Opening on the 9th June 2023 at the MK Building which houses the University Of Wolverhampton’s School Of Art, the degree show is an exhibition of work by Level 6 artists just completing their Degree studies.
The private view was opened by a couple of speeches by the Chancellor of the Uni, Maggie Ayliffe, the Mayor and others telling the assembled masses of the work to be seen and how it was important in the wider world. After that, and a couple of drinks and snacklets, it was time to head up to the top floor for the photography exhibition.
Up on the seventh floor, after walking up all of the stairs to avoid the crammed lifts, I got my breath back and wandered into the gallery hosting the photography students work. It was warm in the room and the third years were stood nearby their hung work.
Colours In The Greenhouse
It was impressive and mind blowing in terms of the quality and the variation of the subjects. My favourite piece of work from the whole exhibition features five photos staged to look like food promo shots. The twist to the images though is that the contents of the shot are all based around candy/sweets etc. The first image with the blue background is a carton of Milk pouring into a glass, but the milk is actually the Haribo style milk bottle sweets. Similarly the cracked open egg is seen releasing the haribo fried eggs that we all know and love.
The colours of all the prints with the immaculately crafted scenes on them work amazingly wells as a series and I loved them.
Banal Photography
Another set of images that worked really well as a series and were right in my wheelhouse in terms of street photography and abstract features in architecture. Sometimes known as Banal photography due to the subject matter being part of everyday life.
These photos made by Megan Nelson work together for me as a depiction of normal places, that we all walk past on a regular basis. A simple piece of lighting conduit at a right angle with a diagonal stair rail in the corner of the image tempts me to see what it is and why this image was made.
It’s similar in some facets to images I like to make and more of these types of images are making their way onto Instagram etc. Jess Groves (Insta handle https://www.instagram.com/t.worth__) does this stuff well as does Black Country Type.
Amazon Giants
Another use of photography was in a piece of work by Valerie Woolford called “Independent Street”, I initially thought it to be. a comment on Amazon and other companies pushing out the shops on the high street as can be seen in the image above the stack of boxes with the usual A-Z Smiley Arrow adorning them.
It is a comment on the shops closing down but further examination of the amazon cartons neatly stacked beneath reveals that there are white screen printed images of shops on the high streets of the West Mids. It shows a direct link between the huge global conglomerate and the smallerf amily run shops which provide us our necessary items when there is nothing to hand on a Sunday afternoon to assist with a DIY job or a cooking project.. Very thought provoking and once I’d noticed the screen prints I was interested in checking out the detail in them.
Scary
Another photographer that I’ve spoken to in the past couple of years, James Banks, produced a degree show series call “Of course it bloody scares me”. Based on his fears of a nuclear conflict during a sketchy time with Russia in an already troubling period of history. Some photos contain references to war, be it a helmet or gas mask whilst others capture the mood that he was feeling at the particular time. James is big into film photography and film cameras so this work woul dhave been technically demanding as well as mentally demanding.
Multiple Floors
Others around the exhibition I found great to look at included some from the gallery below. There were some paintings, material and thread punch needle tufting that I found visually engaging. Some of my highlights are seen here along with the wonderful job by someone in the Illustration course, who had created a series of characters similar to a muppet style hand puppet, but in a digital format, then been able to capture “photos” of them for the wall display. They’d also very successfully had these characters on the screens below with motion tracking devices on the top so that the person looking at the screen could control the character on the screen. Very impressive stuff and I would imagine could be commercially successful. The last image in this small selection is of a Horror Inspired scene carved into a woodblock by Maz Lee. When printed onto paper using a press I would imagine that it produces a spectacularly detailed image, but the woodblock is just as impressive to see.
Carrying on down the floors I saw graphic design work, glass and ceramics, sculpture and even digital animation.
Animated
Into the animation exhibition on the lower floor I found. a sofa in front of a large projector screen. There were a number of short films created by some very talented students. Two of my faves were Red by Fay LeKay Rouse and The Grammafia by Jacob Edwards. Both of these were really well done with nice soundtracks and stories. Red was a really beautifully animated short of a seeming femme fatale with a difference, whilst The Grammafia short was a story about gangsters with pedantic levels of punctuation presented in an 8 bit ZX Spectrum style of graphics, similar to the game Mugsy from my childhood days.
There was another short film in the mix too about a Bee which started off with a wonderful computer generated Bee character who travelled the wonderland looking at flowers and other types of flora and fauna. There were some seemingly NSFW moments when some little mushroom people with an extra leg (if you know what I mean) were dancing around and getting seemingly more aroused before an explosion of sorts took place. A mother with her small child left the room when this was going on and the sexualised theme seemed to grow and grow until it became obvious that it was no accident. It was however, very well produced and the graphics and story were a little surreal but it all held together really well. Ha ha, I still laugh to myself about the mushroom men with their strange appendages…
Bella Colours
One of the other pieces I loved from the whole exhibition was this work by Bella who explores artificial space and depth suing oil and acrylic paints. The way the stripes on these canvases join up was pleasing to my sensibilities and the way that she has light playing off the apparently higher parts of the flag like structures works really well. The light and the shade really does give the canvas a sense of depth and fluidity which I was very impressed with. I spent a lot of time in front of this piece of work.
Summary
On the whole, I loved the exhibition of the students completing their final year of the degree course in all of the subjects on display. There were some pieces that I didn’t connect with and some that I really found engaging. The different types of media and styles on display in the whole of the building was something to see and take note of for when it comes time for my end of degree show. Only another four years…Phew.
Some of the work that I found to be interesting was made up of fewer pieces of work in opposition to the works where there were a great number of pieces on the same wall space, but I felt less of an impact from this style of presentation.
It’s purely a subjective experience, I understand that, but there were some pieces that I found to be at a much higher level than those surrounding them, I guess these are the people who just do something that I like, and what I like many others might not.
I’m looking forward to next years degree show as the cohort I started with in my first year (i’m part time) will be coming to the end of their degree and I’m excited to see what they’ve done and how it might influence me in the next few years coming up.
Overall it was a brilliant exhibition, even better than the previous years when we were coming out of the back end of the covid pandemic. That’s what you can do if you’re not having to create with one hand tied behind your back ro not being able to get within two metres of people etc.
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