com kangaji.kungju@gmail.com Mary Helen
Carla Mancillas Serna is a Mexican mathematician and artist, interested in finding paradoxes and loopholes in systems that involve the perception of space. She loves exploring the possibilities of impossibilities; working for example with visual ambiguities and impossible figures. At the moment her research and experimentation focuses on Theoretical Physics. For the past couple of years, she has been working in higher dimensional spaces and non-Euclidian geometries. Her work consists of using an infinite array of geometrical projections, where spaces fold and unfold, to give the right depth and texture to her art. The cosmos, space and nebulae are a constant inspiration in her work. The concepts of consciousness in dark matter and energy also permeate her abstract paintings. Mancillas is very interested in the topic of extra dimensions that are needed in String Theory; most well known Theory of Everything. Thanks to these extra dimensional spaces, the mathematical model that supports this ToE is consistent. Black Void (2015) Mixed media
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carla.manser@gmail.com Carla Mancillas Serna
Marta Pinilla Martinez is an artist with a background in Biology. She is strongly influenced by Mendelev and Ramon y Cajal, both of whom were polymaths and pioneers of their time. She believes that science and art are a reflection of life, and therefore go hand in hand. Underpinning her work is a natural curiosity for everything, which she explores through her artistic practice. Over the course of the MA Pinilla has focused on the the relationship between the brain and the universe. Both share the same structure, birth and death, and in understanding these connections she seeks to reveal a universal form of representation. Starting with modular and fractal drawings, she has moved to tridimensional and multidimensional drawings and structures. The results of which represent the multidimensionality of global theories, such as the theory of superstrings and the theory of everything. Most recently, she has used the qualities of folded paper, like memory or flexibility, as a way to visualise everything, from the different dimensions of the universe to brain cells and emotions. Motivated by the view that love is an intrinsic component of life, emotion plays an important role in her work. Felicidad and the Theory of Everything (2016) Paper, screen printing and silk
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martapinilla.com biomartix@gmail.com Marta Pinilla Martinez
Grace Stokes is an artist who explores the curious relationships between biology and art. She has dedicated her practice and research to the exploration of the HeLa cell line, an immortal cell line with a huge social, economical, ethical and racial background and story. As an artist she has explored various aspects of the cell line, ranging from the aesthetic, the ethical issues, the social story and the economic implications. She is interested in using living, organic material to sculpt with in order to represent and tell the vital story of the cell line that derives from the incredible Henrietta Lacks. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2016) Living Plant, expanding foam, spray paint
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gracestokes.wix.com/hela gracestokes7@hotmail.co.uk Grace Stokes
The overarching themes in Jana Valencic’s work are responsibility and protection. She is passionate about imperfections and perceives her art as a “pursuit of making sense”, and of “worth creation” for the overlooked, neglected and the marginal. Valenci’s work is not unlike a Rubik’s cube, a process of manoeuvring ideas and materials. In her work, she treasures spontaneity. Seeing perfection as the curse of individuality she rejects postproduction. As Valenci is fanatical about packaging, a large part of her work consists of containers at different scales, from frames and boxes to installations, a specific one being a home. She interrogates it as a source of protection and identity, but also a place of conflict, injustice and social divisions. Her interests include the urban and natural environment, time, relationships, current affairs and the brain. In the Art and Science context she has explored a normal but different wiring of the brain experienced by a minority of the population – neurodiversity. As the link between neurodiversity and art is a fairly unresearched field, Valenci has identified possibilities for further interdisciplinary investigation. I Can Only Love Destruction Which Destroys Me (2016) Mother’s lipstick on recycled canvas, adapted wooden frame, found wrapping paper
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janavalencic.eu jana.valencic@siol.net Jana Valencic
Mira Varg is researching the power of the human mind, reflecting on its ability to see the recesses of the different “dimensions” that surround us. Her practice explores art which causes a situation that changes our normal perceptive experience and understanding of reality. Varg’s creations revolve around creating abstract imagery, sculptures and installations through experimental techniques and methods. “We, artists, should be the modern shamans who enrich people’s lives with our art. To truly experience and share our versions of reality is the role of an artist.” Whale (2016) Installation, sculpture, printmaking
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miravarg.com mira.varg@gmail.com Mira Varg
Jenny Walsh is a glass artist who has been investigating the role glass has played in the re-stimulation of neural pathways. The inert, insulating properties of glass make it an ideal material to be inserted into the body. Glass is resilient to the body’s immune system and natural saline conditions. Copper, a conductor of electricity, is often combined with glass in electrical interfaces to augment and enhance the body’s functions. This alliance can take the form of electrodes, receivers and transmitters, and advancements in micro-technology deliver more acute and accurate control. Action Potential is a sculptural installation that reflects the human body’s neural pathways. By adapting traditional glass techniques Walsh has created a series of glass neurons that, when stimulated by the viewer, will transmit a rhythmic light sequence to symbolise the neuron impulses that transmit information through the body. Jenny Walsh hopes that the viewer’s interaction will provoke them to consider whether they are in control, or the technology within the neurons is. This work was made in collaboration with Jeremy Keenan, Technician, and James Devereux, Glass Artist. Action Potential (2016) Glass and Copper
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jennywalsh.co.uk jennywalsh65@gmail.com Jenny Walsh
Charlotte Whiston’s medium is silk screen printing and her current prints are influenced by “Emergence Theory”, both in the strong and weak sense, in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind. Strong Emergence Theory states that human consciousness is something over and above the physical properties of the brain, although their existence does depend on these physical properties. The notion of reduction is highlighted within Whiston’s prints, seen through her employment of the primary colors. This is in virtue of strong emergence theory being a theory of ontological dependence that is non-reductive. Also her own skepticism concerning the plausibility of Strong Emergence Theory is exemplified through her employment of ambiguous and sometimes impossible forms within the art works. Strong Emergence (2015) Silk screen print
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charlottewhiston.co.uk charlotte.whiston1@gmail.com Charlotte Whiston
