JAMIE BARR HANNAH BERESFORD ANNA BERGIN KAREEN BLYTH GARY CALDWELL KATARINA CHOMOVA KIRSTY COLYER KELLY CRAIG CARMELINA DAURON LESZEK DEBOSZ LAURA DONALDSON LOIS GREEN MIKE HUGHES EMMA-LEIGH MCKAY JJ MCKEOWN SOPHIE RADCLIFFE LOUISE TIMMS
GRAY’S PAINTING
DEGREE SHOW 2012
Gray’s School of Art BA Hons Painting Degree Show. 16th June - 24th June 2012
Sponsored by Aberdeen Asset Management plc
I Made it Fourth year is the most exciting year in art school. By this stage students’ contextual awareness is extremely high, and their ways of making are sophisticated and appropriate for discussing their interests. It is a genuinely exciting time. Students have the freedom to control the development of their practice, which paves the way for a rich, fulfilling and action-packed year. The Degree show is the climax of this year and thus their education at Gray’s School of Art. Indeed, the show is also the highlight of the cultural calendar for many people living in, or visiting, the city. Students feel a great amount of pressure throughout their final year – both external and self-imposed pressure. There is the pressure to achieve a degree award in line with their capabilities and potential, but also the apprehension of the next stage: life after art school. It is not uncommon for students to approach their degree show as if it has to be their ultimate contribution to the global discussion in painting practice. For many students, this will be the first showing of a group of their works, and to have such unrealistic expectations can be unhelpful and debilitating. Each student’s exhibition is in fact their presentation for assessment, and accounts for the majority of their final award. The degree show is a showcase of the individual discussion that each student has been engaged in over the past year - and previous three years - and it represents their current investigation, thoughts and interests; no more and no less. This is hugely interesting, and rightly deserves to be celebrated.
This year’s graduates have already been involved in several exhibitions over the course of the past year. They have shown work within the art school, exhibited in shows throughout the city and have curated a very successful pre-degree show of their work in Edinburgh. A number of them have also won awards locally and nationally. The Gray’s School of Art Painting Graduates of 2012 have achieved much already, and are a credit to themselves, the department and the wider university. I have no doubt that they, and their work, will inspire both visitors and future students alike. To adapt a great quote, the Degree show is not the beginning of the end for these graduating makers, but rather, simply the end of the beginning; I anticipate great things. Peter Chalmers. 2011/12 Painting Graduate Maker in Residence.
JAMIE BARR
jamiebar122@hotmail.co.uk 07842260367
Studio Shot
Stage 4,mixed media. 80cm x 60cm
5
HANNAH BERESFORD
icarus_found_you@btinternet.com 07548514292
Studio Shot
As Big As Your Arm, enamel on board. 98cm x 180cm
7
ANNA BERGIN
annahazelbergin@gmail.com 07543481462
Studio Shot
An Unfound Door, acrylic and oil on canvas. 120cm x 150cm 9
KAREEN BLYTH
www.kareenblyth.com
No Colours of Greenfields, oil on canvas. 120cm x 180cm
Freedom, oil on canvas. 75cm x 90cm 11
GARY CALDWELL
www.gary-caldwell.com
Studio Shot
Fifty Two, acrylic on wood blocks. 120cm x 90cm 13
KATARINA CHOMOVA
www.katarinachomova.com katarinachomova@seznam.cz 07427617241
Where Is My Home?, mixed media on board. 180cm x 122cm
Studio Shot
15
KIRSTY COLYER
www.kirstycolyer.tumblr.com kirsty.colyer@btinternet.com 07929822849
Studio Shot
Ladder of sins, mixed media. 122cm x 91cm
17
KELLY CRAIG
kellycraig@hotmail.co.uk
Stiff Little Creatures, mixed media. 200cm x 250cm
Concealed Exposures: IV, mixed media. 35cm x 30cm
19
CARMELINA DAURON
dauron.daniel@sky.com 07502249015
City Square V, mixed media on canvas. 106cm x 86cm
Studio Shot. City Square, IV (Pearl Square), mixed media on canvas 150.5cm x 105cm
21
LESZEK DEBOSZ
lechdebosz@yahoo.co.uk 07746014594
Studio Shot
Organic 1, oil on canvas. 165cm x 105cm
23
LAURA DONALDSON
www.laurajdonaldson.com l.donaldson@rgu.ac.uk
Studio Shot
Dolly Lama, mixed media. 123cm x 153cm 25
LOIS GREEN
lois_green@hotmail.com 0719106766
View from Road, oil on hessian. 40cm x 27cm
Cupboard, oil on board. 16cm x 11cm
27
MIKE HUGHES
www.m-hughes.com
Voyage/Return, oil on panel. 120cm x 120cm
Small Town Boy Makes Good , oil on panel. 90cm x 90cm
29
EMMA-LEIGH McKAY
