ART
(Un)resolved...
Re ned... Finished
Alex Neish (Year 12) explores an intriguing exhibition of work by Year 13 artists
U n) resolved… Refined… Finished is a tantalizing title for an exhibition. And perhaps unsatisfying for some. Surely art should be ‘finished’ before we see it? Yet November’s Year 13 Art Exhibition was justly named, for it articulates the idea of the artist — and their art — on a constantly evolving journey. As the show catalogue declares: ‘there is not a sense of closure… the outcomes will drive the next stage in the process.’ Indeed an artistic journey without end promises infinite creative discoveries. Unsurprisingly, therefore, pieces explore possibility, transformation, transition, decay, fragility, impermanence. William Macneal’s Ruinas Artificiales was partly inspired by photographing Havana’s decomposing cityscape; to prepare for his anatomical drawing Procedure , Christian Coackley performed heart dissections – and was shocked by the frailty of the tissue constituting this powerful organ. In Traces , Alfie Keenan examines one of art’s central issues: the significance of the artist in relation to their work. Is art enhanced by the presence of the artist? Or reduced by the artist’s absence? Can art stand alone? Keenan refuses to supply the answers but his work brilliantly provokes us into asking ourselves the questions. In Traces , a TV on a bench in an installation of an artist’s studio shows a video of Keenan
violently hacking at a bench with a chisel. The film imposes on the silence of the installation. With his desperate chiseling the artist begs: ‘No, look at me!’ Even when Keenan is gone, the welts in the wood remain. Here there is an intriguing conflict between permanence (the art) and impermanence (the mortal artist whose time is finite): by the desire to literally leave his personal mark on the world, the artist’s legacy is simply to make his art more powerful. Toby Stinson’s Aperture documents the conflict between possibility and reality through the lens of the window. Stinson’s proposal is that windows allow us insight into the lives of others by the very nature of their transparency. Windows are a conduit to the intriguing possibilities of social discovery. Yet as solid objects they are also barriers to communication and understanding. Stinson intelligently executes the dilemma of this dynamic by projecting photographs of people he has encountered onto a wall — but filtered by physical windows he has installed into the exhibition space. The windows are an obstacle to the stalking voyeurism of the video, protecting the privacy of the filmed. Thus Aperture is provoking: the hope of truly knowing others is on the edge of possibility; the reality of life is that barriers often isolate us from each other.
(
89
Made with FlippingBook Annual report