This year’s degree shows have astounded and entertained me in equal measure and I can say with surety that the class of 2011 has produced some of the best art I have seen at graduate shows for some years, and certainly the best art I have seen this year.
I saw pieces that are fully-formed, conceptually confident, technically mastered, visually compelling, opinionated and risk-taking. I saw resurgence in fine art; of old fashioned oils on canvas; ever more sophisticated yet playful digital art; a genuine concern for sustainability in product design; architectural installations that carve holes into rooms; creation of imaginary worlds within space and sound; incisive social commentary woven throughout; sense of adventure; ambition; understanding of practice and technique, of the discipline of being an artist; and the taking of visual and cultural clues from all over time and place.
These are brilliant works of art in their own right, not just a tribute to years of dedication to a creative vocation, hard work and poverty.
What excited me most was the genuine appreciation and execution of transdisciplinary arts, where boundaries of ceramic, conceptual, digital, performance, fashion and the rest are shown to be the artificial construct they are. Refreshing too was an epic and intimate narrative and story-telling, a contextualising of work that far from limiting it and the viewer’s perception, just served to add meaning and open interpretation further.
Exhibitions tend to be a busman’s experience for me – I more often look at the mechanicals of presentation first, work second – and this year’s pieces were presented so expertly that I rightly forgot how something was hung or fixed to a plinth, but instead saw the work first and foremost.
The quality of this year’s shows are testament to the exemplary art teaching in our universities, and their support teams that are the backbone of thier creative courses. The shows this year are truly a celebration of the role that higher education plays in nurturing and launching the next generation of UK creative talent, giving them the confidence to have a voice and the platform to shout it loud.
Undoubtedly there are some names that I saw this year that will become stars of the scene. Others will go on to jobs that shape our daily lives like the Ives of this world. Others of course may find careers outside of the art, taking their creative disposition to the benefit of others sectors. What I am confident of, no matter what this year’s graduates do, we have a generation that can be valued as artists, social agitators, cultural commentators, solution-finders and problem-solvers, and visioners.
Cara Courage is an Arts Consultant, Head of Learning at Architecture Centre Network, and Transition Co-coordinator for the Creative Campus Initiative.