School of Art, University of Brighton
Master of Fine Art
Brighton BN2 0JY

Deborah Jones
12 July 2022

The MA Show in the college building on the Steine in Central Brighton is not far from Brighton Station so is easily accessible. Once in the building the show itself proved to be quite difficult to find. It was located on the 1st and 2nd floors but finding the correct staircase was not easy.

The first room was a little crowded and the works had no clear connection with each other which reinforced the haphazard nature of the displays. The rubber tyre in the centre of the room focussed one’s attention and benefitted from the ample room afforded to it but somewhat dwarfed the exhibits on the low tables nearby. The student’s works were not always labelled and any artist’s statement was not always easy to find.

It was slightly disconcerting to find that the artist had other works on display in other rooms which perhaps was the reason for the lack of labels. . A tutor informed us that the curator for the show had wanted to display the work of artists in the best position viz a viz light, room and angles. This did not work for me at all. One artist’s work seemed to pop up at random in every other room.

In the next room, which was larger and had been partially divided into two by means of a partition, one was almost overwhelmed by the amount of work on display and there was no clear demarcation of the different artists’ works. Some artists had clear statements about their work but very few labelled the individual works with a title and description of the work. A good example of this was the tapestry. It was striking but one looked in vain for a note about the work. It seemed that not enough time was allocated to this task which is a big mistake as it is a very important part of exhibiting an artist’s works. 

The lighting let down the majority of the exhibits and this is demonstrated in many of the photographs I took of this exhibition.  This was frustrating because it meant that the works were not shown to their best advantage which was a shame for the students.