My five favourite works at the Cambridge School of Art Degree Show 2013

In my Pick of June a few days ago, I listed the Cambridge School of Art Degree Show (at Anglia Ruskin University).  I've since been to have a look and here are my

Five Favourites:

(one nude man, one ball in the sky, one ligature, one Cambridge street, one unicorn)

Tom Hiscocks, My Space II, perspex
(winner of the Suparee Gazeley Award)

First off, there was this amazing life-size perspex man.  I entered the alcove and that is what I saw:  a shimmering nude figure.  Then I went up close and the 3-D contours dissolved into a jumble of planes and sharp edges:

The light plays on and in and through the ghostly outline.  Here I am gazing into the rib cage, genitals and the tops of the legs...

Next, I saw this lovely unassuming little work in a downstairs corridor:

Susie Johnson, Appropriation, framed paper sculpture

This reminds me a bit of Joseph Cornell, and a tiny bit of Joan Miró.  I like the way the objects cling to the frame, the music-like bounce of the paper roll, and the jaunty position of the red ball.



Next, this typography booklet caught my eye:

Daniel Silva, Hybrid Type and New Ligatures
(typography)

The scribbles and the careful typeface were strangely compelling.

I loved this page about designing a ligature for the word of.  It made me think about fonts and serifs, about the work typographers do, about the strange magic of script and text.

Now for some Cambridge-themed art:

Crista Wright, ink-based illustration
(Round Church)

I quite liked the clean sharp lines and the blocks of primary colours.  Also the way Cambridge seems oddly empty and formal.

Half Hergé and his ligne claire,  half Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.

But where is this scene?  Do you recognise it?  If so, do let me know in comments!!



And finally, the pièce de résistance:

Yes, it's a unicorn!

Madeleine Taylor, The Sky is Blue (the wall label contains this quote by Leonard Cohen:
"Even damnation is poisoned with rainbows.")
(winner of the Frontroom Graduate Award)

I couldn't believe my eyes when I rounded a corner and there it was, matt black, shoulder-height, with a long flowing man and tail, and big blue eyes.  It just stood there.  

And it has little feathers on its fetlocks!

Its horn juts into my space, like a delicate narwhal's tusk.  Extraordinary to find such a thing at an art exhibition.  (Eat your heart out, Jeff Koons.)

More posts on wild art:

Dinosaurs by the Chapman brothers

Seven reasons why the Snowy Farr sculpture fails

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Three drawings at the Drawing Cube

The Drawing Cube, 9 Norfolk St, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, CB1 2LD, next to CB2.

There's a new little gallery in town, and it's called The Drawing Cube.  See how friendly and cosy it is!

Three pictures

I ambled on in and here are my three favourites from the current exhibition.

Trudi Esberger, work from the series Arrival, 2012, gouache and pencil, signed digital print

I love the mysterious atmosphere, the crisp clean lines, the long shadow, the transparent figures in front of the low wall, the BLUE.  I'm reminded of Edward Hopper and the covers of hard-boiled detective novels. 

Becky Palmer, No Doubt, 2013, watercolour and acrylic on paper

I love images of arthropods (as you may know) so these kooky bugs appealed to me particularly!  There's a whole series of beetles and butterflies but this leaping creature, hovering above its shadow and striving upwards to where another elusive beastie disappears, cropped by the edge, says it all.  Lovely spare lines and colour accents, and a great sense of motion.

Joanne Young, The Journey Home, 2013, graphite on paper

I'm including this because it reminds us all that you don't need a whole lot of complicated equipment to make fantastic art.  All of this is made with just a pencil and a piece of paper.  The varieties of greys, of texture and of line, and the different kinds of light (and even colour) which they evoke, are amazing.

Three artists

All the artists are graduates from the world-famous MA in Children's Book Illustration at the Cambridge School of Art (part of Anglia Ruskin University).

One affordable comic book

While I was in the gallery, I picked up this wonderful comic book, financed by crowdfunding, and full of quirky graphic short stories by the exhibited artists and many more.

Buy it for £3.50 from the Drawing Cube.  Or buy it online via the Etsy shop.

These books make excellent gifts from Cambridge (for those of us tired of yet another pot of local honey or teabags with a picture of King's College on the packet...)

Find out more:

To find out more about each artist:  Click on their name above.

To find out more about this and other upcoming exhibitions at the Drawing Cube, click here: The Drawing Cube

The exhibition ends Sunday 9 June.

