The Unseen Thread

MA Fine Art Online Graduate Showcase, September 2025

The MA Fine Art Online team is proud to present the work of our newest graduates in The Unseen Thread. Over the past months, these artists have worked independently to produce ambitious public-facing exhibitions, events, publications and online interventions, supporting each other throughout as critical friends. Their projects are the culmination of two years of study across five modules and have engaged communities across the UK, France, Ireland, the US, Brazil, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China. Collectively, this work exemplifies the spirit of our course and Falmouth School of Art – artworks have been developed through international collaboration, with ambition, commitment and hope. We can’t wait to see how these artists continue to develop their practices within our alumni community. 

Josie Cockram, Course Lead

Work with threads – as in strands of fibre – has a strong presence in this graduating cohort’s practices.  But the show’s title can’t be taken literally, when it introduces art that encompasses a rich array of media: from 3D printed sculptures to hand-made artist’s books.  And yet: the image of a woven fabric might elaborate the title’s metaphoric application.

Warp and weft. Readily, we might see the course-structure as the first – taut lines provide an underlying framework – and the students as the second.  Such are the practicalities of weaving that the weft is the place where variations can be introduced: from one row to the next, yarn might change in colour, thickness, weight, and substance – think of a textile that combines say plastic twine and hemp cord.  If this showcase is a weave, then it’s certainly a variegated one with each shuttle of the yarn: not just in respect of media, but also in relation to concerns addressed: from AI-facilitated movement-scripts to the role of ‘flow’ in art-making.

And clearly, in the way these differences accentuate each other, no thread is less than visible.  But does that mean it is the MA itself that is the title’s ‘secret’?  This seems unlikely when, in seeking to support its students’ demonstrable diversity, it openly embraces contemporary agendas.  As the course publicity proclaims, students learn ‘to build a sustainable practice that engages with global political, economic, social and ecological change.’  Nothing hidden here. 

Still the secret thread eludes us – possibly by definition.  But then again… following another cue provided by the cloth motif, perhaps the exhibition’s hidden twine or line is one that’s only just become apparent.  Now.  Perhaps the public presentation of this cohort’s work, with its palpable display of warp and weft, produces an emergent figure.  This could be a figure in which we see the thread(s) of work to come; new synergies across the individual artists’ work; collaborations yet to happen and unfolding networks.  In other words: the fabric of the future.

Mary Anne Francis, Final Major Project Supervisor

Special thanks to the following for all their work and support for these graduates: 

Academic team: Josie Cockram, Kate Fahey, Mohini Chandra, Jo Griffin, Evan Ifekoya, Srin Surti, Lucy Sames, Mary Anne Francis, Flora Bowden,
Luke Dowd, Charlie Duck, Tom Baugh and Rachelle Knowles

Student Support: Rachael Burhouse, Rachel Tor, Catherine Worrall and everyone in our Digital Learning team

Organisational partners: Contemporary Art Asia, Chongqing, China; RSPB Strumpshaw Fen Nature Reserve; The Ice House, Out There Arts and Norfolk Wildlife Trust Sweet Briar Marsh; Kevin Barry Recital Room (National Concert Hall of Ireland); Riverside Museum, Reading; The Yard Gallery, Stroud; Taunton Country Library; Creative Innovation Centre, Somerset; The Round Tower, Portsmouth; Quay Arts, Isle of Wight; European Land Art Festival

The creative collaborators on these projects who are acknowledged on the artists’ individual project pages and websites 

The friends, family and support networks of all graduating artists!

Lead image: courtesy Sarah Hargreaves