EMERGENT
// Graduates in Residence Exhibition //

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The exhibition EMERGENT by Graduates in Residence coincides with the Gray’s School of Art Degree Show 2022. It takes place in the Look Again Project Space and includes artists, designers, makers who all graduated at different times, but were affected by COVID. Most missed out on the experience of a physical degree show. This relationship between the physical and digital space was in many ways the starting point for the work in the project space.

As the title suggests EMERGENT denotes the process of becoming visible following a period of growth and experimentation; the physical sense of coming to light, exposure of new possibilities. This word then means something to most working in the cultural environment and to many of the art students, because it describes the way art, social and cultural transformation often grows in unexpected places and in response to situations that are often beyond our control. In this way creativity is rarely managed into being but emerges through happenstance, accident and often is more potent at times of urgency, challenge and crisis.

What connects this work is an interest in continuity and connections. Beginning with a map of networks devised by Maria Roman through conversations with participants; the site-responsive work of Iris Walker-Read and Marcus Murison that both mine the overlooked objects and places and make visible something of the lost possibilities buried amongst the rubble. The ceramicist Jo Northedge listens to materials in responsive and improvised ways and speaks openly about how the limits of working within a home environment altered her way of working. Whilst Cameron Lyall’s work is triggered by those locations he describes as ‘NO-PLACE’ and inspired by a deep interest in future thinking (speculation) and the relationship between science and creative experiment. Ben Cairns also uses that tradition of mapping and landscape photography, to think about our perception of the environment and sense of time and place. This is also the basis of the work by the textile designer Kirsty Robertson, who weaves and knits together past, present and future; thinking about how we correspond with the past in order to travel forward. Whilst the collaborative duo Olive Anya explore the ongoing relationship between popular culture and technology, as well as crossing boundaries, investigating gender fluidity and the way we fashion identity, through performative practices that montage memory, class and nostalgia.

Text taken from discussions between participants and Dr Judith Winter, Lecturer at Gray’s School of Art, RGU.