This is the time of year when the vast “creative warehouse” of the Granary Building, which has been the new home of Central Street Martins since 2011, comes into its own as the doors are flung wide opened to the public for the Degree Shows, of which there are two- this weekend is focussed on Art; later in June the focus is on Design.
With alumni such as Victor Pasmore, Antony Gormley, Eduardo Paolozzi and Richard Hamilton, there are high aspirations and this year’s graduates have created a first rate exhibition of art on the ground and third floor of the building. Are there any themes to the exhibition? The first is the stunning level of creativity across all the programmes, where often boundaries are merged across media and it is difficult to tell which programme a student has studied on as art, photography and installations merge together to create a rich variety of work, including a collapsing immersive experience and an artist himself performing as the artwork. The work even overlaps with design with Mercurial football boots. The second is the sheer quality of the work – everything is executed to the highest quality and the BA graduates provide as good as show as the MA graduates.
The visual identity has been designed by students Nikita Loknath Rao and Stefan Iyapah from the final year of BA Graphic Design, a difficult challenge in such a robust and huge building, but has been done with great success.
An exhibition that shows the rich creativity, variety and quality of work being created by the artists of the future. Now for the Design show at the end of June.