Stephanie Wong creates work that explores the relationship between the mind, body, and external environment. Informed by her background in neuroscience, she is interested in how embodied cognition, which elevates the role of the body in perception, can be elicited in a viewer. Wong holds a BSc in Neuroscience from the University of Bristol, in which she studied Synaptic Plasticity, Behavioural Neuroscience and Learning and Memory. Working mainly with printmaking and installation, Stephanie Wong’s practice examines how human experience from a neural to an ephemeral level can be grounded through artistic process. Extensions on Light (2016) Mixed media installation
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stephanie-wong.com syjwong90@gmail.com Stephanie Wong
MA
fine art
About “About About” Art, Education, Grammar and Knowledge
One of my first ever lectures was titled “About About”, and as I write this I am “about” to prepare a lecture titled “Everything I Don’t Know About Photography”. These two titles perhaps illustrate the fact that, to me, art education is not necessarily “about” the production or dissemination of knowledge. Rather art education is, primarily, a specialized milieu within which a diversity of practitioners and participants with varying perspectives, skills and experiences, exchange ideas, speculate upon and create possibilities. Artists create new possibilities by keeping art itself in question rather than reifying its identity, purpose, or outcomes as any form of instrumental, commodifiable or clearly “useful” knowledge. It is only by being permanently vigilant, and never complacent, even about the language used to describe and discuss art, that art can be kept in question and possibilities kept “in play”. Of course the very word “art” is itself held in question and in suspense by this approach. Bringing two or more grammatical modes of the term “about” into proximity in the title “About About” above, both enables and promotes a refusal to decide upon which of the terms is the object of the other. Is the first “about” referring to the second, or vice versa? Their contiguity, their contingency and their tautology makes them “play about” and leaves them, and their relationship undecided and indeterminate. Any meaning that thus results from such a play must then be an event, not a fixed, knowable and reified structure but encountered differently on each occasion. Importantly, and perhaps
profoundly, the lesson we learn from this tautological experiment may be applicable to all language. The artist, the writer, the artist who writes and the writer who “arts” never ceases to vigilantly maintain this playfulness in language. Meanwhile, and for the artist especially perhaps, “language” is more than words. Everyone who has ever made any kind of wordplay (every child does this); anyone who has decoded the wordplay in an advertisement or appreciated the wordplay in a joke is also embroiled in this constant disruption. We cannot call this play, this vigilance, this disruption “knowledge” or even the product of knowledge. Rather this disruption, play and vigilance is an undeniable and ineradicable function of language, its lifeblood, its means of keeping itself alive, healthy and renewed. I made another play (above) when I wrote “…the writer who arts…”. In such a case we sometimes add inverted commas to the word, like little handles that render it provisional, as if awaiting its next move into or out of our sentence, into or out of language. In this particular case I also suggest that “art” appear, no longer as a noun describing a discipline, but as a verb describing an act. Art is not necessarily a thing, and thing-hood may be the death of play, the death of all that we need to keep in flux. As I said at the outset, it is keeping “things” in play that produces possibility, and without possibility we might despair. Better then to apply this rule to the language we used to refer to art itself, perhaps considering “art” as a verb. Henceforth we might say “Let’s art” (as in “Let’s
Dance”), or perhaps “To art or not to art” (aping Shakespeare), both of which might thus become viable and grammatical enunciations. To play with language is always to refuse “knowledge” and thus to refuse authority, and perhaps this is what makes us laugh, as laughter appears to go hand-inhand with the refusal of authority. To laugh is to refuse. To laugh is to be free, sovereign, even if only momentarily (we might, after all, laugh defiantly in the face of our executioner). It is somehow comic to bring “things” (reifications, knowledge, authority etc.) into question. To question authority is to transgress, and transgression allows us to risk, to test, to judge for ourselves in a lawless realm of speculation we might call “the beyond”. As inexperienced children we are lawless and thus regularly corrected, “brought into line”. But a child is, by definition perhaps, also uneducated and thus invites our sympathy, tolerance and lenience. We might then describe such a child as “Beyond Good and Evil”, as Nietzsche titled one of his books. N.B. Not just beyond “good” but also beyond “evil”, and beyond any such binary opposition too, occupying only a “beyond”, a place or placelessness that is itself beyond words, beyond morals and more (even beyond beyond… perhaps?). As art is always active, acting, never a thing, never known, it might be more appropriate for art to be a verb. Art is, in this way, like Nietzsche’s assertion, always “beyond”. To “art” then is not to create a thing but to cultivate this very “beyond”. Once again our grammar (that which makes us comprehendible to one another)
creaks under the pressure of our insistence upon invention. However, Nietzsche bequeathed us another thought, also crafted in words, and also relevant to this brief meditation. He writes: “I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar”. The death of God is an event heralding our modernity as no longer superstitious, but as knowledgeable, rational, scientific and secular beings. However, Nietzsche noted that even the phrase “death of God”, and even the linguistic attributes of “God” as a noun, are caught up within the rule of a possibly greater god, the “god of grammar”. Grammar was one of the “Seven Liberal Arts” that determined the highest level of classical education. Grammar survived as one of the three crucial aspects of the “Triumvirate” informing medieval scholarship and went on to form a central part of Renaissance learning, and the modern curriculum too. Today, children (at our better schools at least) continue to be indoctrinated with grammar that allows them to articulate, express and negotiate their way as social beings and coherent contributors to a shared world. However, as we have already implied, there are “grammars” other than the grammar of words. e.g. Owen Jones, the Victorian designer and theorist of design produced a famous “Grammar of Ornament” (before ornament was deemed a “crime” by modernism.) As artists, we might then wish to consider every kind of grammar, while reflecting on the implications of Nietzsche’s deconstructive assertions. To play with language is to defy the god of grammar and to thus
be heroic, even laughing in the face of all such risk and danger. For the artist, “language” and “grammar” might refer to any material, any process or form that we use or encounter – not just words. In this regard Nietzsche’s assertion may appear to be one “lesson” that every artist needs to learn and “know”, by rote and by heart if necessary, if only then to make a personal or collective decision as to whether it should be revered and preserved as “knowledge”, or launched, as soon as possible, back into play. Paul O’Kane Artist, writer, lecturer
