Salford Degree Show 2014: Creativity Unleashed

Create at Salford Festival took over MediaCity for three days in June, presenting exhibitions, performances and interactive events that offered up the work of Salford University's graduating creatives. With their efforts showcased in an empty retail unit, the visual arts and graphics courses get a prime location for their final year show, with the space transformed to have all the trappings of a contemporary art gallery.

Yamama Al-Kharsan’s work invites you into the room. Across ten large sheets of paper, Al-Kharsan explores the expressive nature of colour. Her bold pieces invite closer inspection as the layers of primary colours mix into one another, offering depth worth peering into. Connecting the floor to the ceiling, meanwhile, Charma Force's sculptural intervention is an impressive feat of installation. The organic form is mounted to look as though it has burst through the floor and become a permanent fixture. Rika Jones also uses plaster, but combines it with metal to resemble the form of a four-legged animal. Toppled over and defeatist in its expression, it brings to mind the idiom ‘let sleeping dogs lie’.

Natasha Beeton’s striking group of sculptural forms is in fact, after closer inspection, an interactive sound sculpture. Bicycle wheels, strung up with guitar strings, have been embedded into wooden plinths of various heights and sizes. The forms each have their own individual tuning; small plaques denoting numbers hint that they are representative of a group of people, with their chosen pitch reflective of their age.

Process-driven works from Willow Rowlands and Lizzie King are presented next to one another. Rowlands’ sensitive photographic prints of three-dimensional geometric and pictorial forms reveal a practice that is driven by the process of translating an image from the representative to the abstract – while King’s embossed etchings, presented on a custom wooden table, appear as pieces of research, in a process of understanding print.

Keeley Love’s arresting video performance is highly personal and pertains to her process of being wife, mother, student and artist. Invisible other than the shadow of her face, Love intermittently expels a long yell at various pitches. The process is almost ritualistic: it’s as if, after each yell, an emotion is released and, calm, can return.

Over at Graphic Design, Adam Gorton’s product design combines the traditional bookmaking technique of marbling with a minimalist aesthetic for his sleek vinyl design. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Lewis Loughman utilises American pop culture to create his slightly sinister but comical ceramics.

With opportunities for students to present their work to panels of industry elite, including the likes of Matt Booth and Dave Sedgwick, the Create at Salford Festival acts not only as a marker for the three years hard work of all the students, but also as a springboard, hoping to propel the students into their new creative careers.