Alice Wisden

My work rebounds around a collection of frustrations, anxieties and questions. I view my subject’s internal relationship as a family narrative, a violent power struggle to do with dominance.

The characters form a unit within the identity of the individual, which is first formulated then challenged. I attempt to Question perceptions by disrupting the familiar. By invading the stability of accepted reality I can create a sense of moral distrust.

When undermining these familiar boundaries a feeling of the uncanny becomes evident. The uncanny is ever present between the undesired reality and the unattainable fictional void. When personal dwellings within a symbolic space are disturbed the reality disintegrates.

Tom Calverly

Thomas Calverleys work visually reads like the language of children books, cartoons and videogames, this visual language is deceptive for on first glance it reads like the work of a naïve childhood mystic, but in truth is deeply sceptical of the human condition, viewing these creatures of progress as nothing more than pissing, shitting, fucking machines with the only redemption in a weird world of desperation and desire to return unity between man and nature.

alice paton

The bench piece is entitled 'In Loving Memory of Lunchtime.' This is the inscription on the plaque. I wanted to make something that was relevant to my time being at college, as everyday we spent the majority of our time talking about lunch, food, where to go and what to eat. The curtain and rope pull piece is titled 'Unveiling.' I made these specially for the degree show and the hype surrounding it. It was positioned high up on a huge white wall, with the rope pull out of arms reach so it couldn't be opened. Dry humour is usually evident in my practice, as that's what drives me to create work.

Hadley Newman

I am currently inspired by the exact size and time of everything, symmetry, schizophrenia, cancer, world war two, obsessive compulsive disorder and the controlled state we live in. These are just a small handful of things that could fall into my work at any given time. I work with anything I find but I mainly use my hands and eyes.

Reid Peppard

Born and raised in California, I moved to London in 2004 to do a Foundation Degree and Bachelors Degree at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.

My work has developed over these formative years, however the one thing that has maintained a constant in my practice is my engagement with installation, and creative interaction with those who view of my work. My work strives to connect with people through visual means and tricks, but it is not restricted to that. Scent, sound, texture and moving image are often incorporated within my installations, helping me to give life to the spaces I inhabit with my work. Taxidermy also plays a large part within my practice. I am a member of the taxidermist’s Guild in the UK, and I taxidermy all the animals (with few exceptions) that partake in my installational and video works, as well as the ones that I mount separately as sculptural works.

The real vs. the unreal… fiction vs. reality! I am enthralled with creating work that engages as a theatrical satire. However, I often like to “spoil” or give hints as to the process of a work’s making/installation. That is to say, fog never comes from nowhere, and Dinosaur heads never appear to have naturally grown onto a bird’s body. My aim is not to produce a purely accurate replica of something.

I want my work to:

Contradict

Repulse

Intrigue

Engage

Enlighten

Bjorn Mortensen

'Totem' Wood, Tiles, Adhesive, Grout, Speaker, Cable, Mp3 player, Sound 215cm x 15cm x 5cm

'Ectoplasmdrawing' Graphite on Paper 55cm x 80cm

I am originally from Bergen, Norway but am now residing in London.

Paul Northcott

Thematically, my work tends to be chiefly concerned with childhood, and its symbolic language, relative to that of the later stages of our lives. Another defining feature is a continual effort to exploit the visual language that I believe exists, unmediated by cultural mechanisms, within our essential biological make-up, through doodling and mark making led by intuition rather than conscious decision making.

I then extrapolate the raw data of these basic explorations into various media; painted and computer-rendered pieces, sequential visual narratives, and three-dimensional figures. I also apply similar improvisational techniques to thematically-related music.

I am currently working on several projects inspired by pine-cones and their current socio-biological status as suburban street ornament.

Duncan Bellamy

My painting is concerned with issues of abstraction, but also uses elements of ‘sculpture’ to instigate a three dimensional, phenomenological experience of my paintings that involves the active participation of the viewer. As such, they are also intended to be treated as objects; paintings that are to be viewed from a multitude of viewpoints, distances and angles.

Working on thick solid wood, or thin sheets of metal, the support is bevelled or folded at the corners to create symmetrical, geometric shaped supports. The shape of the supports draw from ideas associated with Minimalism, and provide a starting point for the painting that takes place on the surface.

Shape therefore is a fundamental component of my paintings. I make rough preliminary sketches and drawings as a way to determine what the paint will do and how it will respond to the shape of the support. In this sense there is a certain predetermined, almost mechanical quality to the paintings in their conceptuality, whilst at the same time formal decisions about colours, paint fluidity, facture etc take place on a mostly intuitive, improvised level. Both support and painting operate in harmony together, in a symbiotic relationship.

