Brighton Graduate show 2025
As a part of our final examination at the University of Brighton, every student gets to exhibit at the graduate show at the end of our third year. As a Fine Art Painting student I got to be a part of the painting exhibiton, exhibting alongside my incredibly talented year group. The exhibition is located in the grand parade campus, and for this week of the year the entire building, alongside the Edward Street building, is packed full of all the art all students have put their blood sweat and tears into.
I was given the oppourtunity to have four walls for my exhbit by our art technician James, since i had produced so much work in my final year. I was able to exhibit more than i ever expected, and it was a brilliant experience, both in the weeks of preparation were we had to turn our studio spaces into exhibition space, and in the actual show week, were i got the oppourtunity to hear so much lovely feedback about my art and kick start my career both as an exhibitior and a seller.
My exhbit explored the relation between man and nature through romanticist-inspired landscapes that presented eerie scenes were the beauty of nature is both highlighted and distrubed by the subtle presence of human manipulation and industrialisation on these envrionments. Inspired by my own relationship with nature, this body of work was underlined by an unspoken narrartive of my experiences within each scene presented. Alongside these landscapes though was also my largest painting ‘INTROSPECTION’, which purposefully contrasts the very representational landscapes with an entirely imagined, and unplanned, painting of this surreal, undefined ‘gorey’ visual. Whilst the landscapes exlore more melancholic feelings, INTROSPECTION served as more of a positive conclusion to the questions raised by the other paintings. It is, to me, a celebration of the self as an organic form. I wanted to subvert the typical repulsion to such imagery with a painting that intreges the spectator with its mesmerising patterns and the satisfying effect oil paints have with ‘gorey’ imagery. As my freind and fellow artist Joe Zillwood described, this unique style I developed could be described as ‘entropic viscera’. The gorey nature of this peice was complimented by a few other paintings of animal corpses that were included in my space, helping to give an ‘honest’ representation of what natural envrionments entail, and to destigmatise the corpse body as, to me, painting these subjects lends an appreciation of their form.
Not everyone is a fan of art of internal imagery and dead animals- which is fair enough- but i found my art appealed to more than I expected. I have been overjoyed by the feedback ive gotten from this body of work and im excited to develop my art from this period.