Dundee Degree Show 2010

It's that time of year again, as Scotland's art schools roll out their graduate shows. Duncan of Jordanstone opened proceedings with their May exhibition, so The Skinny headed along to check it out
Feature by Ben Robinson.
Published 27 May 2010

After last year’s sabbatical in the Greenmarket’s Vision building, the 2010 edition of Dundee’s degree show returns to its alma mater at the Duncan of Jordanstone college. Visitors to its labyrinthine corridors are seeking a crop of Fine Art graduates whose handiwork will likely be hidden away somewhere in a forgotten corner. You’re really best advised to collect a map from reception on the way in. One such example is the work of Chloe Windsor, whose cosmic arrangements of pyramids and assorted mystical offerings fashion a celestial gift from humble means, all buried deep within the bowels of the Matthew building’s sculpture workshops. Next door Anne Rachel Ward’s display presents an ersatz Eden, a menagerie of bloated birds of paradise, their forms crafted from metal and modroc, sharing floor space with a tree saturated in shiny bright bold gloss paint. Sir David Attenborough can be thankful for such a worthy tribute.

Away from all these natural and supernatural wonders, the Matthew’s renowned Time-Based Art department resides, housing the work of Stephen Bloe. His Research Laboratory of Electronic Progress gives us rickety spools of cut-up magnetic tape, their hums, whirrs, clicks and pops carrying happy echoes of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop’s auditory pioneers. The aesthetic is Doctor Who meets Drexciya by way of the garden shed and this surely is a good thing.

Elsewhere in the college, other artists seize their chance to reinterpret the everyday. Over in the Crawford corridor Neil Ogg’s installation combines striplighting, a wheelie bin and a wall of delicately rendered prints of tabloid front pages, their finely worked details a contrast to the hysteria glaring from the headlines. Similarly quotidian, downstairs Lyndsey Redford has made paintings on the insides of book covers and folders in a series entitled Thoughts On Everyday Life. Markedly more shadowy shapes are cast by Mary Somerville, who creates a quietly epic installation incorporating intricate model architecture and stop-motion animation. Her film of Sirius the Dog Star and a wandering, doddering Dog is an affecting, poetic amble around in the darkness. A more starkly pronounced anxiety pervades Fiona Gordon’s ink drawings and litho prints. Unruly black ink drips and smears across a dystopia of surveillance cameras, scissors and falling share prices, a malignant landscape of ruin.

As ever the sheer volume of art here can seem like a similar threat. Still, the cartoons of Sara Aziz provide a highlight of the show. Smart, dexterous black and white cartoons finished in a fine line and displayed either salon style or painted directly onto the gallery walls, we see two downtrodden figures standing waiting for a bus. One is marked ‘the smell of booze’, the other ‘the smell of curry’. It tickled my ribs, at least.

Comments (17)

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  • I think that this feature is overly kind. I visited this years show on two separate occasions and must have spent 5 hours in total looking around.

    As a gradate of 2009 and having seen all the degree shows since 2004 I feel I have enough knowledge at my disposal to make a fair judgement.

    2008 was an exceptionally good year and us 2009'ers were a little worried that we would be overshadowed. In the end we produced some very strong work which was to a great extent creatively autonomous and was helped I believe (some malcontents dispute this) by the new location (The Vision building).

    I think that this years degree show in terms of fine-art was very poor. There was a blaring lack of intelligence in the themes and concepts of some of the students and I think that the viewers noticed.

    After discussing the show with contemporaries and other guests we were all, and I really do mean all, of the opinion that 2010 was not a good year in terms of fine art. Many of the ideas and physical pieces seemed to be merely pale imitations of the previous years work. I could list them but I don't want to offend anyone specifically.

    DOJ's one saving grace was Time Based Art. While watching the piece 'META', my jaw was hanging open at the astonishingly high standard of production. In fact, many of TBA's films were absolutely terrific.

    I cannot comment on jewellery, textiles, product design, illustration and architecture as I gave them a miss.

    I don't imagine this years students will do too well at the next RSA New Contemporaries (in terms of prizes). I'm sorry if this offends any of you, what I will say is that if you take this to be aimed at you then perhaps you know deep down that you are unsatisfied with your own work/show.

    O

    Posted by Anonymous | Friday May 2010 @ 02:46

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  • All this TBA praising is fantastic!

    Posted by Stephen | Friday May 2010 @ 09:36

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  • I agree the TBA was off a high standard this year. Meta's production was so amazing to criticise the acting and script would be churlish. That being said I am at a loss to understand why the works of those focusing on digital film should be installed in such a way that it has negative impacts on other works. Surely a shared micro cinema and a good surround sound system would have benefited all of the single screen works and allowed the time base art work to be enjoyed as they should have been? Rather than this odd arrangement of black cubicles complete with a tangle of headphones. I wonder where next years show will be?
    I do hope they drop that awful catwalk opening DOJ has no fashion dept!

    Posted by Barry Big | Friday May 2010 @ 14:02

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  • Omar's comments = "Our year was better! Our year was better! NA NA NANANA"

    hysterical

    Posted by scott le rock | Friday May 2010 @ 14:19

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  • barry, there was a time based art showreel in a far off corner of the art school. horribly signposted though...

