Gray's School of Art Degree Show

This year Gray’s School of Art celebrates its 125th Anniversary in spectacular style. At the heart of any celebration of the School’s history is the student endeavour that has thrived in the institution over its history as North East Scotland’s creative powerhouse. Indeed, as this year’s branding makes clear: “Purveyors of Fine Creatives for 125 years.”

The Printmaking department has shaken off the traditional approach that has defined previous years and allows the work to extend out of the box-frame format. Tessa Androutsopoulos presents an explosion of colour as giant robot pandas loom over 2D tower blocks, while Linda Miller’s prints on tissue paper are carefully manipulated into fragile sculptural forms, orbs and branch-like shapes that question the very idea of printmaking as a relatively flat pursuit. However, it is Alex Gordon’s Thin K Gallery which really pushes the limits of his specialism. A curated show of three artists – a sculptor, printmaker and painter – the viewer goes between a printmaking and a painting show via a video-lined tunnel. A Degree Show within a Degree Show, Thin K Gallery pokes fun at the very exhibition that contains it and the dynamics of the Art School itself.

In the Painting department, Christy Yates’ work examines the “transition from Persona to Object”. His understated yet carefully considered paintings portray those little things that get left behind: kidney stones in vials and even gaffer tape and clothing left over from a performance where the artist suspended himself from a wall with tape. His work dwells on the paradox of Schrödinger's Cat, leaving us to consider the persona which we cannot see, casting doubt over whether these paintings are a celebration or a memorial.

Gray’s Sculpture department is home to the consistently strong Photographic and Electronic Media course, making for an extremely fresh and exciting dynamic. This year, both Sculpture and PEM students explore the disconnected relationship between nature and the unnatural societal pressures which dominate the world today. Heather Stewart makes a startling comparison between animal taxidermy and the projected images of “perfection” disseminated by celebrity trash mags. Jennifer Argo creates beautiful, serene, abstract sculptures in perspex, and although their perfection seems unnatural, they are based on the natural, pure and universal Golden Ratio, reminding us that true beauty and perfection can be achieved through natural processes rather than our unnatural constructed lifestyles. Roisin Corrigall takes to exploring explorers, recreating the pseudo-scientific experiments of the Victorian age with everyday recognisable objects. The work explains how, in their haste to discover and quantify the unknown, explorers destroyed the mystery and wonder in our world for nothing more than imperialistic point-scoring.

What is remarkable about Gray’s Degree Show above the others is the professional finish and sheen across the show as a whole. The school successfully transforms itself into a gallery with very little evidence of transition – bar the occasional piece of graffiti or the locked door to a workshop. Unfortunately this does not extend beyond the interior of the building. The school, a forty year old statement of the now defunct modernist ideals of late sixties Aberdeen, is tired and rusty. Even the very name of the school is obscured by a building site and the once beautiful lawn is now a car park. Given the contemporary issues and troubles facing the future of culture in the Granite City, Gray’s School of Art needs to strengthen its position as the primary creative powerhouse of the North East.