Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
The Arts Gallery, University of the Arts, London
7 November – 23 December
Reviewed by: Lisa Wigham
‘Future Map 05’ was another chance for the public to see the achievements and potential of last year’s art and design graduates from London universities. Selection was made from painting, installation, sound, photography, ceramics, fashion and animation, on the basis of the “quality of production and original ideas”. The exhibition fulfilled the criteria to a standard of excellence, yet on viewing the work I found myself seeking the personal or the critical, and wondered how this generation of graduates was different from my own.
I found myself applauding the production process while feeling engaged in varying degrees. Gonzo Drawing by Robert McNally was an impeccably executed piece of draughtsmanship. It was made up of architecture and scenarios broken or detached, yet working as a cyclical whole, like an accurate description of a dream one has never had. From a distance Andrea Voisey’s The Knowledge resembled a working map of London. On closer inspection it revealed itself as a quilted record of her journeys made up of mysterious clues to a story.
A photograph entitled Athens by Orpeas Emirzas depicted a residential area almost entirely overwhelmed by mist, the title enhancing the poetic. The rose patterned and gently humorous knitwear of Rebecca Nehar Ali Teasets and Twinsets was an elegant and witty juxtaposition of English themes, that was also found in Romy Westwood’s Lady Lush, a porcelain My Fair Lady-type figurine holding a parasol, trapped in a decanter of port. Reiko Kaneko’s Egg Soldiers sculpture was another case of wit and narrative: toys with guns in a breakfast situation. It managed to dispel cosy domesticity and replace it with the dread of a gruesome imagined future.
A television on a plinth was used for the screening of two short films. This did not do justice to the amount of toil that goes into filmmaking, not to mention the skill and craft of picture and sound editing. For example an epic fight scene on a snow-capped terrain in Ben Otos’ Rahidian Gutterfish and the labour-intensive dissolves in Tina Yuanyuan Wei Skia animation were worthy of a cinema. The steep roller coasters and never-ending helter-skelters in Bobby Parmar’s Variation on a Theme Park reminded me empathetically of the point of graduation and feelings of accountability and the unknown future. This work represented both feelings of dread and the excitement of possibilities, with its monster drops and peaks constructed architecturally in styrofoam board.
Before leaving the show I encountered the interventionist piece Looking For Palemo, by ‘Raymond Roussel’, aka Oliver Castel. This trail of light bulbs brought the outside world in and the inside world out, from a show which was a successful celebration of departure and new beginnings.
Writer detail:
Lisa Wigham is an artist.
Venue detail:
University of the Arts - London, Gallery
65 Davies Street, London W1K 5DA
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