Moray College, Elgin until 22 June 2007

Speculum Chandelier by Georgina Porteous.

HAVING VIEWED some of the student work-in-progress at Moray several months earlier, I had very high expectations of this year’s BA Fine Arts graduation show. Moving through each room in turn all those expectations were exceeded.

The quality, maturity and presentation of work throughout the exhibition are outstanding, reaching well beyond third-year level. Ideas and technique have been pursued with equal energy and commitment in the creative work of eleven unique individuals.

Ambitious and extremely diverse, risks have been taken and materials grappled with in ways that make an audience see anew. The scale of ambition is nothing short of inspirational and it bodes well for the further development and profile of Visual Arts right across the region.

There is work here that would easily occupy gallery space at international level and reassuring evidence of engagement with actual creative process which often seems to be lacking in more established art institutions.

Installation features prominently in the show from the fashion inspired “dress” and life maps of Louise MacAlister to the menace of suspended animal gut and black and white film work by Emma Proctor. A strong exponent of installation in the exhibition is Selena Kuzman who has created a powerful visual statement using her own body as an element in the work.

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What this exhibition demonstrates is the strength and integrity that comes from art practice that must forge its own path and establish its own centre

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The main “body” of this piece suspended with wire and bled into half spiked vessels on the floor reflects the artist’s concern with the transformation of experience. Pain and “darkness in our life is a growing time.” Key colours of black, white and red represent varying stages of recognition as part of the creative process.

Suspended above this main work are gestures of drawn hands reaching towards bled edges. Visually the effect of the piece is immediate but also intimate, reflective of many layers of meaning and intense investigation.

Nearby the artist’s sketchbook reveals her alchemical process of thought and influences. Reference to Frida Kahlo is particularly interesting as an example of pain being transformed by creative process. Kuzman’s work is a great example of grasping the power of visual communication and language.

So often when viewing shows there is a tendency for contemporary art to explain itself away to an audience in words. Refreshingly whilst there is an artist’s statement on hand, it is economical. The work absolutely stands on its own diluting none of the complexity of human experience that created it.

A truly extraordinary body of work has been created by Georgina Porteous. This artist’s work is an example of the height of creative achievement that can be born out of trauma or adversity. The artist’s series of installations are deeply moving and ultimately uplifting in spite of their underlying exploration of loss.

The first installation consisting of a hospital cabinet with a faded floral curtain backdrop, a commode still smelling of sterilisation and a mirror directed into its base with super 8 projection is a supremely beautiful work.

To describe these elements collectively as beautiful may seem strange but the core of this beauty is the courage to grapple with pain, doubt and darkness to create a new vision or reality. The projected images of the artist swimming under cool blue water, suspended and supported suggest liberation from the structures and memory laden objects of the hospital room.

To see this freedom made manifest visually is both emotive and profound. Having this personal experience visible in a public way connects the artist with the experience of others on a deeply human level. This collective aspect of the work is reflected in the universal female figure symbol on top of the bedside cabinet with a white circle cut out of the belly.

This links to the white balloon central to the larger scale installation in the next room and to those floating outside visible through the studio windows. Meaning is in this work expands spatially, intellectually and metaphorically.

The large scale white balloon of the main installation is tethered to a chandelier comprised of plastic speculums that catch the light from a circle of pure neon. Taking an object of clinical examination, intimate exposure and painful negative association and transforming it into a beautiful object is inspired and powerful.

It is a challenging juxtaposition of form and materials that also resonates in the bed pan on the floor with clouds and blue sky projected into it. The fluidity of the artist’s sketchbook drawings and her uncompromising creative process successfully achieve a balance between ideas and technique. This is work of bravery, depth and maturity, and I look forward to seeing the artist progress as part of next year’s 4th year Honours course.

Concepts of “Potential and Aspiration” are successfully explored in the sculptural works and on site interventions of Mark Creaney. The centre piece of his exhibition (a large scale child’s windmill contained and obscured by a tall rectangular box of bubble wrap) creates a tension between what we see and what we expect in our everyday experience.

Playing with scale that ranges from a child’s toy to the monumental and using plastics, metals and other man made materials Creaney’s work encourages individual interaction with the artwork or on-site intervention. A smaller scale model of reflective blank rectangular signs on metal poles and the nearby mock up of a motorway installation of windmills give an impression of the potential scope of his work.

