Illustration by Simone Philippou.
Last night I went along to the Camberwell College of Arts MA illustration graduate show. I always find it odd to return to Camberwell, hospital mooching around rooms where I once studied on my foundation course 20 years ago. Eeek! Here’s the best of what I found.
Simone Philippou was first to catch my eye with her beautiful woodblock artwork, look featuring jumping frogs and skipping children in powerful lime green and orange colours.
In the corridor Juste Halavin showcased some beautiful work featuring big eyed well dressed animals engaged with humans in curious situations.
Goncalo Constanza went all psychedelic for her bold musical influenced optical artwork.
Jo Chen‘s What are you looking at? was a meticulously presented crowd of curious individuals.
Next door I fell in love with the work of Gerda Razmaite (Kai), pills which tackled the history behind the names of the streets of London in a beautifully intricate and quirky style, not photographed to best effect here. Amazing stuff.
If ever there was proof that the UK is now exporting creative cultural capital it was the prevalence of visiting Chinese students on this MA course: almost half by my count. Beibei Nie (Xiangdi) had produced a series of surreal prints titled Nostalgia, featuring inanimate objects appropriated by oversized animals.
I liked this delicate painting for The Red House, a children’s book by Yixin Fu.
Madalina Andronic‘s The Fairy of Dawn was an intricately beautiful work fit for a children’s fairytale written by Ioan Slavici. I loved the spectacular use of shape to give motion in these images.
Holly Zarnecki took papercutting to the next level of complexity with a large scale illustration of the Coalition government. It was good to see a level of political engagement in this work, something which is all too often lacking in the graduate illustration I have seen.
More coming soon! You can read my second review of the Camberwell MA illustration show here.
Categories ,2011, ,Beibei Nie (Xiangdi), ,Camberwell College of Arts, ,Chinese, ,Coalition, ,deadpixelsinthesky, ,Gerda Razmaite, ,Goncalo Constanza, ,Holly Zarnecki, ,illustration, ,Ioan Slavici, ,Jo Chen, ,Juste Halavin, ,Kai, ,ma, ,Madalina Andronic, ,Nostalgia, ,Papercutting, ,review, ,Simone Philippou, ,The Fairy of Dawn, ,The Red House, ,What are you looking at?, ,Yixin Fu
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