Moray College 3rd yr BA (Hons) Fine Art Exhibition, IG:LU, Inverness, until 1 April 2011

HOT ON the heels of the ground breaking Photoglobal show, IG:LU has been transformed into a white gallery space by third year honours students of Moray School of Art ; Caroline Inkle, Laura Moon, Gabi Stuckemeier, Ruth Walker, Gabriella Hockney, Ingrid Watt, Andrea Dear, Judith Nicholson, Joan Reed, Heather Brotton, Karen Curran, Anne Hicks and Lynn Barton.

Compello is an exciting and well presented show, utilising all of IG:LU’s spaces to showcase a diverse range of work in photography, film, painting, sculpture, printmaking and installation. The flow of work within divided exhibition spaces is remarkably coherent and gives insight into the vision and creative process of some the North’s promising emerging artists.

Laura Moon and WOW

WOW, an installation in paper by Laura Moon, cascades into the IG:LU main space like a waterfall, spilling onto the floor and into the path of the viewer. Moon’s arrangement of recycled, readily disposable material has a curious rhythm all of its own, a fusion of natural forces, human design and human waste. There is playful deliberation in the use of random minute scraps of paper, discarded en masse and then transformed by the artist into a visible human mark.

The ambiguity of this installation is part of its appeal; a natural phenomenon rendered in refuse, human actions with unnatural consequences and contemplation of man-made environment. Equally this work feels very much like a celebration of discarded found materials recreated in the mind’s eye. The artist’s engagement with materials and the element of mindful play make this an intelligent and enjoyable work.

Accidence of My Morphology

Ruth Walker’s Accidence Of My Morphology (Digital Print & Acrylic on Canvas) is a striking image, printed in reverse negative as if solarised and masking the face of the artist/sitter. This is a fascinating multi-layered image where individual identity is obliterated, pared down to a printed triangle on a sheet of plastic pulled across the face and secured either side by the subject’s own hands. The high contrast black and white, fake wig/ masked disguise and the artifice of the portrait or self portrait which can conceal or reveal, make this an ironic and challenging image of self.

The defacing of one’s own image or of any human face is an act of dualism in creative terms; of deconstruction and reconstruction. Here there is a sense of the artist grappling in quite an uncompromising way with individual and collective identity. The work of Sarah Lucas springs to mind particularly in relation to the individual “dewomanised”.

Accidence Of My Morphology is a powerful image that could have stood alone boarded by a single frame on an even larger scale, or perhaps as part of a series. Framing diffuses what is essentially a confrontational image, taking the more painterly background treatment and extending it to the edges of the frame, broken by ill fitting borders. Care should be taken in future to ensure that the artist’s visual statement is not diminished by the mode of presentation in this way. There is something raw and uncompromising about the image that bodes well in terms of the artist’s future development. This single image like a lot of work in the show gives a taster rather than presenting a definitive body of work.

Joan Reed’s DETALUBOBMOCSID in mixed media presents a series of obvious visual metaphors for the workings and mysteries of the human mind in sculptural form; the clear head of frozen water with electrical circuitry within, a key and metallic jigsaw pieces; symbols of the ultimate puzzle to be unlocked, presented in a Perspex box with transparencies of brain scans printed on the exterior.

It is actually in Reed’s adjacent artist book which she comes into her own. A sketchbook-like photographic record of process, this beautiful series of images contain intricacies and connections more subtle and dynamic than the three dimensional symbols of mind on display in their current form. The interior world of the artist’s book seems more resonant here than external symbols for the mind. If the complexity and delicacy of these mind maps can be translated into the artist’s work in three dimensions, then perhaps a more personal and authentic visualisation of the subject and its inherent mysteries could be realised in sculptural form.

WOW

A triptych of digital prints by Ingrid Watt, Treasury, Nursery and Bedtime evoke a fluid state between childhood memory and dreams. Use of montage and the vintage palette of grainy muted colour, like a seventies family photograph, immediately suggest shifting perception and fleeting human memory. The composition of Bedtime, where the child becomes a composite of plastic and flesh, with movement between different fields and angles of vision is a good example of balanced composition within the frame. These visual elements in terms of narrative possibility would translate well into filmmaking.

Ingrid Watt - Bedtime

Untitled #72 (Photography and Text) by Gabriella Hockney presents an interesting play on word and image; staged with long shadow, heels and a hobby horse, the text isolated in the confines of a pink square; “I am proficient. I never come”. The tension between image, text and viewer expectation is an element that begs further investigation and development. The second image, Untitled #25, this time in colour and without the duality of text, presents another consciously staged image, the stage-lit illusion and reclaimed gold frame wrapped around a circular view of self.

Hockey’s third contribution to the exhibition, a short film “I’m Way Cuter Than You”, is lacking in in the necessary irony to make it of interest to anyone other than its three central protagonists and would have been better shared on Facebook. However there is enough evidence in Hockney’s photographic work of a real talent emerging, a potential for sophisticated treatment of text and image that is challenging, complex and engaging. It will be great to see how this artist’s work evolves and matures in future exhibitions.

Lynn Barton’s Untitled abstract (Oil on board) in steely Prussian blue, grey and cream, intersected by a single line of cadmium red, is an image of bold division and delicate mark; a synthesis of geometric and organic forms in a beautifully balanced composition. Each element in the crafting of the image is finely rendered; paint-handling resembling the erosion of natural processes, retention of delicately drawn marks, use of texture and pattern, all combine in a painting which is considered in its design and accomplished in its varied use of oils. Subtle curves of line are almost suggestive of landscape, bisecting bolder geometric forms of human intervention. This is an intriguing and beautifully handled abstract in which colour, form, line and texture create a strong unified composition.

Compello is a welcome sight in the Highland capital, as a refreshing showcase of exciting and diverse visual work, making Scotland’s most recently established Art College more visible to a wider public and as part of an on going commitment by IG:LU to provide a central space for promising new talent.

© Georgina Coburn, 2011

Links

• IG:LU
• Moray College