Kristaps Ancans conceptualises his practice as a filled space with filled surface. He considers the claim of filling a space and the surface to be truthful enough and to be just as provable as the fact that his weight is 78.34 kilograms. To create work he uses the following methodology: to think rationally about irrational things and irrationally about the rational. With positing this task for himself or for the things he creates, he fills the space or the surface with the result that he gets from this way of thinking. Ancans uses the description of filled surfaces to name his non-representational paintings. As there is no object that he relies on to make an abstraction, he doesn’t consider his paintings as abstract. They are simply surfaces filled with paint. A filled space encompasses everything that has a representational meaning and that fills the space. Two Flowers and Two Vases Next to a Monument of a Horse Whose Mane is Cut. One of the Flowers is in a Vase with a Dead Butterfly, While the Other Flower is not in a Vase. (2016) Kinetic objects
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kristapsancans.com ancanu.kristaps@gmail.com Kristaps Ancans
J.V. Aranda’s collage series, Hollywood Never Could Get You Right aims to exemplify the varied roles that different media allow the artist to explore: as curator (through the collection and selection of source material from different eras), painter (through the act of creating compositions and playing with colour) and sculptor (through the use of layering and the different applications of prints now possible thanks to the digital age), while creating work simultaneously influenced by the artist’s childhood growing up in California, and practicing as an artist abroad in London. It is J.V Aranda’s sincere belief that collage essentially explores and celebrates the relationship between the world’s collective visual history and its viewers, through the unorthodox means of destruction, manipulation and reconstruction, in order to create something new and reflective of the time in which these disparate elements were reconfigured as a collage, with the artist acting as a time-traveller and mad scientist. Hollywood Never Could Get You Right (2015) Digital collages in perspex light boxes
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johnaranda.squarespace.com john.vincent.aranda@gmail.com j.V. aranda
Iman Awadh’s work is very personal and about the trauma that she experienced during several wars in her country of Iraq. Her work is about the representation of trauma, particularly in her latest charcoal drawings which show the brutality of ISIS. Awadh uses charcoal as the medium which creates deep black marks when pressure is applied. Along with the fact that they are all in black and white, this adds a certain scary mode to her drawings which demonstrate the feeling of fear and terror. Awadh attempts to express the vulnerability of victims through certain sensitive gestures. Using techniques such as presenting the characters with one eye and one leg can suggest that the ISIS members depicted in her drawings have bad vision and are deteriorating. At the same time her work can be perceived as an attempt to empower those who have experienced trauma, including herself and her own experience. 2015 (2015) Charcoal on paper
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imanawadh.com iawadh@gmail.com Iman Awadh
David Bethell makes wooden constructions that are seen as contraptions. These contraptions have multiple functions that undergo a journey often forming narratives made up of signs and symbols. These narratives are made up of motifs of different time periods. These are not fixed to one time period, they are just reflective, and have a sense of becoming made up of multiple temporalities framed within changed landscape. Bethell plays with notions of time and space and the objects that he creates. Challenging the here and now of the object we are looking at. He tests his own abilities with his constructions, his own labour of making and using his object through a journey. Within this process there is a transformation, a process that reveals something new, through its predicted failure and the deconstruction of the object. The object’s new form is derived from the failure of the initial object. After all it is hard to look forward without looking back. Untitled (2016) Wood
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davidbethell.com info@davidbethell.com David Bethell
Rolina Blok’s practice is inspired by the artist’s encounters with materials, objects and artefacts. Her method for producing and the strategy of choosing the materials is informed by the idea that the materiality and methods of production are a vehicle for the idea/concept/message to reach the viewer. “In physical terms, I produce sculptures, analogue prints, installations and performances. I use found objects in my work because I like the way they bring with them a narrative fragment (taken out of their original context) of their previous life. I like the idea that by using these objects and materials that I find, I am giving them a new life by juxtaposing them with sculptural objects that I’ve made or images that I’ve printed onto surfaces, such as Perspex, mirror, glass, wood and plaster.” Untitled (2016) Silk screen print on perspex, mono print, plaster, wood, light source
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rolinablok.com rolinablok@hotmail.co.uk Rolina Blok
Mustafa Boga’s work examines the differences between art and documentary and how contemporary multi-media manipulates our understanding of current affairs. He is interested in the boundaries that separate the viewing of events as a witness and his desire to tell stories. In his recent projects he is creating a dialogue between feelings of compassion and threat. He has a background in journalism and film and has brought these skills into play in his fine art practice. He is also an experimental printmaker and video artist. His work deals critically (but also humorously) with issues such as gender, national identity, militarism, masculinity and sexuality. His work also involves using traditionally feminine, domestic applied craft techniques such as fabric printing to bring a dialogue between the private and public into play. At the same time, his performances are being developed into video works, which display both vulnerability and wit. Guarding Plates (2015) Digital collage printed on fabric
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mustafaboga.com mubogga@yahoo.com Mustafa Boga
A space comes always with its tricky sides that we usually try to erase when curating a show. An emergency exit door, a canalisation, the stocking space behind the gallery often ends up being obstacles that blight the mythic white cube space. Lise Bouissiere’s installations are partly based on reactivating these areas left aside to better experience their potential, the space is then curated to measure through its proper characteristics and what is considered as its imperfections. Leaking landscape (2014) Ink and plaster
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lise.bouissiere@gmail.com Lise Bouissiere
“Ah I am not sure that is the right ah to deliver – I cannot tell you which ah is right or wrong, it cannot be said of this Há that persists, what it is exactly but definitely, you can hear it right? Sometimes. He thought: this is a “disaster” but in this situation, however, the affirmation of that which is absent is alarming. You can’t say that you are indifferent to her voice he thought to himself. She is so completely stripped of superfluous perfections it is almost like she is deprived of her existence, or rather her existence is not a projection into space but an internalization of all outside, verifying with maximum lucidity a relation which force has with itself, like pink rushing always and always a new on your mouth. Well, it doesn’t seem like you are deprived of anything – he said. Apart from the place where one is two. You should have a toast he said. Ah – she started humming.” Sound Sang Suddenly sss (2016) Score for performance