I work in a way that is as open as possible with an emphasis on exploring the possibilities of abstract painting in an exciting, adventurous manner that is not bound to two dimensions, but extends beyond to engage with sculpture and architecture.

Mikael Alacoque

Dulce Et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori

As a sculptor I am fascinated by sacred objects and the rituals that surround them; especially the idea that some objects carry more meaning than others and have the power to change the way that we behave or the beliefs that we have.

‘Dulce Et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori’ is the name of my piece. This translates as ‘It is sweet and glorious to die for one’s country’, and was the slogan that was used by the British supporters of the First World War. Originally this was the slogan of the Roman war poet Horace. The sculpture itself is based on the design of the war memorial flagpole in Sheffield City Centre, my hometown.

Growing up in Sheffield, the flagpole was a key feature in my environment. It had an austere sense of importance that was re-enforced by the annual ritual of Remembrance Sunday. It was this sense of importance that gave me an interest in war memorials and inspired me to do more research into the subject.

In Britain, war memorials are the most common of all monumental sculptures. They can be found in every village, town and city and always occupy the most prominent locations.

Many of these memorials were designed, commissioned and paid for by the military. For me, it seems curious that the same people that sent hundreds of thousands of young men to their deaths erected monuments in their memory, stating ‘It is sweet and glorious to die for one’s country’. The same memorials that were intended to act as tangible graves for these young men, also acted as a pro-war advert for the military. This to me seems inappropriate.

Monuments and war memorials tell a story. They give a version of events, but from only one perspective. It is worth remembering that despite the fact that a monumental sculpture may be steeped with authority and look important, its agenda and ideology may be questionable.

In my monument, the three wise monkeys represent the three bad pillars of society who supported the war: the Government, the senior officers who used out-dated battle tactics (that lead to many thousands more unnecessary deaths), and the Homer-quoting civilians (who were very often men over the maximum drafting age, or women who could not be drafted). The babies represent the young soldiers who were literally flung to their early deaths as cannon fodder.

You may find the monument garish and grotesque; however, it is not nearly as grotesque as the ideology of the many military war memorials that can be found in London and all over Britain today.

Isobel Shirley

At present it may appear that many works of art could exist as equally in a proposal as they could in practice. The viewing of the work is not always necessary in order to understand the concept or to be aware of its existence. Often it is the process behind the work and the dialogues that take place in preparation of the exhibition that are most interesting. Therefore I believe an exhibition should be approached as a process that continues these dialogues and facilitates the relationships between artist, viewer and curator. Thus producing a situation of reciprocity and fostering a stronger tie between all involved.

In an aim to resolve the frustration caused by contemporary gallery situations and the expectations of the viewers, my practice challenges the way in which works of art experienced are placed within an exhibition context. In doing this, my work promotes a more active role for the viewer, enlisting their involvement with subtle keys from the work itself to establish intrigue as to the participants’ purpose within this particular space.

I am concerned with the experience of the work as a whole, and how that can be altered and manipulated to avoid preconceived notions of participation and mandates of the gallery space. I enquire into ways of taking ownership of an object or space in order to alter the way the viewer reacts to it, often disturbing the zone of comfort normally held by a person. These adaptations frequently concentrate on architectural keys such as doorways, walls and staircases to disrupt the viewers’ natural movement through or treatment of space. My practice also involves the presence of Bear (a dog). Through him I am able to explore the effect of his existence within an art context. I am concerned with what his presence implies with regards to the roles at play within the gallery system and the role of the art object itself.

It is in my view and practice that work cannot rely upon the mode of engagement generally held as the model for contemporary exhibition. The experience must stretch beyond that of work and spectator to become participatory. As much as my work is to control space, to inform upon the viewer, it also beckons for them to become part of my work. I believe an artwork should not simply be a static object whose conveyance survives in the interpretation of those whose view it, but a space of action and experience reliant on both spatial and theoretical dialogues surrounding it.

Josie Walker

Several ink & paper drawings and a wax, clay and plasticine sculpture 'Kebaby' and cardboard 'Memorial'. The latter was intended to commemorate the degree show in a pathetic and temporary instant sculpture that would intentionally look out of place amongst the highly finished construction of surrounding students.

'Kebaby' was the culmination of frustrating over showing decisions, as its component sculptures were made in advance and before deciding to connect them in this way. Likewise the drawings relate as they depict various isolated but connected parts such as classical architectural features upon disconnected land.

I am very interested in the context of artworks, and all of my degree show work was made within days of the show's deadline; this is important to me as I am concerned with curating as much as making art, and this often requires being done at the last minute.