Eight new graduates step out onto the art scene through this exhibition. And if this is what we have to look forward to in the galleries of the future, I'm buying a DVD player.
Despite its excellent presentation, this assembly of collected refuse and constructed stuff is, with one exception, dull, colourless and boring. Does rubbish dredged from a wheelie bin and stuck on a pristine white wall constitute art these days? There must have been some underlying theory or purpose to it all but for the life of me I can't figure it out. Yes recycling is important to the environment, and yes urban detritus makes a valid medium with which to make art, and yes we can inject something new into a tired old cliché. But isn't recycled discards-cum-art supposed to be either functional, decorative, funny or thought provoking?
Gemma Hohnen has an idea, but it's not brought to fruition here. Pale hues of acrylic are painted between light-weight lines perfectly drawn onto the canvas with an HB pencil. The linear patterns are boring, the paint smudges the graphite, there is no rhythm in the exercise, no optical illusion of space or movement, no reason to engage in the work. With more saturation of colour or variation of pattern or strength of line these works could be mesmerizing.
I'm not sure what Susanna Castleden is trying to say in her triptych Corrections Corporation. These images support a black and white depiction of a native flower above its embossed name, Hakia, Acacia, Casurrina, the names of our prisons. They are well produced and presented but don't hold the eye or activate any viable thought process.
Anne Mac Kinnon's Seven Deadly Sins series illustrates the vices in little white scenarios tacked onto a white wall and if it weren't for the one touch of colour in each we might have missed it all. The only response evoked by this exhibit of doll house furniture is 'cute'.
Thank heavens for Geoffrey Palfreyman. His excellent aluminium and silver wire constructions look like exotic robotic flowers from a future filled with genetically modified, cloned, or manufactured beauty. By sliding a knob at the base of each stem we can cause the intricate petals open or close. The mind is opened to all sort of interpretations, then snaps shut at the possibility of one. Looking around at what is being passed off as 'fine art' today, the very talented Palfreyman may indeed be predicting the future of the genre.