Lighting the Beacons
MA Fine Art Online Graduate Showcase, January 2024
MA Fine Art Online is a flexible new postgraduate course at Falmouth School of Art for innovative and sustainable contemporary art practice in the UK and internationally. This showcase, Lighting the Beacons, celebrates a group of student artists who have produced ambitious public-facing exhibitions, live events, performances and publications for their Final Major Projects. These projects have taken place all over the world, and are the culmination of two years of study across five modules. The academic team, and the whole course community, are delighted to be able to introduce these artists and share their work publicly. We’re also excited to see how they continue to develop their practice as graduates and what they do next!
Josie Cockram, Course Lead
During the course of their Fine Art MA, the artists whose Final Major Projects are presented here have demonstrated their capacity to question and interrogate the world we live in through a range of sites, media and methodologies. Themes within their work have included feminist practice and communities of care; questions around living in an unstable and at times absurd world; the potency of storytelling, language and fictioning; and notions of connection and disconnection. What unites them is a practice deeply rooted in process and making, and through their public facing outcomes, a sense of togetherness.
The nature of the course means that students are connecting across multiple geographical sites and time zones to generate a network of encounters, dialogues and support. The online showcases’ title makes reference to this network, drawing on JRR Tolkien’s fantasy writing, in which ‘hope is kindled’* through the lighting of the beacons by communities across the landscape. This graduate group have made projects and built connections across multiple time-spaces; their work has been shown and situated in sites that include galleries, libraries, community centres, beaches and mountains in places across the world, including Sussex, Somerset, London and Leeds, UK; along with Tromsø, Norway; the Gold Coast, Australia; and in online spaces.
Their work has generated questions about how we as artists respond to notions of contingency and unpredictability in our practice and how art can generate new ways of thinking about places (both online and offline) and their inhabitants to generate a rich range of practices that we are privileged to share with you through this showcase.
Kate Fahey, Final Major Project Module Lead
Special thanks to the following for all their work and support over the first two years of our programme:
Academic team: Josie Cockram, Kate Fahey, Ian Monroe, Iñes Bento Coelho, Caitlin Shepherd, Mohini Chandra, Flora Bowden, Srin Surti, Elizabeth Hodson, Evan Ifekoya, Luke Dowd, Karen Abadie and Rachelle Knowles
Student Support & Digital Learning: Rachael Burhouse, Rachel Tor, Kenny McKenzie, Sam Cole and Roo Pescod
Organisational partners and supporters: The Seafront Gallery, Worthing; Heritage Courtyard Studios; MF Gallery, Ipswich; Fydell House, Boston, Lincolnshire; Helensvale Library, Goldcoast, Australia and Gold Coast City Council; Whirled Cinema, Brixton, London; Galleri NORD, Tromsø, Norway
The friends, family and support networks of all graduating artists!
Lead image: Spencer Hogg, ‘Ring Of Fire’ © Spencer Hogg 2019
This photograph captures the ‘Ring of Fire’ solar eclipse through a window reflection in Abu Dhabi on 26 December 2019. It was shot at the point during the eclipse where 91% of the sun was covered by the moon, creating the ‘Ring of Fire’ effect. The last time this was visible in Abu Dhabi was in 1847.
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*Reference: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. (2003). [Feature film]. Directed by Peter Jackson. United States: Warner Brothers.