Falmouth BA show 2024

 Sink at Belmont House

 

There are  about 100 artists in the show, most of them women.
Falmouth University doesn’t give this huge exhibition much publicity and in three hours I only see six other visitors. Several buildings are without any invigilators.
There is no information about what the course content is so we only see each student’s final project and we don’t know their degree results.
Hardly anyone presents anything for sale but quite a few have business cards to collect and a few have give away items. There is little invited participation and no performance.
It’s mostly introspective installations with lots of fabric used and assembled collected ready made things, videos and lots to read. Only the drawing BA has a printed catalogue - and drawing can mean anything.
There’s scarcely any use of wood or metal, stone or ceramics.

Trying to take an overview, mostly the students, who I presume are generally under 25, are preoccupied with their personal identity and problems. There are warnings about suicide as a topic and references to violence in war, to distress, illness, disability and sexual orientation.
A few refer to the outside world, what it looks like, ownership of land and industry, but there’s nothing definitely socialist or traditionally political - there’s mention of women, hints of feminism, portrayal  of vaginas, protest at Greenham, nature as wonderful and the need to conserve it, Dionysian intoxication, and postwar Germany,
It’s mostly about individuals but two artists feature meeting a range of friendly people and having conversations.

My prize for the most memorably meaninglessly horrible exhibit is the room containing two sordid toilets that smells heavily of urine. Elliot Millin gives no clues about it.

Most surprising is the piece that mentions god, by Rebekah Mohamed. There are elegantly written words drawn directly on the wall and gentle sounds and recorded spoken words  - it’s all pale, quiet, contemplative and refers to psalms in the  Bible. 

 part of R Mohamed's installation

 

I liked the drawings of a woman with birds and their twittering on overhead speakers - all about her loss of hearing, by Violet Hill

Violet Hills

I watched the video about a disfunctional family, my attention captured by the way it was constructed and performed.  Its the work of Diana-Maria Ghita, who references the book, ‘What is love?’ by feminist Bell Hooks and uses the same title.

 from Ghita's video

The installation extolling libraries made a change from the personal, with an unusual largedistorted  photograph of bookshelves and then an assemblage of bookcases at odd angles from which you could take a book. I took F.Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘Tender is the Night.’
Lily Tyrrell made this.

 Lily Tyrrell

Nowadays you have to be wealthy or willing to incurr a hefty debt to attend these courses.
I talked to a group who were invigilating who had enjoyed being on the BA although one was glad to stop having to explain everything.
Its not surprising that young students have a lot of personal angst to express but maybe it’s become more general?
Are there similar trends on other BA courses round the globe?

It was a stimulating foray into the minds of Falmouth’s class of ‘24

A relief also to leave this world of self absorbed reconnaissance that feels rather claustrophobic.