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catarinacubelo.eu cubelocatarina@gmail.com Catarina Cubelo
Instead of occupying literal space, we now live in media space, which lacks specific formal, territorial and social definition. We understand the world, and communicate with each other, through the spectacle, a system of image production and representation dominated by the logic of market capitalism. Alex Dipple sets the materials of the press, images and texts, on a collision course with personal possessions and daily ritual, creating provisional tableaus that seem to defy logic. Images are unhinged from context and meticulously reprinted so Dipple’s presence is located in every dot. Texts are redacted and speech unintelligible, reflecting a failure of language to convey meaning. For Dipple there is no outside and inside, only folds and tears that maintain a state of flux between the incoherence of the interior and the authority of the outside. Here media intrusion is inverted and Dipple makes use of the permeability to create her own stories. Demonstrating Vowels (2016) Performance
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alexdipple.com amdipple@gmail.com Alex Dipple
Alice Kemp works primarily in painting. She is currently painting with thick oil paint on top of flat mono printed backgrounds. She applies blobs of ink onto rollers and then rolls the ink onto her canvas to make patterns that act as a background. The painted marks are often inspired by the random effect of the print, like a background of mountain shapes on which she paints trees. She wants to challenge the received notion of western “high� art by referencing subjects associated with the decorative. Her paintings feature flowers, plants, patterns and animals inspired by her experience living in East Asia. Last year Kemp collaborated with photographer Kenshu Shintsubo from Tokyo Geidai University, painting decorative marks on top of his photographs for an exhibition in the Ritsurin garden in Japan. She learnt about the importance of collaboration in her practice, encouraging her to work with local Japanese school children and students from Croydon College on her return. These collaborations have not only helped her to practice looking at her work from an outsider viewpoint but have also inspired Kemp to free herself to experiment with new materials and paint on a bigger scale back in the studio. Camouflage Cat on Monoprint (2016) Oil and etching ink on paper
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alicekemp123.blogspot.co.uk alicekemp123@hotmail.com Alice Kemp
Cultural signifiers is an umbrella that Roshanak Khakban’s work falls under, using a combination of footage taken by her and found imagery through the internet, movies, TV series, she compiles videos that suggest how there are distorted views of the East in the West and vice versa. Untitled (2016) Still from video
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roshanak-khakban.com khakban.roshanak@gmail.com Roshanak Khakban
Yuichiro Kikuma is a painter whose practice looks at the process of painting itself as a main element of a finished image. He explores systematic approaches to painting that on one hand lead to repetition but on the other allow chance and irregularity that happen within the limitations of painting. In this structure, the role of a painter becomes rather passive but at the same time crucial in decision making. All forms of conscious image making are representational to some degree, Kikuma however is interested in the elements of chance which are often not fully under the artist’s control. Kikuma examines the process of how images emerge between the two. In this exhibition, the series of paintings specifically incorporates these inevitable physical aspects in painting such as limitation of picture plain, gravity and drying process. Untitled (2016) Acrylic on canvas
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yuichirokikuma.com yuichirokikuma@gmail.com Yuichiro Kikuma
The work of Camille Leherpeur revolves around power structures. The structures he explores are varied, (political, economical, domestic, etc). The work comes from a critical point of view on art history, museum historiography and popular culture and seeks to achieve a balance between seriousness and irreverent eclecticism. The artist crafts performative items inspired by common shapes seen in european museums such as a crown, mortuary mask, reliquary casket, sword, sceptre, scrolls and manuscripts. Due to the nature of the work, the vitrine and the museum case are the appropriate places to display these items. However, when the items are passive relics at the time of their conservation, they are activated by the artist at the time of their forgery. Items are worn during performances where the artist plays a character defined by the objects he sports. At the time of writing this text, a triad of personae is outlined in Leherpeur’s theatre. First, the king of nowhere is an avatar of secular power. Then comes the priest who is an avatar of spiritual power. Finally the executioner who is the executant of the King’s will. Portrait of the Artist in 2015 (The Priest) (2015) Digital photography
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leherpeur.eu c.leherpeur@gmail.com Camille Leherpeur
Through a hybrid coexistence of making and meaning, Nicola Lorini’s practice finds its recurrent preoccupation in the empathic potential of images and in their poetic appearance. Working with found imageries, such as archives and ethnographic books as well as within specific natural and cultural contexts, he creates objects, photographs, videos and installations that enact an archeology of aesthetic and narrative elements. His interest in the painstaking visual and physical presence of the work, in relation to the space it inhabits, alternates with the almost invisible emergence of the conceptual structure that made it possible, opening up his work to multiple interpretations. His recent research shows an interest in how the modes of exploration and visuality established by the internet perform offline as much as online, unfolding new practical formulations and horizontal correspondences where new forms of consciousness towards the notion of materiality, visuality and contemplation take place. Untitled (2016) Video loop, duration 1’ 22’’
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nicolalorini.eu nicolalorini@gmail.com nicola lorini
The practice of Jérémie Magar is a dialogue. From the Spanish Civil war to the history of immigration in peripheral suburbs of European capitals (both familiar to him), the artist invites individuals to share their perception of their singularity in the society they inhabit. In his projects and multimedia installations, the artist questions the idea of collective memory and how the past is appropriated to define identity. Jérémie Magar creates “platforms” where he assembles video, prints and texts. Through these fragmented installations, the artist immerses the audience in unresolved reflections and transmits his disquiet yet playful attitude towards the “unreasonable silence of the world” (A. Camus). Out of Broadwater Farm (2016) Screenshot from video, 6’
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jjohnpaterman.com/site/ jeremiemagar@gmail.com Jérémie Magar
Alisha Mir is interested in the “fantastic� relating to the uncanny, the oscillation between what is there and what is created. Mir finds the in-between state quite curious and so the world of human-animal hybrids plays an important part in her work. Transitioning from painting on a canvas to creating surfaces and using industrial tools, it is apparent that the process of making has become an important part of Mir’s work. In her current practice, she has been working with steel and graphite in particular to make drawings that have an eerie, ephemeral representation. Skin to Skin (Triptych 2/3) (2015) Graphite on steel
