Exhibition Booklet

Thanks To:

Steven Scott

Chrissie Morrison

Sue Doggett

Paul Taylor

Graham Warren

Tony Crossley

Benjamin Gooding

Lindsay Holland

Tony Bendell

Roger RowlandYOU ARE HERE final fine art exhibition Croydon College Degree Show 2011








Terrence Adegbenle

Street’s Disciples

Hip Hop music has played an important role in my years growing up; it has taught me that millions of people felt the same way that I do about where and how they live. It has united people around the world with its various messages.

In recent years however, the genre (in its most popular form) has been "Dumbed Down"! Conscious rappers have been pushed to the back while large music corporations encourage those with detrimental subject matters of Sex, Money and Violence.

My paintings are of London rappers who use Hip Hop as a platform to express their feelings concerning social, religious and or political issues. I wanted to honour them for being able to withstand the pressure to just, "do what everyone else does" and stand for what is right.

They are not perfect, they are people with flaws like the rest of us but they seem to have realised the power of their position in relation to the youth who listen to their music.

13

Robert Quinn

Views Of Croydon

These two pieces entitled views of Croydon help to sketch a real space between my individual experience and what I have chosen to discard or emphasise and represent as the presentation of that .

The space is in terms of pyschogeographers such as Iain Sinclair, a reimagining of what is taken for granted as a town in suburban London as it continues on a downward trend towards a failed Modernism . I have used vintage postcards because they provide a complementary vantage point to the current views which will surely become as much a new form of nostalgia as those have.

The five audio pieces are similar to archival accounts of recent walks undertaken by myself which change over time from reactionary, anti-progressive viewpoints to open-minded excursions with spirit guides that become in their own way just as clichéd only to make one view the previous walks in a different light.

Listening to the walks one is transported back in time but firmly rooted in the present moment.

12

Louise Douglas

Four Score And Ten

The work I have produced for the final piece is beset with irony and sadness. It has been a bittersweet experience, one that I never could have imagined that would change so dramatically for me in the way I have approached the final rendition. The project was to have considered the ageing process laced with the onset of dementia but in a curious fashion, was to celebrate the life of a very special woman who was eccentric and extraordinary. Her name was Iris.

I had videoed her rooms at Greenwich and recorded her voice. The memories had faded somewhat but there were glimpses of lucidity. Then ten weeks ago, she was admitted to hospital. She died on the 1st of May. It was down to me to clear her flat of everything and the project took on a new layer, a new emotional aspect.

The importance of the piece is the ‘life and death’ of the two rooms. Her voice cascades to us in a jumbled fashion and literally it considers her life lived for fifty years in her flat and then her death and subsequent void.

I hope that the environment would invite the spectator to contemplate old age and the possibility that life doesn’t always end the way we hope and also to highlight that our immediate environment is precious to us and we hang on to possessions like treasured memories that we are loath to relent.

1

Marta De Ferrari

The Other Way Around

This installation is meant to create an illusion of an endless space and to deceive the viewer.

The infinitely reflected images may leave the viewer in a state of confusion and unease.

Sublimity describes moments when we recognise that any of our ways of comprehending the world are illusions. As human beings, we are programmed to make sense of the world and to construct coherence, but at the same time we try to discover meanings that defy rational understanding. This should encourage a reflection on the vagaries of perception and the mysteries of human consciousness.

The upside-down image projected in the space relates to the way our brain and a camera work: the mirror flips the image the right way up. If we think about it, in this world things are not always what they seem and we can never be certain they are the right way up or the only way up.

By walking in this room, the viewer would be overwhelmed by a sense of astonishment and confusion.

This installation should make us stop and think that we shouldn’t take anything for granted because even the banal everyday, taken from a different perspective, can completely change our perception of reality.

