I always find it interesting to look back at work that I did a long time ago. I often see it from a completely new perspective - odd, for something that I myself spent so much time thinking about and creating.
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"Fresh and original" - a favourite phrase of my second year tutor (along with 'jaw-dropping'), that encouraged many of us to come out with the most unbelievable toss. Most of the time this was inoffensive, as it was often too baffling to have any basis in reality, but there were occasions where this desire to 'push the boundaries' crossed over into questionable territory.
We were set a photographic project for public exhibition based on a book by the late Paul Arden, entitled 'Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite'. The written brief we were handed contained all of our tutor's favourite buzz-words: 'staggering', 'shocking', 'breathtaking', 'fresh', 'jaw-dropping', 'original'... (I could go on), while examples of previous work created for the brief showed a passion for pigs' heads and pornography. (It seemed that if your work contained either of these then it would be a pretty safe bet for the final exhibition).
Deciding to go down the route of shock and gore, two of the most vacuous students in the group decided that they would visit a funeral director's and ask to photograph some dead bodies. This eventually developed into them somehow getting permission (from crematorium staff, not the family) to photograph the body of a teenager burning in the oven of a crematorium.
The resulting image certainly fitted the bill of being 'shocking', it was horrific, but also, on the surface, strangely beautiful. Had these two girls been trying to communicate something with their photograph, had they had some justification for it, it may have been a rare example of a deeply affecting piece of art. Unfortunately, what was most remarkable was their apparent obliviousness to what they had been doing. The word they used to describe it, in a typically offhand manner, was "crazy". There then followed the most unbelievable piece of bullshit post-rationalisation I've ever seen, resulting in an Artist's Statement that was 'jaw-dropping' only in its stupidity. The final exhibition was cheapened by it. Though I might add, only slightly, as the tone was already fairly low thanks to one of the 'mature' students (and I use the term loosely) painting his penis and using it to print "one-off individual pieces, signed by the artist". Needless to say, there was no great rush for commissions.
To return to the original point; here would have been a good opportunity for the tutor to give these students a much needed piece of moral grounding. That substance is as important as style. Instead, she lapped up their work with enthusiastic praise, failing to note their lack of morality or understanding. (With very good reason) she hadn't seen anything like it before, so she loved it.
Thankfully, the majority of students were able to think for themselves without going down the obvious route of cheap, graphically explicit imagery and the resulting exhibition included some pieces that were both intelligently rationalised and beautifully constructed. The two particular pieces that stick in my mind were those of Anna Brooks (http://www.anna-brooks.com) and Amy Herriot (http://amieherriott.com).
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My Exhibition Piece:
Images of bathing children, once a common subject within family photo albums, were displayed in a dusty shoebox in the under-stairs cupboard within the gallery.
I wanted to highlight the suspicions people have in the modern age where photographs of children are concerned. An innocent collection of family photographs, taken in times gone-by and stored away for years can take on a sinister edge if they finally see the light of day in our modern social climate.
The exhibition was held at the Arden & Anstruther Gallery in Petworth from March to May 2009.
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