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alishamir.com alishamir20@gmail.com Alisha Mir
Galina Munroe has no particular urges to make effects that might otherwise predominate. Instead, she wants to suspend any such readings on our part in favor of accessing language and imagery in a state of emergence. This ambivalent inbetweeness is precisley the state of mind and practice that she searches out when working. Hoping and groping inbetween, expanding upon temporality and existence. Transcending through fragmented narratives, flexing an abstraction upon language and figuration. Each drawing and painting seeks its own pace and pitch, while nevertheless stating the same problematic of inbetweeness until the word inbetweeness itself is exhausted and language itself becomes as transitory as the imagery of the work. By riffing upon the rhythms, textures, surfaces and slackening upon figuration and meaning, her work tests the parameters, unhinging narrative and positionning the work and the viewer constantly on the edge and inbetween. Untitled (2016) Oil and compressed charcoal on canvas
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cargocollective.com/galinamunroe galina.munroe@gmail.com Galina Munroe
Politics had always been dirty in India but when politics and religion mix together it gets dirtier. Religion and community are the first and foremost things people notice in others ignoring the fact that all belong to the same country. There is a strong feeling of belongingness towards their religion and community which is a natural phenomenon but there is also a strange and equally strong despise towards the others which political parties focus and exploit by arousing religious sentiments and making promises of drafting laws favouring the customs and culture of one community or religion and suppressing minority religions which then results in riots. This system of abusing the idea of religion by political powers for their personal benefits is focused in Jasmeet Singh’s works which are informed and inspired from the current activities of communal tensions manufactured by political parties to gain power. Works have minimum elements on a plain saffron background that establishes the works as a series and act like different characters of the same story which allows the viewer to establish connection between them. Untitled (2016) Inkjet print on paper
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jasmeet_@outlook.com Jasmeet Singh
Subash Thebe works with sound, installation, music and performance and uses sound as a basic medium for most of his works. His practice explores the relationship of art and social change through sound. He records the sound of public engagements, sound of public spaces and interviews related to contemporary socio-political issues. With the growing tendency of using social media as a space for struggle, resistance, and propaganda, he also exploits the unlimited access of sounds it can provide and unlimited space to disseminate. He works with various audio software, equipment and electronic music to manipulate sound to produce the desired effect. He uses open source technology and file sharing technology that have made the sound production widely accessible and affordable. Recording Sounds of Solidarity (2015) Instagram photography
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subashthebe.com subashthebe@hotmail.com Subash Thebe
Will Thorburn’s work combines both the decorative and the anatomical to create an intermediate space in which the organic and inorganic merge. Saturating the canvas with bright, clean colours, forms emerge suggesting limbs, internal organs, and plants intertwined in ambiguous combinations. Influenced equally by the palettes of the fauves and pop artists such as Tom Wesselmann, the works evoke sundrenched climates, the lime greens contrasting with brilliant oranges and deep crimson. The colours of southern France and Morocco infuse the paintings with a vivid energy. Each work simultaneously creates and resists a sense of depth; flat areas of colour dominate the canvases, yet arches and apertures intimate three-dimensional space. Palm trees, vines, and cacti surround fragments of reclining nudes and fractured bodies in indeterminate gardens and courtyards. These dissected figures are painted with a simplicity of form and vigour of line, at once innocent and unnerving. Beach Fatigue (2016) Oil on canvas
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willthorburn.com info@willthorburn.com Will Thorburn
Re[figuring] Dialectical Flatness constitute both process and method. Flatness is not a condition belonging to Modernism alone, nor is it the language of all abstract expressionist lines. Western philosophy is strongly founded upon the dialectic, the mechanism of logic that perpetuates binary divisions. However, with 59.5 million people… displaced by the end of 2014… (BBC News, 2015), violent divisional discourse established itself as the logic upon which humanity currently pivots. Re[figuring] Dialectical Flatness reimagines a logic of binary conjunctions. A line, spoken by a member of the Kalahari Khoisan tribe, Southern Africa, reads: “There’s a dream dreaming us…” (Kalahari Bushman, date unknown) Pure logic refutes dreaming. Viviers, however, holds the thought that dream is not host to the land of illusion, but that dreaming is the origin of manifestation. “Conjunct_ subjects” constitutes grounded & figured forms, that have emerged from dreaming and holds the thought pattern of binary conjunctions. Re[figuring] Dialectical Flatness: Conjunct_subject / Red & Pink / Masculine & its Balancing / Heart & its Echo (2015) Plywood, cochineal pigment, acrylic paint, interior matt varnish, support wheels
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vivierschristelle.wix.com/viviers vivierschristelle@gmail.com Christelle Viviers
Eva Wilkinson’s work are digital videos made from footage captured from her wanderings around remembered places on Google Street View. The locations featured are places from her home town or places she has visited in the past. Through these films she explores the borders and boundaries of real spaces, remembered places and virtual landscapes. Untitled (2016) Video still
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evawilkinson.co.uk evapwilkinson@gmail.com Eva Wilkinson
MA
PHOTOGRAPHY
The MA Photography situates photography as plural and trans disciplinary encompassing at its core, contemporary visual arts practices, aesthetics and logics. The deep integration of theory and practice offers a world-class supportive environment in which to explore photography as both a grammar and cultural form of expression that interlaces fine art, technology, philosophy, politics alongside new media (electronic, digital) and older technologies (analogue, archival). Opportunities to research photography as a central component of discursive practices within the arts, the sciences and the construction of personal identities within or across social media, provide students with tools to work in fields related to artistic production and the extended creative industries. Philosophy of the visual image and the understanding of photography as a melting pot of political, aesthetic and social concepts are embedded throughout the course. Specific emphasis is placed on exploring new media and post-internet as the language of contemporary art practice. Exhibiting forms one of the core pedagogical tools. Experimental forms of exhibition are taking place throughout the course on a number of levels, including exhibiting on handheld devices, TV screens, sitespecific installations, publication and performances. Unlike many other photography courses, this course is not committed to one notion of what photography is or to one form of media specific practice. Instead the course aims to
