Student work on display at the MA Fine Art exhibition: 5th – 12th September

Date 31 August 2023

The UON MA Fine Art students’ degree exhibition show is open at the Development Hub on 5th – 12th September. This blog provides information on the students that are exhibiting, including their practices and some images of their work. This represents the culmination of our learning and development throughout the course.

Kaiya Khatri

On our Fine Art MA course, we have a vast range of students with many different practices, including photography, installation, printmakers and painting disciplines. We’ve come together to create our degree show, which runs from 5 to 12 September.

Fine Art student work

We invite the public, fellow peers, and academics, to come and see the exhibition that represents the culmination of our learning and development throughout our degree programme.

Our private view is on 5 September, from 6 – 9pm, at the University’s Development Hub – please come and support us!

Below is an outline of our exhibiting artists and their practices:

Shannen Garfitt

Shannen is an experienced photographer and college photography lecturer. In this exhibition she explores Britain’s remaining ancient rainforests using pinhole photography, an antiquated process using modern 3D printing technology. Her work brings attention to these spaces and brings audiences into their depths using a specialised panoramic pinhole camera.

Black and white photo of a waterfall and rocks, taken by MA Fine Art student Shannen Garfitt

Claire Stear

Claire is a visual artist specialising in photography. Her current project is entitled ‘Hiraeth’ a Welsh word with no direct translation into English, but that denotes the feelings of a wistful longing for your home/country. Claire’s images deal with loss, longing, love, and emotional evolution.

Two photographs of water with land in the background, from two different angles. The photos are taken by Claire Stear a Fine Art

Shazia Mufti

“What do we (women) do?” is a series of women’s invisible/unappreciated work. Female cleaners and store workers are the focus. Shazia has made this series with oil on paper.

Artwork of oil on paper depicting a woman wearing a his-vis jacket pushing a cleaning cart. The art is made by Shazia Mufti

Sarah Watts

Sarah is interested in the relationship between arts and health, exploring the supportive scaffold that the process of making art provides. She uses her studio practice as a therapeutic tool to confront issues of wellbeing and mental health. She is currently engaged in exploring aspects of self-support, observing the accumulated contribution of self-prescribed mundane gestures in her daily life.

The use of tea in her practice highlights one of the small doses of support she provides for herself on a regular basis. Tea dispenses warmth and comfort, connects to the area of the brain that makes us feel safe, lowering cortisol levels and reducing anxiety. Collecting her spent teabags has enabled her to capture the extent of consumption and observe the value of the support over time.

Art work created with the use of teabags, showing a wall of brown connected by fabric. Art created by Sarah Watts.

Marigold Short

‘The Ties that Bind: Life before Birth: A Homage to Robert’ is a memorial to Marigold’s twin. Nebulous memories are all that remain of their shared life. This installation speaks to the sanctity of life, and of the miracle that happens within a woman’s body as she becomes a mother. It is inspired by the reasoning that feelings of grief are caused by the loss of something good. Marigold works across a range of media, looking to express her experience of life without her brother.

This is part 1 of a blog series about the artwork from Fine Art students. Read part 2 for more student work.

Kaiya Khatri MA Fine Art student graduate
Kaiya Khatri

Kaiya is a Fine Art Master’s student specialising in printmaking.