Slade BA Show - LONDON KICKS - Fashion, Music, Art, Film, London and Going Out

May 19, 2008 at 16:53

Ferocious socialising, a confusing labyrinth of mismatched artworks and the slightly off-putting smell of drying paint. Oh yes, it's the Slade BA show 2008 - this year a slightly underwhelming affair, but not without its surprises.

The general impression was one of brash colour, as many students turned to more childish or kitsch subjects and palettes in an attempt to inject some vitality into their predominantly painted works. Sometimes this worked well, most notably in the psychedelic but rigidly geometrical toy box-styled canvases of Katy Kirbach (Aporia, 2008, pictured below), and in James Mack's playfully totemic giant masks, but en masse many of these glaring works seemed too obviously to demand attention without providing much else in terms of content to prolong a viewer's interest.

Mark Davey's sensuously robotic constructions (a cross between Conrad Shawcross's ingenious machines and Dan Flavin's light sculptures) were among the most striking of the sculptural works, and it was a shame more of these weren't shown, the majority being available for viewing only in a long 'best of' DVD that played on a tiny television on the ground floor. Also impressive (and unique in their employment of new media and electronic equipment) were Tom Badley's musical sculptures, which ranged from a realistic mock up of a one-keyed piano to a sounds cape pieced together from thousands of You tube videos that jittered between two wall-mounted monitors.

Overall though, and excepting these few works, there was a depressing lack of innovation or acknowledgement of new ways of working. This is perhaps to be expected from such a traditional school, and especially at degree level, but it'll be interesting to see how the Slade's 2008 hopefuls compare with the rest of the competition at the Chelsea, Camberwell and St Martin's shows in June.

Words Adam Welch

The show is open this week Monday- Thursday at the
Slade buildings on Gower Street, 10am–8pm.