provide students with the tools to locate their own practice within a broad range of contemporary visual art forms. Dr Daniel Rubinstein Course Leader
Victoria Batt’s work explores the idea of beauty and freedom of expression in an intuitive playful way. The fragility of beauty and life is reflected in the materials she uses: tissue paper, acetate and flowers. In her practice, she experiments with ways of making a photograph into a shared experience by creating wearable photographs. Her interest lies in the connections and disconnections of sharing photographs. Batt is inspired by storytelling as a way of connecting and disconnecting with people. She incorporates this into her work by creating performances during which she wears shared images created into an item of clothing. Flows and Disruptions (2016) Installation, fabric, paper, flowers, projection
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victoriabatt.com hello@victoriabatt.com Victoria Batt
Aurelie Berry’s work explores the parallels between photography and death masks. The death mask is used as an allegory for the instability of the image suspending the space between life and death, between reality and the invisible. Berry’s work is informed by literature, poetry and Surrealist art particularly in relation to sleep, dreams, hallucinations and myths. In this series, the death mask is presented around a double structure (boxes and photographs) to convey outer body experiences and as an object transgressing death. Material used are plaster, plaster bandages, resin and paper. Eidolons I, II, III (2016) Paper and plaster
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aurelie.berry@googlemail.com Aurelie Berry
Ilayda Bilgin uses art as a way to realize and affirm her Turkish identity in a violent environment that has always been going on over woman. Thus, she sees art as a form of collective consciousness of our communities. Her subjects carry notions of suffering and absence. Thus, her characters often appear as shadows, without half of their face or body. Her figures oscillate between abstraction and expressionism. Their uniqueness lies in the spontaneity with which Bilgin paints them. She willingly mixes techniques and materials. She sees the colors as beings of their own, interacting and tending to discord as much as to create harmony. Unknown (2015) Mixed media
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ilaydabilgin.carbonmade.com bilginilayda@hotmail.com Ilayda Bilgin
Mariya Bilyan’s installations are based on the principle of unpredictability and the algorithmic duplication. She works with a woollen thread, which helps her to remain flexible and variable. There is neither a process of preplanning as to where to put the thread nor an act of consciousness of how the installation would influence the given spatial situation. Yet, as a result of such a contingent process new borders emerge. The thread breaks the space and forms a new visually and physically perceivable territory within the same space. The lines, which only gradually appear, break and distort this territory in such a way that upon entering it people become aware of their individual presence and the vectors of their movements in the space. Continuation (2014) Woollen thread
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m.bilyan@gmail.com Maria Bilyan
Sara Boscioni explores the concepts of simulacra, fetish, idealisation, obsession, nostalgia and rebellion. She works with mixed medias such as photography, painting, video and performance. She tries to relate to the multiplicity of art with a controversial “schizophrenic approach�, a process in which she continually changes and re-creates her personality and body. The paradoxical and challenging nature of art is central in her production; she fights and plays within her character until she has enough reasons to change it again and move on. Every Act of Rebellion Expresses a Nostalgia for Innocence and an Appeal to the Essence of Being (2016) Oil and acrylic painting on photographic prints
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sara.bos@hotmail.it Sara Boscioni
As a contemporary subject, Juan Carlos Covelli is intrinsically linked with technology; always connected to social networks, broadcasting to the world his every move through smartphones, tablets and selfie sticks. His body, made of flesh and bones, eats and shits but is simultaneously becoming a mesh of hashtags, GPS pins and flows of information. Thus, he is becoming like image, one that is trying to catch up with the computational speed of the informational age and its ubiquity essences. This is the way he embodies the network. A type of embodiment that lies between technology and the body, is neither material nor immaterial. Through his body, the artist is trying to understand better what makes us digital, material and whether, by generating this new embodiment – a trans-materiality – he is able to grasp a new way of understanding the dynamics of the information society we live. In his execution, Covelli employs a wide array of media, spanning photography, video, 3D printing, coding and data streaming, where self-portrait and data manipulation of the image are used to produce installation based works. I am given (2016) Digital collage
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juancovelli.com jccovelli@gmail.com Juan Covelli
Yaoyao Ding’s practice explores the relationship between painting and photography, indifferently considering paintings and photographs as images, rather than doing a distinction between paintings and photographs. The new images she creates throughout these investigations are not defined as paintings or photographs but are referred to as second hand images. Second hand images are devised via translation or transformation and a mechanical process, they challenge the notion of originality. In her series, she tries to find her own narratives within the existing images, exploring thus the dynamics between beauty and sadness, desires and fears. Paintings of Paintings of Girls Look Like Me (2016) Painting
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dingyaoyao11@outlook.com Yaoyao Ding
“I need to pray not to some God but to a higher force. I need a miracle.” Bodyflow is a place where the outside world ceases to exist, where time is suspended, wounds are healed and dreams can live. These hangings, unconfined by frames, are created in a trance-like meditative state of hakalal, following a distinct process. The room is cleared and the canvas is laid on the floor. A candle and incense are lit. Alix Edwards immerses her hands in the paint, then spreads and mixes the colours by feeling the paint sliding between fingers to ensure the flow between the artist’s body and canvas is not interrupted; walking, kneeling, lying on the canvas without restrictions. The space is quiet, either flooded with sunlight or immersed in darkness. It is a carefree space: disconnected from banalities and constraints of everyday life, where colours are applied directly to the canvas where they merge and blend until the energy has gone, she feels exhausted and her hands lie still. Bodyflow II : My heterotopia (2016) Acrylic paint, glitter, energy on canvas
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artographylondon.com aedw892498@aol.com Alix Edwards
Being there and not there is a present notion in Pearlie Frisch’s everyday. Due to being separated from her home country, she spends a lot of time video calling. Confronted with her own physical experience against the visual perception, which is bound to a screen, she became interested in virtual spaces that cannot be physically encountered. The variations of visual impressions on screen, whilst video calling, reveal bizarre angles and compositions. Frisch’s practice includes installations with mirrors, iPads, slide projectors and photographic prints of screenshots taken during video calling, photos taken facing a mirror with an iPad, or landcape images with mirrors. There Where You Are Not (2016) 35mm slides, slide projectors, plumbing pipes, mirrors