2

Edwin Botchway

Perception

My work is about views of perception. There is a lack of information in perception that makes one make a judgment towards a situation before the complete information becomes available, which may be different from the judgment one has just made. Since there are different points of view, my work focuses mainly on the omniscient point of view. This is where the narrator of a story knows everything about all the characters. My work is placed in scenes that trigger an immediate response, especially humor or a fascination with ambiguous or surreal happenings. This shows a series of street photographs which reveals different people in situations faced with a scenario. The scenes are heavily loaded with real characters and from different locations in London but which happen to tell a story when put together. This work explores the notion of staged reality. The intentions behind my work, was to explore the human psychological concept of being judgmental and how we, as human beings, are quick to make conclusions upon coming across a situation or adverts. In most cases, our judgments and our perceptions are different from the reality. What I wanted to achieve with this project, is to highlight that the human mind often works in quite a primitive way of processing information and to question the viewer to the fact that there is always another side to every story, scenario or incident.

11

Yvette Maguire

Representations Of The Female Pose

I have been exploring the representation of the female pose in men’s, women’s and lifestyle magazines and portrait paintings as popular opinion is that Men’s magazines are exploiting females as sexual objects.

I found that the poses used were similar and repetitive regardless of the source and intended target audience, as if there is a standard blueprint they are all following.

I have challenged this misconception and demonstrated that it is not only Men’s magazines that exploit with such explicit forms.

The final piece is two separate prints made with multiple images from different sources combined into a single piece with traces of their origin abstracted.

The linoprint reflects how the female form appears in glossy magazines and the monoprint reflects a softer style reminiscent of classic nude portraits.

The ornate frame provides a renaissance to the innocence and splendour of the nude image as it has appeared for centuries in portrait paintings, presenting the female form as elegant and something to covet.

Can the viewer identify whether they were sourced from Art, Men’s or Women’s magazines or even Pornography?

10

Zsofia Szabo

Imprints

We all leave something to our children and the next generations. This can be property, jewellery, money or nice memories. Even if we don’t want to leave anything we do have an impact. This is called nowdays ‘carbon footprint’.

The main motive of my current work considers the idea of endurance, which here means that the materials of scattered litter (mostly aluminium and plastic) not only to cause lasting damage to nature but breaks down in 100-1000 years. By the time the garbage degrades we will be long gone and the only thing would be left after us is the rubbish and its imprints.

The intentions behind my work is to make people think about the problem, bring awareness and to engage with the issues of rubbish.

3

Jushima Mardushaj

Memoirs...

I went back home last winter and came across an old album. It consisted of my childhood photos together with some of my family and friends. This old album made me very curious as I was not aware that they existed, the photographer was anonymous or forgotten and now these events are stuck back in time and cannot be repeated.

So I decided recreate a second collection of old photos. Throughout my work there is a strong interest in ‘myself’ looking at my own childhood photos as being the third person and at the same time getting the viewers involved.

‘Memoirs’ is a piece about trying to overpower the photographer’s choices and decisions that he related to when taking those photos. The idea of looking through the images allows the viewer to take the place of the ‘operator’ and perform the same method of looking through the lenses (like the photographer) and also choosing where and how to look at them.

The viewers have then completed the context by becoming the third people looking at the object.

4

Hannah Colbron

Did You Hear...

Second wave feminists gave up house hold crafts in order to break down the notions of what women were capable of, in contemporary society third wave feminists believe it is a reward for them to re-connect with these traditional activities and in doing so they hope to re-build the community that once existed.

In traditional times women would gather together to quilt, this way they could socialize but be doing something of use at the same time. This became a very communal activity and the quilts would often be donated to those who needed them the most, this helped to keep the community close and became a frequent way for people to support one another.

By combining traditional quilting techniques with embroidered text, you gain a sense of how much the community has changed in contemporary society. It gives us an insight in to how gossip gets passed from house to house, its content changing every time a new person hears or tells it.

We love to hear the latest news, but we will rarely stop and try to help or resolve any problems, we just pass them on.

