MA Illustration Falmouth

Falmouth Illustration MA. Sept 2018

This show is now the only surviving MA show at Woodlane as sadly the Contemporary Art, the

Environmental art and the Craft MAs have gone, victims of Tory austerity ?

There were about two dozen artists in 3 studios.

At first I though it looked a bit tame, small scale and quiet colours, but I needed time to adjust and

then found the show varied and absorbing.

Wonderfully generously a free catalogue was provided and everyone had postcards to collect with

their contact details. There were also books to buy but sadly no refreshments or cafe area.

A few people were there taking a great interest. I always feel the college should make a lot more of

the MA show to help the artists and should have the show still up for the new students to see who

are embarking on courses. There were several of the students there available to chat and those I

asked thought it was a good course. It is the refuge of artists that can draw and want to in these

postmodern times.

Unusually there was someone who actually drew Falmouth docks and local beaches with great flair

and fluency.

Georgie Bennett

I liked the way one illustrator, Judith Ohamizo Jurado,  invited us to sit at her desk and examine many small books that took

us into her life including pictures about her mother's death.

Then I was entertained by a political foray using sound, song and charicature to lampoon the way

Jeremy Corbyn has been presented but in an affectionate way.

Kat Johnson

I liked the wooden movable plant forms that knocked together gently.

Sarah Hougham-Slade

There were attractive stories, especially one with an urban and a country fox by Anita Stuart Andrews

There was reference by Valerie Dalton to painful experience of child abuse.

There was something using video about sea swimming.

There was work about the present bombardment of images versus quiet looking at a physical

book.

AND I was delighted to find a booklet of manifesto statements.

So well worth a visit and I left enriched by meeting a number of artists through their works. 

In the past I have heard some tutors at Falmouth disparage illustration, indeed 'illustration' is used as a

term of abuse for people's art on occasion, but why? 

The illustration MA shows us artists finding

their own individual expression in a variety of ways and the fact that they can all draw and can

make a living in the world of books etc is fine with me.

As Danya Todd puts it,

'Explode! Art is not a numbing agent, be volcanic'.

Newlyn Society of Artists Drawing Exhibition, Tremenheere May 2018

Newlyn Society of Artists ‘Drawing’ at Tremenheere May 2018

I love going to an art exhibition especially if it’s free, there’s plenty of parking and there’s tea and cake available afterwards. Tremenheere has these factors in its favour although tea stops an hour before the show closes so I was lucky to get any.This time difference is of course traditional.

Unlike going to time based entertainments, at an art show you can spend as little or long a time on each of the contributions as you please and are not trapped while something you don’t like goes on and on.

So, I was very glad I went upstairs first and demolished metaphorically the pencil drawings of taps, the casts of tea spoon holding boxes and the shapes made of car body type sheets of metal. They were beauifully executed by Michelle Olson and Jack Davies but I wasn’t in the mood for them. 

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Downstairs there were a lot of works drawn in many ways and media. There wasn’t much really political or narrative.  Quite a lot based on landscape, gestural marks, lots of black on white. If you knew some of the artists you could spot whose was whose.

David Whitbread Roberts

A video was showing with each artist talking briefly about their use of drawing and I caught Suzannah Clemence explaining sometimes she drew to remember and sometimes to forget, which was interesting.

As you go in you are invited to take a stick with a pastel attached and draw on a large piece of paper hanging down. It was a bit frustatrating as there was no hard surface behind the paper and no way to draw satisfyingly but people were participating.

This is a gallery that allows work on paper to be pinned to the wall with no protection for its surface, making it seem so vulneraable if anyone should want to deface it or should even cough on it or have a child who might make a grubby mark with their hand. One such work was marked sold for £1600. It was Pippa Young’s ‘Judgement Day’ a very detailed portrayal of three RA judges, Grayson Perry, Cornelia Parker and a third one I don’t recognize, on a large sheet of paper.

I liked some of the works and as an exhibition it served to wake me up visually, to make me notice the world around me more, the exit signs and the loo signs, the flowers outside, the blueness of the distant sea.

