Edinburgh College of Art Degree Show 2011

When visiting Edinburgh in June, I took up the opportunity to visit the ECA Degree Show. And my goodness was I impressed!!

Although my main interest was the Fine Art Department, Animation has always been of interest to me and so I had a good look around their department too. It was a real treat to watch ECA student Paul Rice’s advanced CGI animation ‘Let Me Come In’ which just so happened to be nominated for the Edinburgh International Film Festival also. The twisted version of the fairytale ‘Three Little Pigs’, although disturbing was very captivating. I particularly enjoyed Will Anderson’s humorous yet more traditional animation ‘The Remaking of the Longbird’ and have been following his website www.whiterobot.com and other animations ever since.

There was much to be seen in the Fine Art Department, what, with it being the Degree and MFA shows at the same time, and I found it a very enlightening and really inspiring experience.

Of course if you know me at all you know that I love to see where contemporary painting is going.  The ECA show was no exception. I loved it! There were many students both post-grad and masters practising painting.

I absolutely fell in love with the exquisite paintings and photography by Anna Bernard. She made use of the natural colours of the wood, which she painted onto, and complemented them with her own colours beautifully. This also happened to link into the subject of her paintings. When speaking to her she told me that the wooden barn she had painted was her own at the parents home. Her work explores the comfort of her country farm home now that she lives in the inner city.

Kari Adams’ series of paintings really caught my attention. She sees herself as an ‘artist who appropriates ‘things’ and products- taking them from their convivial structure, rearranging their anatomy.’ To place meaning within the new form. Her innovative use of combining canvases and using them in an unconventional manner really pushed forward her aim to create new forms and images with discordant texts.  

The inventive style of drawing by Thomas Adam was really interesting too. Although the pieces where essentially 2 dimensional their placement around the room, occasionally with props made them work on a sculptural level. I found this quite fascinating.

Don’t get me wrong though. It wasn’t just the painting and drawing that interested me. Fiona Crozier’s work was ‘a series of events in which the viewer was not invited to watch.’ It consisted of earwigs trapped in glass fronted boxes and meat knives. The work had a powerful and shocking effect which pin pointed the irony, fragility and transience of life. She summed up her work with a simple quote ‘Bodies are only empty vessels, ain’t nothing in them. I’m not doing anything wrong.’ Ed Gien 1906- 1984.

Clare Flatley’s work develops processes of solidifying distortions and reflections of objects familiar to us, giving them an alternative, opposite existence. This piece creates a passing point, a self contained gateway, that provides an immersive experience for the viewer but that doesn’t physical lead to a different space, or alter the space around it.

Another aspect which added to the professionalism of the students’ work, is that the majority had personal statements, business cards and even had designed their own websites and online galleries. I would really like to be able to achieve this by next year too.

Every aspect of this degree show was exceptional! The work spoke for itself, and the students excelled!