The audience reaction and interaction is very much part of the “finished” piece which keeps evolving. This creative investigation has enormous potential in terms of documentation and wider communication about the individual’s relationship with society with humour and irony.

Occupying the same room, Ian Massey’s sculptural works in clay, sandstone and rubber balloons utilise contrast of texture and form in a more conventional way.

Kathleen Sanderson’s work explores our relationship with the environment and essential human vulnerability through Kinaesthesia and contours. Focusing on water and global warming Sanderson reflects the modern lifestyle preoccupation with status objects in her indoor series of sculptures and outdoor painted car.

Completely obliterated in white paint with measured levels of rising water painted as contours on the vehicle this outdoor piece suggests consequence of human action. As “our bodies are 70% water” we are directly connected with natural forces and therefore bound to the fate of the whole planet.

Interdependency is a major theme of the artist’s work. The interior series of sculptures on dark plinths of various sizes scales down the car form to toy size. Some of these shapes veiled in silk seem stained with human aspiration in a way which is genuinely thought provoking.

The human relationship to the natural world is explored in a unique way by artist Angela Williams. Instead of the global focus on man’s destruction of nature William’s paintings cause us to contemplate the beauty, rhythm and renewal in altered landscapes.

Though the Highlands is famed for its “natural” state the artist work offers an alternative view seeing beauty in post agricultural or industrial landscape by focusing on vertical patterns created by the process of replanting. Three large scale horizontal oil paintings make the viewer look again at scenes we pass in transit everyday.

The first of these titled “Distracted” is painted texturally in gashes of reds, white, greys and black creates a sense of hurried movement in vertically stippled edges. “Emerging” in yellow ochre/ sap greens and red positively vibrates with life with new saplings bursting open and dark upright accents on young trees.

“Advance” contrasts dark upright vertical lines and horizontal shadows on a ground of snow. A series of black white and red drawings displayed in white mounts and frames are also extremely effective and read like the intricate charting of human capillaries.

Caroline Bury’s work combines organic shapes from the natural world and human body bound into Mandela form drawing the viewer irresistibly to its centre. Sculptural modelling, composition and projection are used to great effect to produce a remarkable animated vision.

Projected movement across the surface brings the sculpture to life through the texture of flowers, the division of cells or the movement of human hands. The main installation of plaster cast torsos arranged like a monumental flower with eye-like pollen is both macro and micro in scale and as fertile as the artist’s creative imagination.

Currently working on a project with Arts in Motion for the Belladrum Festival it will be interesting to see this artist’s naturally cinematic and theatrical work develop at Fourth Year Honours level in 2008.

Painting in the exhibition is contrasted in the realist work of Matt O’Conner depicting detailed surface textures of gradual rust and decay in ships of the Moray coast and the work of Brian Crawford Young who embodies a more interior approach in relation to technique and subject matter.

Crawford Young’s 3 acrylics on canvas “ Mutable Line #1,#2,#3” swathed in intense colours and hung as a triptych demonstrate strong composition and a rich interplay of magenta, turquoise and deep purple with vibrant green accents.

Subtler use of colour (though no less intense) is exhibited in his “Anima” series in oils where female form is suggested gradually moving out of the darker ground and into the conscious world. Led by the process of painting itself and allowing the unconscious to emerge is an intense and painstaking process that here has resulted in a series of strong and distinctive self portraits.

As the recent validation of the fourth year Honours programme in Fine Arts suggests Moray College is emerging as an innovative centre for professional training in Scotland and this show provides further evidence of its cultural importance in the region.

What this exhibition demonstrates is the strength and integrity that comes from art practice that must forge its own path and establish its own centre. It is inspiring to see a new generation of artists redefining how we see ourselves and the world around us in such a committed and dynamic way.

The overwhelming impression from this show is of the highest potential and creative aspiration with a developing and justified sense of confidence from the group. This leadership is an exciting and potent agent of change which will positively alter our cultural landscape now and in the future.

(The Exhibition is open Mon-Thurs, 9am to 9pm; Fri- Sat 9.am to 5pm. For further information contact Gina Wall at Moray College on 01343 576413 or by email; gina.wall@moray.hi.ac.uk )

© Georgina Coburn, 2007