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pearliefrisch.com pearliefrsch@gmail.com Pearlie Frisch
María de la O Garrido’s work explores the traces of (her) experience through chance, curiosity and observation, she analyses what is around her, principally what it’s not working well, and translates her conclusions into sculptural installations. Her relationship with image is wide, using this as material within an overall process, as part of a kind of ethic of collage, by which she means the selection of elements from a diverse spectrum of possibilities and “places”; juxtaposing, re-contextualising and re-aligning in order to transform and create new meanings. Making Love with the Things I Hate deals with different aspects of the everyday life. It pretends to make fun of the hated “things” that we can’t avoid but which are always present. There is no hierarchy as to what to hate as each thing has an accumulative presence as part of the fabric of life; the empty bottle of shampoo that is supposed to be full, the bank statement that makes it impossible to pay the next rent or the impotence felt in the face the consequences of some social or political changes. We lose control, other hand is moving us, let’s say and laugh at it at least. Making Love with the Things I Hate (2016) Mixed media installation
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mariadelaogarrido.com ogarridogea@gmail.com María de la O Garrido
Ludovica Girotto is interested in the characteristic of architecture to appear and expose itself. The external appearance, so-called facade of the building, is placed on the top of the construction, wrapping and defining the exterior aspect. The external part implies the presence of an internal one, more deep and private, that we cannot reach from the outside. The surface of architecture is supposed to hide and protect a private space, in this case the intimate space of the artist. But what happens when the boundary between private and public is nullified? The intent of the artist is to reproduce this condition of continuity internal and external, trying to recreate the ideal space of the ‘folding architecture’, where the surface of the external becomes the internal through the act of fold itself. She uses the surface of the space itself as a surface to expose the private dimension: its role shifts from covering and protecting the internal, to showing and making it visible. A celebration of the exterior in a fusion with the private. Personal Outside (2016) Video projection, photographs, models
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ludovica.girotto@virgilio.it Ludovica Girotto
Samantha Harvey uses video and audio to reflect upon the mind’s relationship to the body. Her practice questions whether it is possible to emulate non-physical sensations that remain unseen. Taking inspiration from science fiction, philosophy, and quantum leap theory, Harvey’s works seek to investigate the affect that occurs when mental sensations become visible through the physicality of the self. The Moment we are Blind is a recent work which embodies these questions, with the title being an integral part of the work. Examining the state of being if one becomes blind, losing one’s visual perception and sense of self, and exploring these sensations. Taking inspiration from analogue techniques working in the darkroom. She creates moving image works that explore these themes, through the materiality of the digital screen, sound, and portraiture. The Moment We Are Blind, part 2 of 5 (2016) Video installation, duration 7’32
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trireme.co samantha@trireme.co Samantha Harvey
Célia Hay’s work explores the link between image and performance, focusing particularly on the moment of photography. She sets up some performative processes of shooting, considering photography as the starting point of an interaction. Hay is indeed deeply interested in what happens between individuals during the shooting. The interaction of their bodies, how they establish a deep and yet ephemeral connection at this very moment, in silence, the role and the nature of the mental projections they have on each other by this time, the mix of trust and tension, et cetera. Thus, she uses video as a way to extend the moment of these meetings in time. There is a notion of fragile balance inherent to Célia Hay’s work. The shooting is used as a frame she sets up and during which something will be able to occur, perhaps an accident, in the manner of some mysterious rituals. Her images depict people spacing out, during some moments of waiting or wandering. She looks for something that slips from them and which cannot be totally grasped, an inner experience. The Last Gesture (2016) Video installation, duration 29’30
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celiahay.fr janesuzy.hay@gmail.com Célia Hay
Lena Heubusch´s practice concerns the transformation of the seemingly ordinary through a shift in photographic practices. Developing sculpture and moving image based work, she explores the system of thought and how the ordinary of the everyday creates our experience of knowledge. Her series Everything In-between is Irrelevant investigates the rhizomatic role copper plays within the evolution of technology, the transmission of energy and how these subject areas mirror the limitations of modern photography. In a fully structured system like photography, copper is an element that is capable of the photographic process yet allows for far more potential than the system does. A materiality like copper therefore disrupts the current order of knowledge. Expanding the realm of contemporary photography beyond its field, the categories we have created are exploding rapidly and call for restructuring of previously conceived systems therefore invoking a return to materiality. Returning to a truth to material therefore is returning to a truth to existence. Everything In-between is Irrelevant (2016) Copper installation
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lenaheubusch.com lenaheubusch@me.com Lena Heubusch
Why is there something rather than nothing? Why isn’t everything just a huge void, a huge blackness? These are the main questions that drive Candice Japiassu’s research. Human beings, utterly unaware of their originary ground and without a say in it, are thrown into the world. For Japiassu, her sheer existence is awkward and vertiginous, precisely because it has no ground in itself. How she deals with the fact that she exists in this “infinite abyss” is her work’s main aim. Photography is her main tool, it became an existential practice in her everyday life, compelling her to deal with things and appreciate even further her condition as a finite being. For her, photography is pointing out the void between existence and the (failed) attempt to fully grasp what is ungraspable: existence itself. She is trying to understand photography as a bridge between her existence and its relation to the world around it. Thus, most of her research is based on the fusion between the mundane and the extraordinary. She considers the image as means to accept an insufficiency, even if it works by providing her with temporary and illusionary foundations. Dust on a Groundless Ground (2016) Vinyl print, direct to media (aluminium)
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candicejapiassu.com candiceja@gmail.com Candice Japiassu
