between the devil and the deep blue sea: dive in! | biad ‘08 grad shows

Between the horns of official work and much spun-out personal work, this afternoon I grabbed the kindly gifted opportunity to nip down to the BIAD degree shows. SuperKatie has already stalked out the Crop site for this year’s finalists and has seen the show in the flesh, but I certainly vouch for going to see the actual show, and seeing for yourself that the Crop website is only the tip of the iceberg.

Being a plebby-type, I didn’t partake in the private view. Instead, I had a mooch around on the Crop website last night, and wasn’t entirely sure about the whole picture. Some good stuff on there but, as I discovered this afternoon, it’s not fully populated with all students’ work at the moment which is a serious shame for those who can‘t make it to the shows. Maybe it’s being updated over the coming days but myself and a colleague, since viewing the shows, have been unable to source our visual lust objects from the site. Maybe those students opted out, I don’t know. Subjectivity butts in and so wants to see their work on there. Give us the content! I found this to be true of all of the subject areas I visited.

I’m so glad I went. I love perving at illo/graphic design stuff so primarily went to lap up some suitable aesthetic pervage to satisfy the need. This year threw me a couple of surprises. Graphic design was, again, strong but not biffing me in the face quite as much as last year’s outage – maybe (a very random maybe, but still a maybe) I‘m a bit more fussy and could recognise things that I do/ don‘t do in my own work making me a bit more judgemental. But, there were still those exhibits that turned a smile, or a sense of admiration or a why-didn’t-I-think-of-that moment. They did good.

I’m not normally a textiles fiend, but my colleague recommended the BA (Hons) Textile Design show. So I ventured there. Oh yum, what lovely printed textiles – some very illustrative, some geometric, some very sexy knitted stuff. Lummy, I was so surprised I’d feel so struck by textiles!

But, the illustration. Oh, the illustration. Illustration students really beat me over the head with the visual stick this year. From beautifully naïve typographic needlework to fashion, narrative and children’s book illustration, I was really pleasantly surprised to see this years’ work being (to me) so much more …. oomphy…… than last year. There were so many pieces I enjoyed, but if I have to give a totally subjective pick of my favourite, it was James Lloyd’s whale. I flipping adore this whale, the careful way James illustrated the story and the attention to technique he displayed. This was the personal melt moment for me. The melt moment is here: http://jameslloyd.carbonmade.com/projects/2067115#2.

Go visit James‘ work, or I will have to eat you.

So much to take in. So much good work to inspire. Nice work, BIAD grads. Thank you. Go see the show.