New Creative Talent, Vision, and Energy At AUB
The Creative Industries need to constantly renew themselves and the Arts University Bournemouth Summer Show 2023 gives us a glimpse of the future
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I live in Bournemouth, which is a beautiful English seaside town with seven miles of sandy beaches which I regularly enjoy and two piers. I am originally from London which is known as a world capital of culture, (albeit with terrible beaches!) while Bournemouth has an image of being slightly left behind culturally with a diet of visiting tribute shows and organ recitals.
Geographically Bournemouth is only 100 miles from London which is half the distance between the capital and York in the North of England. The challenge for Bournemouth is connectivity: the train journey to London takes the same time as the train journey from York. Even in 2023 there are no motorways connecting Bournemouth to the world and it is quicker to fly to Dublin from Bournemouth airport than it is to drive to London. Maybe it is this semi-isolation that is building another narrative. A story about a group of driven creatives who are leading a change and building a creative community and a cultural movement on the South Coast.
Much of the energy for this cultural renewal is coming from the Arts University Bournemouth (AUB) which has alumni like Emmy Award winning writer Jane Anderson and Creative Director of Alexander McQueen Sarah Burton. AUB has also recently invested in the purchase of a classic 1930s town centre theatre which had been used as a church since the 1980s and will now serve as a centre for new creative work. Last night I was invited to the AUB Summer Show 2023 which is a celebration of the creative work of some brilliant graduates across multiple disciplines from fine art to performance art.
This event is the biggest free art exhibition in Southern England and as Lisa Mann, Director of Academic Teaching in Innovation at AUB says "The Undergraduate Summer Shows not only demonstrate the incredible talent nurtured at AUB but also exemplify our commitment to fostering the next generation of creative leaders”
The Summer Show 2023 opening event fell on a perfect summer night for a celebration of creative vision. Graduate Creatives, parents, dignitaries, lecturers and me streamed onto the AUB campus in a long excited creative conga line from car park H through to the library square following the bright yellow Summer Show 2023 signs.
We arrived in an area that Oxford might have described as a quadrant but, here it is a gathering space, human in scale and feel with an ice cream van, a DJ, a bar and a small stage set up for welcome speeches. I was handed a map and started my journey of exploration through fine art, textiles, make up, illustration, photography and much more.
What struck me was the sheer visual impact of so much of the work. And that doesn’t mean it is all surface and shiny because there is meaning here and beauty is used to draw you into the meaning. There are occasional touches of a punk aesthetic but there is a feeling of pieces connected or influenced by influencer aesthetic. This is not a criticism. Rather it is written in admiration at the clever use of a visual style that makes it comfortable to communicate a challenging message. Coralie Braddock’s wonderful ‘What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?” pair of paintings is a beautiful example which continue a line drawn from the work of Sarah Maple. Aleksandra Poluch has a stunning triptych called ‘The Calm before The Storm (is this talking about meteorology or mental health?) with a colour palette that could have come from Monet and a swirling hypnotic form that cuts you off with it rough edges on display.
As my journey continued I discovered that I am a textiles fan! I can’t sew, paint or make anything but this exhibition of patterns, shapes and colours on fabrics, in knitwear and wallpaper was exhilarating - and seriously I never thought that I would find wallpaper anything other than functional or a challenge. But looking at this wonderful work made me want to live in a world where magnolia and Laura Ashley stripes have never existed. It is vivid and alive with texture and depth.
Glow Up, the make up competition on BBC I-Player, was won by AUB alumni Sophie Baverstock a couple of years ago so I was keen to see what this year’s graduates were up to. People generally think of make up as something that conceals or changes in the search for aesthetic beauty and tend to think less of how it can change perspectives, horrify and shock. All of this is on display with axes in back, skulls peeled back like in brain surgery and, for some reason I didn’t quite get (sorry!), a prosthetic penis! The last two were in a cubicle marked ‘over 18s only’ which clearly had the biggest crowd! Despite the horror the visuals were still beautifully presented and it seems appropriate that make up was next to photography where I particularly loved Charlotte Clark’s ‘Everyday Living is Future’ which gives us domestic appliances serving glamour in the retrofuture world of DORALTYS.
The sense in the performing arts and creative writing pavilion was preparing for the next move with talk of working with publishers and producing work in new spaces. The rebirth of pub theatre would be a welcome 70s and 80s revival.
Fashion is always reinventing and re-imagining what we know to make something that we don’t know yet. There was some great work on display from new takes on 70s tennis gear to Lolita Gosling’s womenswear based on a deadly flower. The very tailored lines of Louisa Sanders collection take the masculinity of mens tailoring and apply it to womenswear without it appearing utilitarian or tomboyish. I also loved the posh boy stood near the mannequin who tried to come over all barrow boy asking if I wanted to buy any threads - not sure if it was a performance art aspect to the show.
The fashion marketing and communications introduced me to Idiosyncrasy by Malvina Mariya. I am not sure what it is selling me because I was too focused on the vivid, deep and leaping off the screen images. It looks like fashion photography for a sex club with tight shiny outfits and chain mail gimp masks but in iridescent purples, mauves, silvers and violets. A stunning set of images that had me sending WhatsApps to fellow creatives encouraging them to get down to Dorset to check out some new ways of seeing the world and to get to know tomorrow’s creative heroes.
The AUB Summer Show 2023 runs from 30th June to 7th July at the Arts University Bournemouth.
Media Contact:
Kevin Chambers
Course Leader, Events Management
01202 363320
kchambers@aub.ac.uk