Shaun Project Space Group Crit 1

This was the first group crit of the year, featuring myself along side Sarah Hedley, Shaun Pemberton, Holly Cowan, Davika Kergon and Stuart Teears in front of the rest of the year and our lecturers, James Hutchinson and Ralph Broeg.

There was a good variety of work that was on show, with everyone seeming to be confidently developing the start of their projects. While there wasn't anything inparticular that stood out to me, everyone's work displayed the beginnings of their ideas, letting you see where their thought processes were taking them with their work.

Stuart was the first of us to exhibit his work, one large scale painting of a tree that seemed to be in progress as there were unpainted sections and others that seemed to need another layer of paint, as well as displaying a series of drawings with watercolour that were of the same pattern of the bark but with a dofferent colour palette for each drawing. After discussing his work, he explained that the drawings were test pieces for his larger painting and said that his painting wasn't done for the critique. After talking about his work, there were some suggestions of what he could do with his practice, such as trying out different materials for his work, playing around with the scale of it and whether or not he'd thought about working in 3D materials.

After Stuart, it was Shaun to exhibit his work, he had multiple prints and drawings as well as a sculptural piece that was shown without a plinth and one piece that was shown with a plinth. There was some discussion as to whether or not his work was meant to be figurative or abstract, with the majority agreeing that it was somewhere in between the two. It was interesting to hear about his concept, of exploring if furniture craftsmanship can be considered 'fine art'. The suggestions that were made, were for him to keep exploring the 3D elements of his work to further push his idea.

It was then my turn to exhibit and talk about the work that I'd been making and the concepts behind it. It was agreed upon that my work was concerning itself more with abstraction that had figurative elements within it, with Ralph suggesting that a lot of the work felt very much as if it were graphics work, which is understandable considering my graphic art background. Out of all of the work, it was agreed that it was my painting on the left that was the most successful, with the abstract imagery allowing the viewer to bring in their own interpretation about what the work was about, were as the other two images were more forthright in their figuarative representation. It was suggested that I could move away from using the image of a skull in my work and move towards an abstract represention of the themes that I was trying to deal with.

After me, it was Sarah's turn to exhibit her work, featuring 3 mounted canvas paintings. Her work revolved around taking old/unwanted work of other artists and then working over the top of what they had made, a form of 'recycling' that challengedthe idea of what art had to be, does a piece of work have to be wholly your own to be classed as your work? The suggestions for her work were to keep finding old work, eiother through charity shops or going around the studios asking the other students if they had any work they didn't want to use.

Unfortunately, the other students that were due to exhibit did not attend this critique.