A review of the University Of Wolverhampton Masters Degree Show 2023
On the 8th September Wolverhampton School Of Art held a private view and opening of the MA Degree show held at Wolverhampton Art Gallery, so I headed over from Shrewsbury to take a peek at what the students have been up to in the three schools, Design and Applied Arts, Digital and Visual Communications and Fine Art.
Into the gallery and I’m having a wander around the pieces on display, the first thing that really catches my eye is the following piece hung on the wall.
Alongside the strange display of electronic devices was an artists plate that explained why the artist “Richard Mutt” was doing with this collection of what appeared to me as humidity monitors and thermometers. I was immediately suspicious of the R Mutt link as Marcel Duchamps introduced “Fountain” at an exhibition, which was a urinal on it’s back. He had signed the the urinal as R Mutt as a protest and to disrupt the established norm. The date of 1917 is also pertinent as this was also written onto the urinal. This suspicion was eased a little when I read through the full card of information that was full of art language and terms, thinking it gave it some more credence.
Sikh Head-dress
Moving on into the room further I talked to a couple of people from the course and staff that I know before looking lots of other collections. One of the sections that I really appreciated was work by Simran Samra who is a Sikh artist who produced some outstanding work about his religion and his experiences of racism and bullying. The main image shows a wonderful painting/illustration of an older Sikh gent, who represents Simran’s grandfather tying a turban on a young boy’s head. The young boy is Simran and this is a wonderful piece of storytelling. I talked with Simran about the meaning of the different types and colours of turban. The smaller sketches are also lovely and it was a wonderful and meaningful collection. Nice job Simran.
Windows ’23
Next up was Susan Pitt’s window as part of the MA in Design and Applied Arts. It features a sash window made up of 12 smaller panes, each of these is representative of another conversation regarding the connections between people and nature. Pitt states in the show catalogue that one pane remains broken “acting as a metaphor for our broken connection with nature”. Some panes show mobile phones and some show scenes from nature all in no discernible pattern.
It’s a beautiful piece of art and the windows of different coloured glass showing different images must have taken a good amount of deliberation and design to select and place the contents.
The age of the window frame, including the broken pane lends it the feeling of time gone by and a history built into the piece. I stood and looked at this for a good time, letting it sink in. Thanks Susan it’s a “smashing” piece of work.
Horizon
A third piece of work was a piece called Horizon by Marinus Veit who was studying for a Masters in Digital and Visual Communications.
Marinus’ work consists of a 3D multimedia work, using projection and screens, along with an audio track, all leading to the front of th ework with some life jackets or buoyancy aids on the floor. It is related to immigration across the English Channel and is a powerful story especially as the artist himself came across in 2018. The projections show people walking along, seemingly on gang planks, or quay sides, maybe they’re other immigrants trying to make the perilous journey, or some that have made it to the next phase of uncertainty.
Behind the 3D work was also a table with some small pamphlet style books waiting to be read. Each one of these three works, contained a number of dots on the front covers which helped to bring into focus the numbers of people being referenced in the work. In much the same way as I recently saw an artist represent people by rice grains. That work is called Of All The People In All The World by Stan’s Cafe. The stories in Veit’s publications though are raw and often heartbreaking. It is choosing to re-humanise a story that is often turned into statistics by the popular news channels. It’s a valuable piece of work and i wish Marinus all the very best.
Firefly
Firefly by Lewis Ashfield is a piece of work based around magazine style publications where the creator had chosen to use an anti-design set of methods to create a rather Punky piece of work using typography and bold garish visuals to be probably the most eye catching piece of work in the exhibition.
Summary
Overall then the exhibition showed off a wide range of work by a talented group of artists and it was inspirational to me, leading me to start thinking about Level 5 and what I might get up to in the next 2 years of my part time degree.
After the presentation of prizes by the staff I took a wander back through the gallery and noticed that there was another set of temperature/humidity sensors in another room, without the Richard Mutt plate, so I figured that this was in fact a prank of sorts or a performance piece of art. I spoke with a current masters student who told me that I was correct in my thinking and who it was who’d got up to this nice little bit of mischief. Well done sir, top job!
My congratulations to all the students who have now graduated from the Masters in these topics and I wish them all of the very best for the future, and I look forward to seeing more of what they get up to. Thanks to the staff from the University and School Of Art as well as the museum and gallery staff who did a wonderful job of presenting this work for the public too.
Below is a small gallery of other images I took on the evening. there were far too many other works for me to document in this post but I really enjoyed looking at all of the work on display.
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