A ‘Show’ Indeed…
Bradford School of Arts & Media –that’s what it’s called. Simple and neat but as you enter through the ListerBuilding that looks nothing else than a monument by itself you realize themagnitude of using the words ‘arts’ and the ‘media’. The school as a wholeconsists of 17 individual programmes but it felt like a hundred odd thousandprogrammes coming together, I suppose that was a hundred odd thousand ideasmerging still.
As this portal named the Lister Buildingopens up, you find yourself overwhelmed with names that you perhaps did notbefore correspond towards ‘art’; Fashion Design, Special Makeup Effects,Contemporary Surface Design etc. Even if you have never been to an art spacebefore it wouldn’t take someone long to acknowledge that this degree show isgoing to broaden the conception of ‘art’ itself.
You can choose to climb up the stairs, godown to the basement or just walk to your right or left or walk straight aheadinto the magical colourful door. The options seem innumerable and just likethat, the portal that I chose to enter was splintered with colours and spotsand shapes that don’t even have names.
The exhibition was a culmination of all theyears spent in the studios of the school so as you walked the rooms and glancedthrough and over the walls to discover artworks, installations, videos etc youweren’t only invited to appreciate the works but also build a relationship withthe artists themselves as you could read a little bit about their work, alittle bit about themselves, a little about their practice in that particularyear and so on. Therefore, the artworks presence came with a history, a historyof the artwork, a history of the artist, a history of thought that existedbetween the artist and the artwork that gave rise to the product in front ofyour eyes today.
Stories were told, stories that did notquite qualify as stories – very real stories. Stories aren’t supposed to bereal but that’s what this degree show achieved; to bring to life stories youcouldn’t imagine were real. In fact, it was not just storytelling that madethis show intriguing but storytelling in different mediums from digital videosto screenings to even tiny write ups that explains the journey of the artist tothe production of every specific work of art in display.
Such a surreal experience such as this wasmade accessible to everyone in print, if you fancied a particular work morethan others and wish to possess it you could take a bit of this dream with youas all the works displayed were also available in print. The reflection oftangible works of art then transposed as little cards for you to take away withyou.
You experience ‘the substance of dreams’ aswritten on one of the walls in the exhibit – the substance you could see, feeland even touch as you move through the portals and see objects, moving images& humongous pieces of installations that call out to you to play with them.
Maintaining a balance between surreal andreal, though the works leapt between dreamy images and real objects almost allthe works exhibited had their cause rooted deeply within a time frame that theycome from, what it means to the artist & more importantly, many even dealtwith real life events that had never been properly articulated before.
The show was a coming together of not justdifferent mediums of art, different artists, different medias essentially verydifferent minds coming together but also a standing example of how art breaksthe boundaries between what is considered art itself. If you thought a videocould not be art, this exhibition broke that rule. If you thought wallpapercould not be art, this exhibition broke that rule. From every mundane object inthe world to objects you had never seen before – fundamentally the onlyquestion you could ask was: what is art? But, by making you ask this veryquestion, the Bradford show also revealed that we have not even begun tounderstand this word called ‘art’.
If people from so many different coursesusing so many mediums could create works that aesthetically made you feel inthe presence of art, in my world that liberates not just art but us, asindividuals. The innumerable beautiful ways through which expressions are madeaccessible to us has to liberate us as humans and as history has defined usover the years.
With the problematic of modern day man’sfear of being dislocated from his roots, his culture, his arts due to intensetechnological invention and isolation from himself, the Bradford show attemptsto create a response to these cries of everyday man by integrating newtechnologies right into the core aesthetics of artistic expression.
Every medium, every technology, every ideafrom traditional art to redefining artistic practice in the new era – it was ashow, a show indeed, a show that not just pushed aesthetic borders but added anew element of theatricality to art with new media.
Text by Bhavani Esapathi
Bradford School of Arts & Media –that’s what it’s called. Simple and neat but as you enter through the ListerBuilding that looks nothing else than a monument by itself you realize themagnitude of using the words ‘arts’ and the ‘media’. The school as a wholeconsists of 17 individual programmes but it felt like a hundred odd thousandprogrammes coming together, I suppose that was a hundred odd thousand ideasmerging still.
As this portal named the Lister Buildingopens up, you find yourself overwhelmed with names that you perhaps did notbefore correspond towards ‘art’; Fashion Design, Special Makeup Effects,Contemporary Surface Design etc. Even if you have never been to an art spacebefore it wouldn’t take someone long to acknowledge that this degree show isgoing to broaden the conception of ‘art’ itself.
You can choose to climb up the stairs, godown to the basement or just walk to your right or left or walk straight aheadinto the magical colourful door. The options seem innumerable and just likethat, the portal that I chose to enter was splintered with colours and spotsand shapes that don’t even have names.
The exhibition was a culmination of all theyears spent in the studios of the school so as you walked the rooms and glancedthrough and over the walls to discover artworks, installations, videos etc youweren’t only invited to appreciate the works but also build a relationship withthe artists themselves as you could read a little bit about their work, alittle bit about themselves, a little about their practice in that particularyear and so on. Therefore, the artworks presence came with a history, a historyof the artwork, a history of the artist, a history of thought that existedbetween the artist and the artwork that gave rise to the product in front ofyour eyes today.
Stories were told, stories that did notquite qualify as stories – very real stories. Stories aren’t supposed to bereal but that’s what this degree show achieved; to bring to life stories youcouldn’t imagine were real. In fact, it was not just storytelling that madethis show intriguing but storytelling in different mediums from digital videosto screenings to even tiny write ups that explains the journey of the artist tothe production of every specific work of art in display.
Such a surreal experience such as this wasmade accessible to everyone in print, if you fancied a particular work morethan others and wish to possess it you could take a bit of this dream with youas all the works displayed were also available in print. The reflection oftangible works of art then transposed as little cards for you to take away withyou.
You experience ‘the substance of dreams’ aswritten on one of the walls in the exhibit – the substance you could see, feeland even touch as you move through the portals and see objects, moving images& humongous pieces of installations that call out to you to play with them.
Maintaining a balance between surreal andreal, though the works leapt between dreamy images and real objects almost allthe works exhibited had their cause rooted deeply within a time frame that theycome from, what it means to the artist & more importantly, many even dealtwith real life events that had never been properly articulated before.
The show was a coming together of not justdifferent mediums of art, different artists, different medias essentially verydifferent minds coming together but also a standing example of how art breaksthe boundaries between what is considered art itself. If you thought a videocould not be art, this exhibition broke that rule. If you thought wallpapercould not be art, this exhibition broke that rule. From every mundane object inthe world to objects you had never seen before – fundamentally the onlyquestion you could ask was: what is art? But, by making you ask this veryquestion, the Bradford show also revealed that we have not even begun tounderstand this word called ‘art’.
If people from so many different coursesusing so many mediums could create works that aesthetically made you feel inthe presence of art, in my world that liberates not just art but us, asindividuals. The innumerable beautiful ways through which expressions are madeaccessible to us has to liberate us as humans and as history has defined usover the years.
With the problematic of modern day man’sfear of being dislocated from his roots, his culture, his arts due to intensetechnological invention and isolation from himself, the Bradford show attemptsto create a response to these cries of everyday man by integrating newtechnologies right into the core aesthetics of artistic expression.
Every medium, every technology, every ideafrom traditional art to redefining artistic practice in the new era – it was ashow, a show indeed, a show that not just pushed aesthetic borders but added anew element of theatricality to art with new media.
Text by Bhavani Esapathi