    Posted by Stephen Bloe | Friday May 2010 @ 17:32

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  • If Omar could string a coherent sentence together then maybe the rest of the artistic society would pay attention to his work and him which he clearly feels it should do. The fact that he can't display his unjust rambling in a manner that shows respect for his peers and also the english language (of which he pollutes with his bitterness) illustrates a man (dare I say?) who has clearly not grown as a person since he left the comfort of his institution. If you have something important to say then consult a dictionary in future, and then your critique may convey a constructive analysis, instead of exemplifying your clear moroseness.
    I would like to inform the reader that I'm not an artist and hold no bias toward
    any particular show.

    Posted by Mark Calloway | Friday May 2010 @ 19:19

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  • i do think it's an awful shame that fine art appears to be lumped together and shot down as there are some absolutely outstanding fine art pieces scattered throughout the building

    Posted by Stephen Bloe | Saturday May 2010 @ 11:57

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  • I wonder if Mark's personal thoughts of Omar play part he - Mark's comments seem more like a personal attack and mentions absolutely nothing of anything to do with the opening article. What was the point in it?

    The Time Based Art's Digital Film work was poorly placed. In my opinion, which appears to be a shared one, a single microcinema would have sufficed, instead of 7 oddly placed small screens. The showreel was available to watch, on a precariously bluray player and projector - 'professional' it was not.

    Though I share a feeling that fine art was weak, Stephen raises a good point. There are nearly 100 students of fine art - there's bound to be rehashed crap. However, I was happy to see fewer sketches of fucking birds this year.

    All in all, I wonder what many people have spent doing the last 3 or 4 years of their lives and wonder if there was any point in so many of them studying art.

    Disheartening to say the least. It's becoming less an education facility and more to do with equipment hire. I certainly wouldn't be recommending anyone I know to study there.

    Posted by Edward Shallow | Saturday May 2010 @ 12:43

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  • about the micro-cinema layout...i was against the idea from the start but when you consider the size of the studio and the space that had to be filled then it wouldn't really have worked any other way. ...if there were no individual screening rooms and one mega-cinema then there would be an awful lot of barren space. nothing like a healthy debate...

    Posted by Stephen Bloe | Saturday May 2010 @ 13:49

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  • Having visited the degree show for the first time today I am surprised to read the negative reviews of fine art which seem to unjustifiably dwell on the negative aspects of the show. I agree that there were low points, however certainly no more than last year and there were some outstanding well presented and well thought out works on display.

    Posted by Jamie Muir | Saturday May 2010 @ 18:14

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  • I was pleasantly surprised with this years standard of Fine Art and Art/Philosophy work, I went in with low expectations after viewing two previously outstanding shows. They have little to be offended by in Omar's sweeping statements because I believe they are unfounded, this years work had a great balance between visually typical FineArty practice, the more contemporary conceptual and the plain old good fun with interesting ideas to boot. Nonetheless, this year lacked the flamboyant characters of previous years... maybe this is what Omar is missing/needing? The TBA showreel - poorly presented and placed, also some of the films were entirely laughable (and not in a good way), with me and my partner-in-observation unable to control ourselves at some points! Obviously the work of Matt Cameron was of a very high standard, it showed an aspect of what I thought was expected of TBA film work - interesting concepts teamed with great execution!

    Watch out next years suckers!

    Posted by Sour Grapes Anyone? | Saturday May 2010 @ 19:02

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  • I think Omar has posted a very distorted and inaccurate comment on the standard of the Fine Art and APACP show at D of J. He states that he doesn't want to offend anyone in particular, so instead he offends the entire year. I can think of at least a dozen really excellent examples of students showing high standards of conceptual rigour and aesthetic skill within this years show. In my opinion he only shows up his own mean-spiritedness and lack of artistic intelligence by highlighting the poor work (of which there was, as always, some) while remaining unaware of the excellence to be found.

    Posted by Luke Touchpaper | Saturday May 2010 @ 20:11

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  • in response to the comments about the showreel...yes, it was horribly situated and placed and without saying too much, there were some atrocious pieces as there always is but may i add that tba is much more than narrative based film and high production value and that balance is what gave our show an edge this year

    Posted by Stephen Bloe | Sunday May 2010 @ 00:04

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  • Just to clarify I do think the work of TBA is very interesting and many of the degree shows presented aesthetically and conceptually versatile work. However, the showreel did reveal flaws in that aspect of TBA, but perhaps that is due to individual talent rather than teaching.

    Posted by Sour Grapes Anyone? | Sunday May 2010 @ 12:34

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  • "However, the showreel did reveal flaws in that aspect of TBA, but perhaps that is due to individual talent rather than teaching"

    correct

    Posted by Stephen Bloe | Sunday May 2010 @ 14:34

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  • I spent over an hour writing a reply last night, only to find that The Skinny had deleted it this morning. I'll admit that I did use a couple of 'bad words'. Originally, I merely said that I didn't think that the show (specifically fine art) was particularly good this year and it seems I have opened up a whole can of worms. The topic for discussion here is art, not my 'character'.

    Posted by Omar | Wednesday June 2010 @ 15:38

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  • @ Scott Le Rock

    You are totally right. Reading it back it is essentially as you say. I can be really childish sometimes.

    Posted by Anonymous | Wednesday June 2010 @ 16:15

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