Sit on the chairs and interact with the quilt and allow yourself to question whether the act of the handmade really can re-define our community life as we know it.

9

Melanie Burke

Copy me do

"Copy me do" is a synchronized sound and projection installation that attempts to highlight and mimic the relationship between what is formally taught and what is passively learned through the process of non-verbal communication and cultural socialisation. Much emphasis is attached to the spoken language, however the learning process begins long before the ability to speak is grasped as children learn to make sense of both verbal and non-verbal gestures and sounds that carry un-discussed meaning. These non-verbal styles are distinctive to all cultures for example people from Caribbean communities may "Kiss their teeth" when angry, frustrated or showing descent. The act and its correct use is not normally taught or explained but experienced naturally as part of the socialisation process within the domestic space where culture is first learned. Taking the lead from YouTube English pronunciation videos, the projection instructs the viewer how to perform the vocalisations out of context in an unnatural way yet, when used in context no instruction is required.

The kinetic sound box responds with the use of motion sensors to the projected image in its own copied version.

8

Rebecca West

Untitled

My practices are concerned with concepts of femininity, vulnerability, sexuality, and women. I am influenced by cinema and popular culture. I wish to refer to the work of Edward Hopper, Gregory Crewson, Cindy Sherman whose work has a strong narrative, sense of theatrically and characterisation and sense of place. My prints are not self portraits even though I am the subject of my work as Cindy Sherman that she disappear in her work that she does see her self in her film stills. I was influenced by Cindy Sherman's untitled film stills in which she assumes female identities, revealing gender as an unstable and socially constructed, leaning towards the assumption that there is no innate biological female identity. As judith butler argues, it is learnt by performance the act of gender, femininity. Whilst taking my original photographs it was my intention for the lighting and composition to resemble that of the film noir, illuminating the face and upper body. My characters are inspired by Hitchcock heroines, the femme fatals of film noir. I have produced a series of prints that lead into each other, the head of the imaginary actress moves gradually up in a series of four prints, with a landscape print to secure a narrative, as a ambiguous statement and I hope to add a sinister element. I repeated this series four times and hang them in adjacent lines.

5

Suzanne Ray

Held In The Memories Of Others

"We look at people’s faces in photographs with an intensity and intimacy that in life we would only normally reserve for the extreme emotional states – for a first look at someone we may sleep with, or the last look at someone we love"*

There is an importance, personally and socially for ceremonies and memorials when someone dies. This helps us to come to terms with, let go and separate the dead from the living. This in turn helps us to come to terms with our own inevitable fate and confront the universal fear of our own extinction.

This piece is very much about our deep human need to be remembered and to be held in the memories of others. A funeral order service is an object, which encapsulates all of this and more.

The photograph used on the front cover of the order of service holds its own importance, as it has been used to represent the person. The sorting and choosing of the photograph is pivotal to the process of memorial. For the person that knows the loved one in the photograph, it holds and encapsulates that person’s personality, their essence, their being.

The wax tablets resonate with the idea of devotional candles. The blank tenth tablet is left open to the viewer, which also references the uncountable blank order of services and our inevitable fate.

* Gumpert, L. (1994) Christian Boltanski. France. Flammarion

6

Francesca SotaAugmentum

My intentions for this piece were to work around the concepts of the flesh and the notion of the ill body. These sculptures represent my interpretation of the ill human body. Externalising that which is usually hidden from us and putting the hidden on show. Through the sculptures I have tried to duplicate a sense of the organic, by using the plants to give the impression of the untamed and that of the natural. The plants symbolise illness, embodying the felling of growth and being alive. All the plants I have used, have medical and or homeopathic attributes.

The masks were created so that they are non-gender specific and that they are relatable but unidentifiable. These have been made with the traits of skin in mind, showing the pore-like texture and a transparency, mimicking the thin membrane.

The masks have a strong resemblance to traditional death masks and veiled mourning figures, although death is not a concept that I am strongly enforcing.

7