Arts / Something for all as fine art show returns
A WIDE-ranging selection of creativity will be on show this month as the UHI Shetland fine art degree show returns for the first time in almost two years.
The Lerwick show opens today (Friday) before coming to a finish on 24 June.
The exhibitions will also have Saturday and late evening openings.
The exhibition will feature work from various courses, and there are four students involved: Shannon Leslie, Jean Urquhart, Elouise Spooner and Karen Clubb.
Leslie explores her island identity by delving into the world of dream, symbol and unconscious by inviting the viewer through the “portal of a trapdoor into an imagined sculptural archipelago”.
In this the artist looks though the “lens of dreaming reality [which] has been transformed into a waking nightmare where light and dark converge in a family of powerful and memorable forms inspired by lambs that have become deformed by undefined forces”.
Urquhart’s chosen medium is paint in all its richness and fullness and against the backdrop of the colours light land sea and textures of Shetland she allows her subconscious mind to roam.
A self-confessed ‘doodler’, Urquhart takes inspiration from artists such as Adam Christie from Shetland and allows this free-flowing imagery to imbue her works with multiple layers of meanings.
Spooner meanwhile has created a whole room, walk-in installation full of “youthful rebellion and unbounded self-expression”.
Her work is said to be irreverent, joyous, fun, and multi-layered, taking inspiration from popular media such as poetry, songs, tattoos and graphic novels, and utilising found object trash to reject any form of preciousness.
“Her show is an out of the box celebration of the freedom that coming of age brings and the work explores a diverse range of pathways and threads that will leave the viewer needing to come back for more,” the college said.
Clubb has created an “intensely personal body of work that explores the mysterious spaces that exist between absence and presence”.
Using textiles as a carrier for the emotions that arise during the process of making, her work captures essences that connect the individual to the universal by exploring the life experiences that touch us all – love, loss, the passage of time and the fragility of memory.
UHI Shetland’s head of creative and cultural industries Simon Clarke said: “After the lifting of Covid restrictions, it is going to be a wonderful opportunity to come and view our student’s work in person.”
The exhibition will have an official opening tonight at 6pm. Everyone is welcome and no booking is needed.
The opening hours at the Gremista campus are Monday to Friday 9am – 5pm, while there will be late night opening Mondays and Wednesdays from 7.30pm. It will also open on Saturday 11 and 18 June from 10am to 4pm.
Clubb’s degree show is being hosted at: 49 Commercial Street, Lerwick (opposite the Queens Hotel), opening daily from midday until 4pm.
UHI Shetland is also hosting an open day on Saturday (11 June), allowing people to get a taste of what the college has to offer.
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