The Up-And-Coming Art Pack
June 7th, 2007
Free Range is Europe’s largest graduate art and design show held annually at The Old Truman Gallery in London’s East End. Everything imaginable and impossible is on exhibition in this mega-showcase of student work. Marika Mathieu caught up with three of the artists to talk about lips, the 40s and portals to the past.
Lucy's got a smile for me
Lucy Rowlands' is obsessed with your mouth. Her focus on the mouth has conferred to her art a creative style, with a distinctive yet very feminine identity.
Her striking image of red lips is entitled ‘Gag'. It is in fact a lollipop holder, designed to be worn around the neck.
According to Lucy, the mouth is both highly sensual and fetishlike. It takes on an erotic potency and mystique in the form of Rowland’s creations.
Her use of reflective surfaces in her jewellery is designed to purposely intensify and intrude, creating a feeling of misperception.
She keeps celebrating these facts as she thinks about opening her own shop: "It’s not going to be easy, but it’s what I want to do," she said smiling.
She enjoys the "complete privilege" of her work on exhibition in Brick Lane. "It was very good fun" she said.
Rowland will graduate this summer with a BA (Hons) in Jewellery Design from Middlesex University.
Barron goes back to the 40's
George Barron's sensitive artwork has not gone unnoticed in the artworld.
He received critical acclaim across the pond when he was awarded £25K sponsorship from the Scottish Arts Council to mount an Anglo-US project, entitled ‘Scotland Rocks New York' culminating in an exhibition in New York last month.
This 22 year-old hyperactive designer has been associated with fashion label TopMan. An eclectic artist he has also designed conceptual films, illustrated magazines and CD's whilst promoting music festivals.
He often adds secret and affectionate images into his artwork; depicting a simpler life with images of loved ones and figures from the bygone era of the 40s and 50s.
His graduation artwork is a collaborative venture with fellow student Hattie Garlick; a book, which, in his own words is: ‘An intricate grown-up Janet and Allan Ahlberg style book; a marriage of words and pictures and the way in which they come together'.
Barron is a multi-talented designer and musical promoter who will graduate this summer with a BA (Hons) in Illustration from Camberwell College of Arts. His work will be presented on week five of the Free Range Graduate Art and Design Shows, from 28 June to the 2 July.
For photographer Lucinda Chua the Free Range shows sound like the beginning of something.
She will complete her degree in Photography from Nottingham Trent University this summer and she's expecting a lot from this summer's exhibition "I feel very excited, a lot of people will see our work" she said. "It is only my second exhibition, I'm really new to this stage!"
Chua describes her photographs as "quite filmic, romantic, capturing the moment of memory so well you can return to it..." She works on themes of escapism using the constructed tableaux image to recreate heightened, over-romanticised fragments from everyday life.
She compares them to portals that allow us to enter into a frozen world where everything is considered and staged as a piece of fiction.
Her work has already been published in the Guardian Weekend Photo Prize website and she was short listed for the Shots ‘Young Photographer Award 2006'.
Chua hopes that after Free Range there will be lots more shows. In the meantime she is preparing for a photo-project starting later in the summer.