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Mysterious sculptures outside the Doubletree Hotel: Who made them?

Every week, I cycle past these two sculptures on my way to the gym.  They flank the entrance to the Double Tree by Hilton hotel in Cambridge.  (It's that hotel on the river Cam, next to where you rent punts.  It used to be called the Cambridge Garden House Moat House Hotel, for those who remember that far back.)

It's easy to be snobbish about corporate sculpture.  Bland, pointless, smooth as the money used to pay for it, empty as a hotel bed just after the last guest has departed.

I was snobbish about it myself.  But then I stopped and really looked at these sculptures, and I found them to be surprisingly sweet.  They have now quite grown on me:  they're like two funny gnarled people, patiently standing there, day in, night out.

Left one

The left-hand one is made up of three articulated elements, with round smooth holes.

It looks at you like a beaky owl.

Close-up, it reveals an interesting surface and a twisted three-dimensionality.

Right one

The right-hand one is a smooth white flame, with two holes.

It reminds me of Henry Moore.  Or of Barbara Hepworth.

I wonder who made them?  No signature is carved into their stone bellies; no plaque reveals their names.  Nobody in the hotel had any idea.  Hotel staff suggested to me that I write to the Ability Group who own this hotel chain; I did so a few months ago but haven't had a reply.

I'm not fabulous on materials, either.  Is this a local stone?  Is it granite, marble, concrete?  

So if you have an idea who might have sculpted these, or what their rightful titles are, or the date they were made -- do let me know!

What?  Two stone sculptures.  

When?  I'm guessing 1960s but could be any time between 1930 and 1990, really.

Where?  Outside the Doubletree by Hilton Hotel, Granta Place (opposite the Grad Pad).  Go to Scudamore's and keep walking towards Coe Fen.

Related post:

Mysterious Cambridge rocks at the Classics Faculty:  Who is the sculptor?

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Imps galore! Rebecca O'Hanlon's photograph

This is a photograph by photography student Rebecca O'Hanlon at Anglia Ruskin University.

It caught my eye as I walked through this corridor:




At first I thought it was a painting. It's composed so carefully.




An irritable woman sits at a desk in front of a white space. She is surrounded by little people -- imps? sprites? pixies? They climb around on her and near her and teem across her desk.

She flicks at one, without looking.



Upon closer inspection, we see that the little people are all the same person. A plaque on the wall next to the work contains this artist's statement:

"In this composition I use my 'Mini-Me' technique to help me illustrate the differences that exist in a subject's personality between when they are at work and when indulging in free time. ... it is the conflict between the need to conform at work, and the release found in free time that I try to capture in this composition."

I have to say that I did not see this in the work.  And when faced with conflicting communications -- artist's work vs artist's statement -- I tend to say:

Trust the art (not the artist).

   Sorry, Rebecca O'Hanlon... :-)

For me, the work is more whimsical and layered than the artist's statement with its focus on one individual's personality and its blunt opposites (work/free time) suggests.

Bizarrely, this composition reminds me of the German children's rhyme about little elfs called Heinzelmännchen who creep into your house at night and tidy everything up.

Source: Daniela Dreuth's Kinderohren-blog

Except the imps in this photo aren't tidying. They're busy having fun.


There's also a mystery here: a picture within a picture (within a picture within a picture...).




The umbrella-flyers are my favourites.




They remind me of another German children's story, taken from Heinrich Hoffmann's 19th-C. book Der Struwwelpeter. It's the story of the Flying Robert.

Source: Wikisource.

And the photo is also a tiny bit like Victorian fairy paintings with their wild and weird little people:

Richard Dadd, The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke, 1855-64, Tate. Source: Japanese wikipedia.

Magical.

Who: Rebecca O'Hanlon.
Where: Anglia Ruskin University, in the first-floor 'bridge' corridor between the Helmore Building and the Lord Ashcroft Building.
To find it: Enter Helmore from East Road. Go to the first-floor Costa café. Go through the double-doors at the end. Turn immediately right and go through another set of double-doors. You will see the art!

On display until 30 Jan. 2013.

Visit Rebecca O'Hanlon's photography website.

Like Rebecca O'Hanlon on Facebook.


Related posts:
Realism plus fantasy:  An extraordinary painting by Ulyana Gumeniuk

Woodcuts in a corridor:  John Lawrence illustrations for Philip Pullman



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