2020 UK Graduate Online Exhibition — Contemporary Art
Updated: Jan 10, 2021
During Lockdown, HelloArtUk launched the online public art exhibition to support students and new generation artists whose graduation exhibitions were cancelled due to the impact of the pandemic. We were pleasantly surprised to receive numerous amounts of submissions.
We will be showcasing works of photography, painting, sculpture and contemporary art. Click here for the other themes: "Painting", "Sculpture" and "Photography".
Let's take a look at Contemporary art submissions in this article.
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01 红怪 / 装孙子
Zuki Zhou
IG：@zukikikizhou
Zuki’s practice focuses on the paradoxes within daily life, bringing the catastrophic influence of intimate relationship in Asian culture, especially in China. Her work refers to Chinese feudal thought such as gender stereotyping.
<红怪>
Watercolour Paper、Oil Pastels、Marker
<装孙子>
Oil pastel、Collage
‘My grandmother always wanted a grandson, so I pretended to be her grandson. I failed, and I became a coward.’
“Pretending to be a grandson” has two meanings in Chinese, one describes someone pretending be someone’s grandson. The other is a satiric description of being a coward.
02
02.FARRRA
Camila Ospina Gaitán
IG：@camila_ospina_gaitan
Ospina is a Colombian artist. Her work attempts to reveal identities through the aesthetics of ordinary things. Her most recent project is based on her own identity as a Columbian women.
FARRRA is a Colombian slang word for party, the project has started as a question of Ospina’s own identity when she moved to the UK. It began when she started to identify the sexualization of the Latin American woman based on their body language and dance. She felt a drastic change in people’s behaviour due to her physical appearance and the construction of beliefs and behaviours based around the stereotypes around different cultures. As a result, she started to recreate her own real Colombian party through the aesthetics of the ordinary, with symbolic sculptures, specific music and the design of an environment based her own Bogotá low-income party. In her work, Ospina’s identity is constructed through her own experience and not the European male gaze.
It is a decolonisation and liberation process where the body is thought of as an expression, a form of communication and a site of politics, history, and resistance.。
03.Holy Boob Pottery
Kate
IG：@idea.ceramic
'This is a short story about my Holy Boob Pottery. I love ceramics and creating naked ceramics turned out to be inspiring and essential for me!
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The story began when my elder son was born. I tried to make every effort to grow him healthy and happy. And to my firm belief breastfeeding was the first step to give my baby the best food, care, and love. And it really was! I became a lactation specialist and was eager to help other newborn mommies (I remembered how I suffered from the lack of help and support at the beginning). So I became a volunteer at our local maternity hospital and ran meetings with future moms. To promote my practice my dear husband and I designed breastfeeding business cardholder. You can't even imagine how astonished I was when I found out that hospital staff started hiding it from the visitors! They were just ashamed of this boob cardholder! At that moment I thought about how many people are ashamed of their bodies. I was wondering what people from other countries think of my ceramic boobs. And breastfeeding consultants all over the world liked them and used them in their work!
From then on many other souvenirs were created. And I do believe that these funny gifts not only bring some joy to people's lives. They also attract attention to burning issues of today - body positivity, sexual relationship in the family after child birth, promoting breastfeeding in public. I want people to understand that there are natural things in life that you don't have to be ashamed of!' —— Kate
04.
Ying Hui Tam
IG：@cardsfromyingland
Here's two yarn ewes, Ewenice and Ewegene, who have been scarfing down YingHui’s favourite scarf.
Her paper art has always been more of a therapy than hobby. Lately, she started a 100-day paper art project crafting fictional creatures inspired by Neil Gaiman's Coraline button-eye characters. Each of these being is born from a pun, illustrated by photographing "Unseen Scenes" where they fiddle with household items when the humans are not looking.
"I am a dreamer by day, crafter by night, and punster around the clock. Well, that is, who I would love to be. In truth, before pursuing a postgraduate in Musicology at the University of Edinburgh, I worked as a writer, an orchestra management personnel, and a copywriter. "
05.
Freya Yeates
IG：@frja.lou
<Touch Across Time>
Freya creates video and time-based works that reflect on themes of intimacy, loss and memory. Through her practice, she experiments with the potential of video, projection and light to communicate a surreal and quiet account of human experience. Her current research considers the states of grief and melancholia through a subjective lens as well as applying its theory to social and political climates.
Video Screenshot
Her most recent work explores the relationship between haptic memory (memory of touch) and the body. These works engage with the theory of hauntology and haptic visuality (use of the visuals to generate a sense of touch), to convey the process of grief through moving image work.
06. Halco 角豆树
Markos Ioannou
IG：@designer_mio
Markos studied Graphic Design at the University of Edinburgh. The project featured here, Halco, was conceived in response to an Edinburgh College of Art brief demanding the communication of a best-kept secret. He chose carob, a staple of his Mediterranean heritage, which is largely unknown outside of the region. With a dual goal of advertising and preserving carob, Markos conceived carob product manufacturer Halco, a brand which employs Cypriot influences in its contemporary design. The full range offers not just snack bars, but other carob derivatives such as traditional syrups and flours to introduce carob in everyday cooking/baking—all with modern flair.⠀
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Versatility is at the centre of His work. Markos constantly searches for ways to combine diverse influences, mediums and subject matters into a single, cohesive design practice. Illustrative sketches become brand assets. Photography becomes a concept. Idle conversations become copywriting; he constantly picks and blends various titbits throughout the day and iterate them into cohesive and striking visual outcomes.
07. Posterboy
Rory Russel
IG：@posterboy.pdf
Posterboy is you, Posterboy is me, he’s the neighbour you only know exists because of the frequent the thud from above…
Posterboy is the faceless protagonist from Rory’s concept album 20X20 set to be released in September. He began writing the album back in 2016. Growing tired of the predictable and terrestrial ‘out of this world’ personas we see in popular culture he wanted to ground himself as a musician and designer.
Posterboy is the antidote to the far-flung facade we’ve come to expect from pop musicians, he’s just average and sometimes below average. Growing up religiously on American cinema we first encounter Posterboy on his pilgrimage across the Atlantic in search of his American dream, only to be crushed within the first few bars of ‘24hrs In America’. Returning to his flat defeated, he vows to live in his 20 by 20 world for the rest of his life.
08. Incognito
Shannen Dorothee Tioniwar
‘Incognito’ is an intelligent offline device which allows users to determine whether they would like to share their data to the “always listening devices” with the respective consequences. This is done by allowing users to categorise and classify the perceived level of privacy of data, allowing them to consciously share data at their own discretion. This interactive intermediary device gives users the ability to customise the boundaries of a device in regards to data collection. ‘Incognito’ gives a user the chance to explore challenges and the opportunities provided by AI supported devices.
Shannen is an aspiring Product designer looking to create products that reuse old technologies for innovative purposes; to instigate a positive change for the future society.
While the development of AI, data technology and autonomous devices heavily influences her practice, she looks more towards exploring various user interactions that circulate the subject of technological regeneration. Compelled by the amount of tangible products in the market, she is interested in exploring user experiences through tangible products.
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