JMU Fine Art Degree Show

At 2a Myrtle Street 10.00 – 16.00 until June 9th.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that I love art degree shows and, in fact, any exhibition of works by students or recent graduates. Naturally the individual works range from excellent to crap but overall there’s freshness, energy, enthusiasm, challenging, ground-breaking and often weird and humorous.
This is a huge exhibition involving over 60 final year students, its on 3 floors plus the spooky basement and 2 portakabins in the yard. I’ve already been round twice but need more time to really have a good look and despite being provided with a map at reception I get lost a few times.

Some of the highlights for me are John O’Hare’s painted rooms in one of the outside huts, Julie Swallow’s room full of Tokyo-inspired distorted clay robots on the 1st floor, Lucy Sibbick’s abattoir-in-a-house creation complete with lots of fake blood also on the 1st floor, Jamie Torode’s and Gordon Culshaw’s sound and video installations in the basement (the perfect setting), oh and loads more. You just have to go and see for yourself before it finishes next Thursday.
There were bottles of Raisin beer courtesy of Cains at the opening too, very nice.