www.emmaleighmckay.tumblr.com emmaleighmckay@gmail.com 07530359814
Cut Flowers, given time, will surely die, graphite on paper 102cm x 152cm
Uninvited Guests (detail), graphite on paper. 59cm x 84cm 31
JJ McKEOWN
www.artbyjj.tumblr.com jjmckeown@live.co.uk 07875524107
Oasis, pen on paper. 83cm x 127cm
Studio Shot
33
SOPHIE RADCLIFFE
www.sophieradcliffe.co.uk 07920746207
Breezy trousers and feather weight knits, mix media on panel 150cm x120cm
Chunky knits and Karl’s collars, mix media on panel 90cm x 120cm 35
LOUISE TIMMS
www.louisetimms.com louisetimms1@hotmail.co.uk
Controlled Chaos, mixed media. 56cm x 76cm
Are You Satisfied Yet?, film still
37
JAMIE BARR
HANNAH BERESFORD
ANNA BERGIN
My paintings depict a meandering journey through landscapes with no direct route or destination. Wildernesses where man’s presence is increasingly evident through technological encroachment. They are paintings whose history is unknown, glimpses of their former lives revealed through pieces of weathered script and half seen imagery.
“Tell me what’s next, alien sex?” - Kanye West
I make paintings that are a form of ‘self portrait’, abstracted from the traditional representation of the physical self, my portraits are glimpses into the conscious self. They are investigations of the social and cultural experiences which inform ; personality, individuality, and ones perception of the world.
KAREEN BLYTH
gary caldwell
KATARINA CHOMOVA
“Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things”
My approach to painting is something akin to a DJ, in the sense that I’m sampling pieces of high and low culture into a type of mix. I am especially drawn to the aesthetic of vintage typography, comic books and packaging. The act of cutting up a painting is liberating and allows me to rework the remaining pieces with a fresh attitude, yet still retaining some of the original imagery. Each block represents a sample similar to how electronic music and hip hop are produced.
My work reflects a personal response to human trauma and memories connected with the Chernobyl disaster. My paintings sit between reality and dreamlike imagery. I explore the idea of combined memories through repetition, over-layering certain elements, covering up and at the same time revealing something new. Slowly over the years little truths are uncovered and create a complex image, which is like a puzzle. All our memories get stored away in our mind; they come out in a changed form, just like the spaces I create in my paintings.
Edgar Degas During my time at Gray’s my painting has become much more intuitive. My practice is a constant development, if I knew what was going to happen next I would have less desire to keep painting. At present my work focuses on current events covered in the media and the saturation of these images in our daily lives.
KIRSTY COLYER
KELLY CRAIG
CARMELINA DAURON
“Living amid the same perpetual flow Of trivial objects, melted and reduced To one identity by differences That have no law, no meaning, and no endOppression under which even highest minds Must labour, whence the strongest are not free.”- Wordsworth
My work is about concealment and how the act of doing so, questions our associations with the everyday. I create pieces that invite the viewer to think differently about what they are viewing by contradicting and challenging the predetermined associations that they have with certain objects. I also attempt to look at the emotional responses that these objects bring out in us. Those of love, comfort, happiness, pleasure, innocence and purity, and I explore whether it is possible to question such preset emotions.
“ I believe that in each plaza, Corner to corner and street to street, People reveal themselves. We look at one another face to face We recognize each other And make ourselves strong. …. The houses of the people are the plazas And there we are. Everyone and no one.” -Alfonso Chase
In my paintings, I create my own over compulsive interpretation of the urban environment I live in, contemplating the patterns and shapes I see around me, and exploring the use of urban textures and surfaces as a way of creating my own identity within my work.
Inspired by that poem as well as by the events in the Middle East, my paintings explore the city square as an entity; a place whose shapes and characteristics have often been the result of antagonistic forces: public/ private, communal/individual; a public space large enough for gatherings of people with diverse agendas: religious, social, cultural, political and economical.
