Westminster BA Mixed Media Fine Art Degree

It’s not a good sign when the reception staff don’t know where the Degree Shows are……. Eventually I found the spot, a temporary industrial marquee which is apparently a replacement for the normal building that is being refitted after a fire at the Harrow campus of the university.

My fist view of this ‘tent’ included the back of a car apparently halfway into the structure, it had of course been cut in half and the front was inside. This humorous work by Alexis Alexandrou has been done before but it was well executed and it improved my Sunday morning mood a bit. The clay slip dipped paper from Joanna Evans also had a bit of déjà vu having seen work by Richard Long using this technique from river mud in which ever city of the world he’s exhibiting in.

Janine Zuchelkowski had elements of an interesting project with her installation “Rise and Crime”, a domestic scene of a breakfast bar, partially covered with tabloid newspaper cuttings of assaults and murders. I think though some consistency is required. However she varied the techniques used, sometimes totally coving objects, but leaving others partially covered as if we might not work out what they were. In the case of the kitchen roll it was totally made out of newspaper! I did like the piece despite these picky comments. As manipulating found objects is an important part of my practice, I was also drawn to Rosanna Rubino’s tangle of copper pipes and boilers with a long red hose woven viscerally though. It was a bit reminiscent of a cartoon view of guts – or am I just gut obsessed at the moment!

A lot of the painters are making pretty pattern pictures, with the obvious exception of the painting installation by Abigail Balfe (who included areas of collage – hundreds of rubber gloves and cotton wool blobs). However the unfinished look seemed less intentional and more just not finished. Perhaps there’s a hint in her quote from the show catalogue “Some days I don’t even make it to University….” The repetitious use of eyes and faces in the large, bright, powerful canvasses of Rebecca Youssefi made them stronger than a lot of the other painting and they overshadowed the poorly constructed canvases of Holly Edwards who’s project consisted of seven large Pollocky pictures each in a single colour.

There was, of course, the ubiquitous non working video, but I was a bit shocked that one of the installations was locked! fortunately one of students, showing friends around, took in upon himself to call the artist who gave the code to access the room. I don’t think I would have missed not seeing it – but that’s not quite the point.

Finally, a very satisfying projection by Beya Rivers, consisting solely, but wonderfully of a continuous showing of “The End” from different films. The red velvet curtains framed the piece like punctuation.