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Edinburgh College of Art Degree Show 2008

Until June 24 2008

Information overload, autonomy, inquiry, provocation and dissent. Not themes as such, but rather loose strands in the wilfully disparate expanse that makes up this class of 2008 show-and-tell.

Information overload: How many umpteen million seconds make up a lifetime? Brian Hewitt projects every single one, his intimations of mortality flashing onto two walls, getting bigger by the minute. Elsewhere, virtual worlds collide.

Autonomy: There are alliances, as with Ausgang, a group show within a show, set in a pink-painted room to call their own. Spaces are created, physically, mentally and psychogeographically. Georgina Scott Angless finds out who she can be in ‘Freedom.’ Elsewhere, there are at least two huts, and much getting back to nature, as if yearning after some old-fashioned idyll of home. Like Susie Goodwin says, ‘…looking back, it was always about the daisies…’

Inquiry: Minutiae matters. As in Bridget Steed’s ’37 Inverleith Place’, set inside pull-out drawers where remnants of a town-house now reside. It’s a cupboard full of ghosts, forensically sweeping up the past.

Provocation: Kevin Harman’s experiment in community relations via 200 borrowed Welcome mats may be back with their rightful owners by now, the space left behind speaking volumes. See also Christopher Viviani’s half-devoured chocolate head and Finlay Cramb’s text-based narratives.

And dissent? Just check out J.A. Harrington of Ausgang’s written, Zine-like responses to a formal examination by his alma mater. As art school ethos goes, biting the hand that feeds him becomes practice itself.

The List, June 2008

ends

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