LESZEK DEBOSZ
LAURA DONALDSON
LOIS GREEN
My initial ideas were derived from seeing the rural landscape of Aberdeenshire for the first time. I wanted to capture the beauty, the essence, of what I experienced. To discover the pulsing living energy that excited me, hidden behind the multiplicity of forms and fragments that I encountered. The semi abstract forms that I paint, of leaves and trees, attempt to explore and translate, through paint, what drew me to the subject in the first place.
When I was born I woke up yellow. Yellow has a youthful potency, which reminds me of my childhood. The relationship between colour and pattern is essential in my work as I aim to explore opulent colours such as gold and crimson red through their traditional roots within Fresco and Indian Miniature painting. In using these historical references and juxtaposing them with new imagery and materials I am able to subvert conventional ideas into a contemporary form.
The signal box stands as a lone island, with a time specific to itself. I am interested in the mundane; over-looked glimpses of daily life. I enjoy taking the time to observe these moments and render them in paint.
MIKE HUGHES
EMMA-LEIGH Mckay
JJ MCKEOWN
It’s difficult to define why it is that I make paintings or even what it is that makes them important to me. The only thing that I am sure of is how another artist’s work can affect my mood and way of thinking. It’s always new and unpredictable. Even a negative experience can reinforce what I have come to value in painting. When making my own paintings I try to deal in discovery. Letting the image reveal itself within the process of these positive and negative reactions.
Old photographs. Bad photographs. Forgotten photographs. Frustrated by photography (and everything else) becoming increasingly reliant on digital, I started collecting physical, analogue images. Overlooked images. And I have given them a home in my drawings. I hope the intricate, time-consuming nature of making pencil drawings gives the photographs a new-found life. Photographs embody the ghostliness of something having been there which doesn’t exist any longer. Photographs are the corpse of a moment in time. Through my drawings I like to resurrect these moments.
“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.” ― Henry Beston, The Outermost House.
SOPHIE RADCLIFFE
LOUISE TIMMS
The work I produce is derived from my interest in adornment and decoration. Working with multiple layers I aim to create idyllic utopias of decoration.
My practice this year has centered around issues of control in relation to eating disorders. My work explores control and addiction in relation to food, through film, performance and drawing. I am also interested in self reflectionusing the film as a mirror and the body as a vehicle for recording my personal relationship and experience with food. Many of the staged situations in which I perform, reflect my experience of food as both a pleasurable source of nourishment and a catalyst for shame, leading to bodily imprisonment.
By Purchasing a copy of this catalogue you are supporting the following charities:
Befriend a Child is Aberdeen’s only 1:1 befriending service for vulnerable young people. We provide adult role models - Befriends - to youngsters aged 5+ in the Aberdeen area, and they undertake activities ranging from swimming and football in the park, to museum trips and restaurant visits. Our aim is to improve the child’s self confidence, boost their self esteem, introduce new interests and life skills, and provide a break from their difficult home circumstances.
CLAN Cancer Support is an independent charity for anyone of any age, affected by any type of cancer. From first sign of symptoms onwards CLAN is here for you. Whether affected personally, as a carer, family member or close friend, our services are available to you free of charge. From CLAN House in Aberdeen and our centres in Ballater, Inverurie, Peterhead, Stonehaven, Kirkwall and Lerwick our services reach and support people throughout the whole of Grampian, Orkney and Shetland.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The students of 4th year Painting would like to give special thanks to: Keith Grant, Andy Cranston, Heather Ross and Francis Convery for guiding and supporting us throughout our time at Gray’s. We would also like to thank Aberdeen Asset Management plc for their sponsorship and everyone who made a purchase from our fundraising events.
Photography: Graham Kinross Layout and Design: Gary Caldwell and Kareen Blyth
JAMIE BARR HANNAH BERESFORD ANNA BERGIN KAREEN BLYTH GARY CALDWELL KATARINA CHOMOVA KIRSTY COLYER KELLY CRAIG CARMELINA DAURON LESZEK DEBOSZ LAURA DONALDSON LOIS GREEN MIKE HUGHES EMMA-LEIGH MCKAY JJ MCKEOWN SOPHIE RADCLIFFE LOUISE TIMMS
GRAY’S PAINTING
DEGREE SHOW 2012