MA Exhibition UCA Farnham

This years MA show at UCA Farnham was another diverse mixture of disciplines and ideologies that will have appealed to a wide audience. A few of my personal favourites appear below.

Tom McDowell - Jewellery - Tom sets out to challenge the traditional formality of jewellery wearing. He transforms children's drawings of creatures, imaginary or real, into quirky but highly wearable art that brings a smile to those who encounter them.

Alex Archbold - Glass - Alex uses cast and kiln formed glass in sculptural pieces of architectural and public art that explore the boundaries between two and three dimensional forms. Her recent project to design a large window for the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge was shortlisted for the commission. The work is cast from impressions of books and papers and relates well to the layers of history that are stored in such a repository and the transparency that archivists strive to achieve in their work.

Melissa Ryland - Ceramics - Melissa's work deals with the concept of memory and how everyday objects go unnoticed by most but may have a deeper resonance for some individuals or audiences, sometimes offering an expression of presence through absence.

Beverly Ayling-Smith - Textiles - Beverly is exploring melancholia with a focus on the emotional dimensions of the words grief, loss and absence. For me this particular piece spoke of the emotional baggage that we carry with us, the grief unspoken and locked away in a cage that we can never risk losing but are reluctant to open. The barbed wire shrieks its message loud and clear - touch at your peril. By contrast the delicate, almost invisible, interlacing of human hair speaks of the genetic markers that we carry within us, often unseen or denied but integral to out being.

Louise Anderson - Textiles - The essence of Louise's work is about the passage of time. The weaving and dying processes that she employs take time and patience; planning and precision, and yet the outcome can still be excitingly unpredictable, producing unique results. Edges are important to Louise as they frame the time that has passed in the making of the work.

Bruce Marks - Glass - This installation from Bruce explores the fine line between sanity and insanity, surely one of the finest lines that we can ever encounter. The work juxtaposes the apparently fragility of the lacelike glass structures with rust coated spikes that might, at any moment, rupture the bubbles of illusion and destroy the safety net of domestic sanctuary.