This year’s graduates demonstrate acuity and sensitivity when grappling with the complexities and instabilities of the contemporary, writes Sarah Kelleher
The summer marked a refreshing return to normality, with degree shows back in physical form. It’s encouraging to see the quality of these exhibitions, given the fact that many of the students graduating have spent two years of a three- or four-year degree working in isolation, enduring little or no access to studios or equipment and finally returning to college full time only
months before their final show. Despite the difficult and uncertain conditions to which these students have been subject, and perhaps even because of the seclusion in which they have been conducting their research and formal experimentation, there is
a striking diversity in mood and thematic engagement across each presentation. What is common across the fields of fine art, fashion, furniture, photography and TV production is the consistently high level of formal inventiveness, conceptual rigour and material complexity, as evidenced by the graduates selected here.
John P O’Sullivan investigates painterly values and pitfalls with Donald Teskey, ahead of his mid-career survey at the RHA