Tremenheere somehow repells me as the most middle class place I can think of whilst I still like going there. A child of about 7 was letting their yellow dumper truck run across tables in the cafe outside area so that it repeatedlly crashed onto the stone chippings on the ground. I wanted their parents to stop them doing this, to tell them it would break, to require them to take care of it. Maybe they were too busy conversing intelligently to notice.

I heard that Ken Turner was so annoyed that his piece about refugees was refused that he has left the society. He was annoyed that they invited him to do a performance at the opening of a show for which his drawing had been rejected.

As always it would interest me to see the rejections, maybe on a slide show, or why not put the work closer together and get more in? Why were two artists given lots of space upstairs whilst the others were hung, some in academy style proximity and some more conventionally spaced?

Outside I noticed a rather chi chi use of placing things in threes, three pots, three cylindrical posts with acrylic tops and three huge pebble structures. A bit gardeners’ world.

Anyway it seems the Newlyn Society are alive and, if not kicking, drawing quite a bit.

.

Newlyn Society of Artists 'Drawing' at Tremenheere May 2018

Newlyn Society of Artists ‘Drawing’ at Tremenheere May 2018

I love going to an art exhibition especially if it’s free, there’s plenty of parking and there’s tea and cake available afterwards. Tremenheere has these factors in its favour although tea stops an hour before the show closes so I was lucky to get any.This time difference is of course traditional.

Unlike going to time based entertainments, at an art show you can spend as little or long a time on each of the contributions as you please and are not trapped while something you don’t like goes on and on.

So, I was very glad I went upstairs first and demolished metaphorically the pencil drawings of taps, the casts of tea spoon holding boxes and the shapes made of car body type sheets of metal. They were beauifully executed by Michelle Olson and Jack Davies but I wasn’t in the mood for them. 

Downstairs there were a lot of works drawn in many ways and media. There wasn’t much really political or narrative.  Quite a lot based on landscape, gestural marks, lots of black on white. If you knew some of the artists you could spot whose was whose.

A video was showing with each artist talking briefly about their use of drawing and I caught Suzannah Clemence explaining sometimes she drew to remember and sometimes to forget, which was interesting.

As you go in you are invited to take a stick with a pastel attached and draw on a large piece of paper hanging down. It was a bit frustatrating as there was no hard surface behind the paper and no way to draw satisfyingly but people were participating.

This is a gallery that allows work on paper to be pinned to the wall with no protection for its surface, making it seem so vulneraable if anyone should want to deface it or should even cough on it or have a child who might make a grubby mark with their hand. One such work was marked sold for £1600. It was Pippa Young’s ‘Judgement Day’ a very detailed portrayal of three RA judges, Grayson Perry, Cornelia Parker and a third one I don’t recognize, on a large sheet of paper.

I liked some of the works and as an exhibition it served to wake me up visually, to make me notice the world around me more, the exit signs and the loo signs, the flowers outside, the blueness of the distant sea.

Tremenheere somehow repells me as the most middle class place I can think of whilst I still like going there. A child of about 7 was letting their yellow dumper truck run across tables in the cafe outside area so that it repeatedlly crashed onto the stone chippings on the ground. I wanted their parents to stop them doing this, to tell them it would break, to require them to take care of it. Maybe they were too busy conversing intelligently to notice.

I heard that Ken Turner was so annoyed that his piece about refugees was refused that he has left the society. He was annoyed that they invited him to do a performance at the opening of a show for which his drawing had been rejected.

As always it would interest me to see the rejections, maybe on a slide show, or why not put the work closer together and get more in? Why were two artists given lots of space upstairs whilst the others were hung, some in academy style proximity and some more conventionally spaced?

Outside I noticed a rather chi chi use of placing things in threes, three pots, three cylindrical posts with acrylic tops and three huge pebble structures. A bit gardeners’ world.

Anyway it seems the Newlyn Society are alive and, if not kicking, drawing quite a bit.

.