David Jaramillo Klinkert likes to position his photography in a zone of ambiguity, to try to express indifferentiation of sex, genus, the natural kingdom, natural order, and to create new becoming in between fixed forms of life experience. There is a constant mix of something strange and something familiar which is central to his depiction of the world. The light of all Arts, Chesterton said, is the combination of an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome. Klinkert’s photography gives him that connection to the otherness, that welcomes and wonders. Currently, he is interested in how photography can render visible the forces that invest the body and make it deform and dissolve, and create sensations in a state of indifferentation; where we become indeterminate, de-humanised, but re-possessed of animal spontaneity. Via sensations and a dissolution of forms, we return to our preevolutionary state in which, as Deleuze said, “we no longer know which is animal and which is human, because something like the triumph or monument of their nondistinction rises up�. Contra Natura (2016) Lightgrams, monotype contact prints, still life photography
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ensynapsis.com d.jaramilloklinkert1@arts.ac.uk David Jaramillo Klinkert
“There are no individual statements, there never are. Every statement is the product of a machinic assemblage, in other words, of collective agents of enunciation (take “collective agents” to mean not peoples or societies but multiplicities). The proper name (nom propre) does not designate an individual: it is on the contrary when the individual opens up to the multiplicities pervading him or her, at the outcome of the most severe operation of depersonalisation, that he or she acquires his or her true proper name. The proper name is the instantaneous apprehension of a multiplicity.” — Deleuze, Gilles; Guattari, Félix; (2002) [1987] A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia – London: Continuum (p.37) Machinic Unconscious (2016) Installation
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andrewkiddie.tumblr.com helloandrewkiddie@gmail.com Andrew Kiddie
Federico Redaelli is particularly interested in how socio-political ideologies strongly influence the life of the individuals who naturally fear decontextualisation from society, how audio-visual media can be used as a subtle tool by the weavers of such ideologies, but also how art can exploit media to produce a powerful critique on such matters and let us know more about ourselves and the way our world operates. The effort to capture what we are not used or allowed to see is a common denominator throughout Redaelli’s practice, which freely mixes photography and cinema. His current research puts under examination the narrative structure of a cinematographic product and the one of a dream from different points of view. He is interested in how the combined disciplines of cinema theory, modern neurology, psychoanalysis and philosophy, offer various insights about how our brain and subconscious are able to give birth to such complex and seminal narratives, before our rationality (widely influenced and shaped by our cultural and social context), makes them impure through its censorship. Int. Playing Room – Night (2016) Digital photographic print on PVC
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federedaelli.com f.redaelli@hotmail.com Federico Redaelli
Stephanie Sant’s work is mainly video-based but the videos themselves branch out to have dialogues with “things”, performers or each other. Her research in desire, the ephemeral and alchemy provides foundations for her video work. Her work therefore has a performative element that stems from spontaneity whether it incorporates people or not. Ultimately, her journey as an artist and a human being is to achieve a form of intimacy and connection with the performers and eventually with the audience. Midas (2016) Video installation (3 videos), duration 11’39, olive branch, gold leaf, beeswax, pigment, spices, golden thread
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stephaniesant.com stephaniesant20@gmail.com Stephanie Sant
To Mike Sung, art is about knowing oneself and playing around with the exhibiting process. His work deals with politics, technology, and spirits. He believes there is always something behind, to which is connected to his practice. He uses various methodologies and technologies, in a playful and interdisciplinary approach of photography. He enjoys anime, comic and games, which he incorporates in his work. Mindcraft (2016) Augmented reality, 3D modelling, digital sculpture
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mikesungphoto.com ekimice@gmail.com Mike Sung
Will Webster conducts business and creates output where repeating circles of activity meet. Starting from a concept that collective and individual endeavours define themselves by their difference and their repetition, he seeks areas where interests overlap in order to provoke notions of commonality and community. By positioning himself in the role of mediator, Webster attempts to provide frameworks and structures whose attributes are characterized only by indeterminacy. In previous projects working with photography, installation and performance, he has harnessed financial assemblage, the rhetoric of interview, Cartesian geometry and what used to be called “Home Economics�. The degree show work probes the speculative relationship between exchange and display in art and mechanisms of capital accumulation. Will Webster also makes frames. 1P (2016) Screen print on perspex, financial transaction
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willwebster.com will@willwebster.com Will Webster
Neale Willis is particularly interested in creating conflict between what enters the machine and what leaves it. He manipulates data to create ambiguities within the certainties of the digital realm, breeding uncertainty from the usually reassuring definite of binary data and letting repetition and replication take form as a rhythm from the space inbetween the known and unknown. Pardon The Dust (2016) Speaker, computer, algorythm, deleted tweets
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nealewillis.com hello@nealewillis.com Neale Willis
Art Direction and Design Daniel Baer Nils Braun Davide Di Teodoro Contributors Susan Aldworth Paul O’Kane Dr Daniel Rubinstein Alex Schady Editors Aleksandra Borys Célia Hay Lena Heubusch Andrew Kiddie Nicola Lorini Marta Pinilla Martinez Stephanie Wong Published by Central Saint Martins and printed by Team Impression (UK) in edition of 400 copies 2016.csmpostgradart.com
Affordable workspaces for the arts — www.euroart.co.uk
Cass Art proudly supports Central Saint Martins Degree Show. The Cass Art Prize is awarded to one undergraduate and one postgraduate student selected from the show, each will receive £1,000 to spend on art supplies at Cass Art.
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While developing the show and this catalogue, we searched for a concept that could embody the wide spectrum of practices on display. The importance of process pushed itself forward as a central element through which the many different approaches could be accumulated. Not as a unified whole, but rather a thread from which multiple weaves can be woven. An encounter with Louise Bourgeois’ mantra “do, undo, redo” resonated with us. We sympathised with her sensitive approach to the production of art, her expression of the process as a flux coming by waves, a visceral oscillation of states and emotions, a constant process of destruction of what has been, and (re)construction of what is and might be. The answers found are not definitive, but instead form a repetition, an iteration, a movement. Doing is always in some way undoing, undoing is always in some way redoing … and so it expands, folds back into itself, and continues.