Dundee Masters Show @ DJCAD

With just over fifty students and six disciplines exhibiting, the Dundee Masters Show offers a much smaller package than its undergraduate counterpart, but with a breadth of work that is both imaginative and intelligent. Students present work of a generally ‘deep’ caliber, seeking to provide thought provoking commentary on society past and present, or develop practical solutions to the here and now.

In fine art, there appears less of the random diversity that defines the Degree Show and more a gritty engagement with the world as it is. The initially comical sight of Michael McLeod’s black rabbit clad in his fur trimmed hoodie loses smiles quickly when its surrounding dark paintings and quivering showreel leave a sense of self destruction in an urban environment.

Andrew N MacVicar’s figure of a tragic superhero holding supermarket carrier bags packs a similar cynical punch. It is a wickedly sarcastic portrayal of an aspect of modern city living where the supermarket shop has become the inevitable. 

Gordy Livingstone, too, comments on aspects of urban life, though perhaps with a slightly more optimistic tone. His work reflects street culture; it is recycled chaos with a hint of anarchy and bombardment prevalent in the urban environment.

Using a phrase in the Book of Revelations, Ian Scott develops an energetic series of textured paintings, Usman Malik paints sumptuous visual representations of the Quran, and James Bell explores Scotland’s modernist architecture.

It is art that is engaged, questioning and practical. In medical art, Helen Lee utilises an educational tool to assist students on a cranial course. Dylan Gould visualizes the growth of cancer cells, while the University’s renowned expertise in forensics provides a fascinating edge to art, serving up exceptional highlights from the reconstruction of a Mesolithic boy in the past to the identification of criminals for the future. [Ashleigh Gibbs]