BA FIne Art and Drawing at Falmouth 2026

 Falmouth BA show is a fantastic opportunity to see what students have been doing on a huge variety of of courses and I wish it was more advertised.

I saw the BA Fine  Art and BA Drawing shows and that’s such a lot to take in I was exhausted although revived by an interesting lunch, having had to email to make sure the cafe would be open.

There were very young people about along with their parents for interviews and information which reminded me usefully that most of these graduates are also very young. Having done a variety of work over 3 years they present only one project

 Some staff member must have decreed that Fine Art students would not make their identity clear by having their names and statements next to their stuff. Instead you had to find leaflets just outside the rooms which you were asked to put back if you read them. This makes it less likely that names will be remembered  or anything sold - no prices either. Are any art dealers even invited? Business cards disallowed this year?

Is any advice given about how to progress in the ridiculous art world, how to organise an exhibition etc? Or do the tutors as in my day not touch on these subjects?
Hopefully the male staff no longer prey on the students sexually and hopefully they encourage rather than standing in a group around one student tearing into them with criticism until some burst into tears.

In Drawing they had the gumption or funds to make an informative free catalogue with even the names of the staff who run the courses. Here one artist was actually  present - most of the show has not even student invigilators. 

  Matthew  Amos had observed houses where he came from and done small detailed paintings of suburbia, including a butcher featuring a menacingly large English flag. It made a point.
 Students show little interest in Falmouth-   perhaps earlier course work required them to look around where they live?
There is hardly any painting although the shop still sells the materials.

Instead there are a lot of installations. These range from a fridge containing a few melting ice molds of foodstuffs to a detailed construction of a snooker club with a feminist message.
Another  would be feminist thought, wrongly in my view, that she could further this by constructing a sleazy night club booth with neon and a revolving female leg.

There is hardly any obvious politics beyond interest in nature’s importance, one  controversially using young trees taken from their habitat.

One piece, by Farah Bhatti, I found eloquent was a presumably Palestinian floor design with irises made to emerge growing through  its smashed surface - life despite destruction.

 

There are quite a lot of students taking the opportunity for self reflective  examination and here the most powerful was a room with obligatory warning of upsetting content, Inside a slide show clattered relentlessly in the centre showing the clinical notes about the artist , Francesca Pease, who was sectioned and treated for anorexia. Around the outside were expressive drawings showing patients holding hands between  their beds or a circle of naked people.
It was the contrast  between the lively inner life and the matter of fact records kept that was brilliantly poignant.

 

 Another piece I liked , by Amy Higginbottom, was the only one depending on active audience participation and was unfortunately closed when passed - but  it was a Photo Booth using old fashioned developing of film - you could see this done through a window in the shed - and photos from it were exhibited along with a box of slides - oh the nostalgia of past hands on  tech!

And the nostalgia for those happy days seriously playing around with art before working to live usually intervenes - but still a creative basis for life - unhappily now open to fewer from less wealthy families who don’t want to incur huge debt.

Best wishes to them all - as they leave the paradisiacal Wood Lane campus with its palm trees by the sea.

Falmouth BA show 2016

 I wake up early, eager to get to this show. Why? I want to see what this year of graduates have to show. Maybe I expect too much. Most of them are very young. The way the fine art is shown indicates nothing of the breadth and amount they have experienced. Their essays are not there, their books of ideas, we see no photos of them, very few give statements and some that do seem to be entering for pseuds' corner.

 This year I was largely disappointed. This wasn't helped by the usual lack of a canteen on Sunday or even a stocked drinks machine, and the fact that catalogues had run out and most videos were not operating.

 When I strayed briefly into illustration and found the room very dark to the point of eye strain and asked a student about this she said 'we do not find it too dark.' We found some lights and switched them on. This year the illustrators had their work on low cloche like displays on desks instead of in wooden booths at normal exhibition height for walking around. This made the room more open and spacious looking but it was harder to concentrate on an individual's work. Unlike the fine artists the illustrators show a lot of stuff. I just could not settle to examining it all and only admired one, Rachel Summers. She had illustrations to do with therapy and a light, witty, economical style.





 Fine art had the usual almost universal lack of interest in life in Falmouth, in politics, in ordinary day to day scenes, even in ecology that I have noted before. This year there was four times more interest in porn, that is four notices warning of 'adult content' whereas before I have only noticed one per year. A depressing trend.Feminism only featured, if you can call it that, which I don't, via pink vaginas.
What were the predominant themes? I can't remember but many paintings, quite a lot of installations, a bit of sound, one computer thing.

Painters seemed to have a similar palette of green, pink and yellow as if the college had provided vats of certain colours. Drawing skills were scarce and in the drawing BA favoured laboured detail using H pencils with a few flashes of acute observation.

 As an aging adult I am entirely unwilling to stoop to pick up information from the floor, to crawl into spaces, to remove my shoes, to subject myself to loud noise, claustrophobic constructions, or insanely bright light a la Don Flavin and I therefore missed a fair amount.

 Travelling to the college hopefully, with a sustaining supermarket breakfast inside me, enjoying Wood Lane's lovely trees and birdsong, plus an old pond with tadpoles and stained glass windows, and Tremough's beds of daisies were more enjoyable than the art, although maybe because the exhausting looking at the show made my senses sharper as I became more sourly dismissive yet still craving excitement.

 Best in show, and why not give the audience, which is meagre on the Sunday, a vote on this, was unhesitatingly awarded unaminously by myself and my companion to Finbar Conran's 'The protagonist and their lover' a charming, amusing, interactive piece with revolving trees and lights and music that were wired to come on if a couple sat down. It satirised romance whilst at the same time evoking it, changing our state of mind, making us laugh and getting us to participate despite being at the end of our walk round.

Whilst I was fresh and willing the first item I saw was a disturbing installation , 'Excruciating play' by J.F.Wilson. Lots to look at, many materials used and drawing us in to examine the quirky and sinister playground.

 A couple of students, out of how many? Referred to refugee migrants. By combining deck chair canvas stripes with sand castles in the shape of coffins I thought Duncan Walters expressed how sitting on a beach nowadays brings to mind those dangerous voyages of desperate people.

 A painter I liked was Grace Green because her pictures were well drawn, many layered, elaborate, decorative constructions.

 Over in the soon to be abandoned craft BA at Tremough there were several who could just as well have been in fine art although without these craft courses in the college how will students use glass, ceramics etc? Here there were references to the importance of bees and an impressive oil ruined mutation of a beast with the sound of its laboured breathing by Emily Yates, 'A toxic relationship'

 I missed so much, because it is far far too much. I missed all of architecture and product design and planning, photography of various sorts, film., performance, dance, and most of fashion and textiles.

What a pity to see no more than a dozen other visitors in several hours of looking round. Surely the college could advertise better, open the canteens and encourage the local population in and art dealers in? Isn't it worth even a double spread supplement in the local press? It's worth two days attention, but there we are, here today, gone in a few more as it ends on Wednesday, and for most students only a few business cards may fall into the hands of a rare helpful contact.

 There they go, lambs to the proverbial, degrees on their cvs and thanks to the cruelties of capitalism only a small proportion can make a career that pays any bills. Nevertheless, I believe the three or four years gap for thinking , experimenting and experiencing before their noses strike sparks from the grindstone will help us all in a society too given over to merciless daily toil versus desolation row.