Sunday, June 14, 2009

UCA Farnham - Graduate Show

The BA students at UCA Farnham have recently held their Degree Shows around the campus.
For me the textile department is always a highlight and this year I was particularly taken with the intricately textured surfaces of Kim Tattersall's leathers. Inspired by skin and yet also created in skin these beautiful pieces are highly sensuous and tactile. At the same time they can be used to invoke questions of identity and ethics.
Joanna Burdett's theme of smoking and lung cancer is a difficult one but she teases out a rare delicacy in many of her pieces. As with the process of detecting cancerous cells these pieces deserve to have time, and attention to detail, spent on them.
Paul Stopler's glass forms carry a great strength of weight and form. Lit from above their depth of colour casts deep pools of fluid colour onto the tables, it would be wonderful to experience these in natural light where the transience of this light/colour would be subject to constant minute changes. Paul's Pond Bowl is shown above
I was also very taken with Emily Percival's delicate ceramic pieces. Each piece is an unrepeatable one-off. The visual delicacy of the porcelain belies it's solidity. There is an impression in these pieces of the capturing, and preserving, of a moment in time but also the notion that they are vulnerable and that with a careless gesture the moment could so easily be lost.

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