Privet View

“The changing of the seasons (has) brought the transformation of thirty-two individuals from birth to death, to eventual reincarnation.”
Thus ends the preface to the catalogue for “The Birds”, the 2006 Degree Show of the Mixed Media Fine Art B.A. course at the University of Westminster’s Harrow campus. The thirty two referred to are the latest graduates from a course with a ten year reputation for challenging established attitudes within the world of contemporary fine art, from approach to work through to curation and presentation.  
Rebirth is inevitably a tricky business but one season on, ten of those newly fledged graduates are preparing for their first group exhibition outside the nest. Located at Nolias Gallery’s Old Kent Road site and organised by fellow graduate and co-exhibitor, Kinga Chrzaszczewska, she has chosen a group whose work she feels is compatible within the space.    
The children of a complex cultural climate in a constant state of flux; none of these artists’ works are comfortably contained by traditional defining labels. At the same time however one can find a certain familiarity within the concerns addressed, whether it is the carnivalesque absurdity and dark humour of Chrzaszsczewska’s sculptures and animations or the ready wit of Lynsey Tidman’s approach to formal sculptural concerns, built from the detritus of a humdrum and banal existence.
Similarly links can be found between Seda Ozgul’s examination of neuroses and self- obsession, or Mary Mannion’s intense and poignant response to family memory and experience.
These are just as easily counterpoised by Oj Murrell’s large scale pencil works, casually subverting collected images from the multiplicity of sources that influence  us, or Jack Brewer’s self-projections into a ruined world of his own construction, part Orwellian and part reality TV.
Shifting again, one might be engaged by Deborah Ridley’s primal sonics, somewhere between art and instrument; or the rich literary and visual motifs with which Natasha Ponton  reworks her own personal history, and if that is not enough then be entertained by Nurcan Ozagi’s deeply personal and wonderfully positive images of modern Turkey or Sarah Cleave’s witty and perverse re-workings of  daily life’s more mundane moments. 
On first glance one might not perceive a theme or thread to bind these ten together and yet none of them are telling us the world is a glorious place and that they’re having a great time.
To draw a lesson from John Latham, if artists give society the art they deserve then perhaps there are warnings present here that we should be listening to.  

Pip Thompson
October 2006