SPS Crit: Me, Davika Kergon, Jess Avery and Alex Jones

I recently had my work take part in a Shaun Project space group crit alongside 3 other students and I actually really enjoyed it. There was a variety of works to discuss and I brought along some shark sculptures.

I was really pleased with the display of my works in the crit as I felt that once I got the opportunity to suspend my shark sculptures the large one in particular really dominated the space and worked well in a gallery space physical context. My initial plan for the small shark was to leave it on a plinth as I had tried this in my studio space but last minute I opted to try suspending it alongside the larger shark. Once it was up it gave some humanity to the other and reduced the threat which was an interesting effect. The small shark also moved around in the crit as it wasn't fixed properly but I liked that one was so still and the other dynamic. The newspaper shark head is in progress but I brought it along to show a different style of what I was working on.

Overall other people seemed to prefer the look of the shark sculptures over the paper shark head. I agree that I like the geometric skeletal style of the sharks and want to carry on creating large and to scale animal sculptures in this style. I like the idea of working with everyday man-made materials and plastics as a building material because of the contrast between natural animal forms and damaging, wasteful plastics. Jess pointed out that I could be looking at plastic pollution and I was pleased that there was some seriousness to that work as well as humour from the shark head that James and Alex both tried on for photos.. I really liked that other people were happy to get involved with the work.

This crit was really helpful for me for generating ideas to move on with and artists to look at. One artist and piece that was suggested to me was Ashley Bickerton's Orange Shark. It's definitely seems odd to me with the orange outfit and hanging objects but it was good to find a shark-using artist that wasn't Damien Hirst.

Davika Kergon's work was a large digital portrait print with painted geometric shapes and a smaller screen print with multiple layers that gave it an animated glitch effect.

I thought that the accuracy of the painted shapes on the large print was really worth credit but as a piece I didn't think it was as finished an idea. I really liked the second print, the overlapping and saturated colours gave it a sense of movement and came across quite futuristic to me. I like Davika's use of printmaking and photography and I'm looking forward to seeing her next works and seeing where she takes it as it was discussed she could even go digital which would be interesting as not many people work in that medium in the year group.

Jess included one large piece of spray paint and marker pen lines for the crit which included these long curled octopus tentacles. I particularly liked that composition of the piece as she hadn't included the whole octopus which gave a sense of it sneaking off out of the scene like it could have a hidden narrative. It was pointed out that the glitch like marks created a look of security camera footage which was an interesting take on it that I don't think Jess was going for but could be interesting for further works too. Jess is changing direction with her work and starting to look at using pop culture that she likes which will be good to see what she does with that in comparison to the underwater animals.

Alex's work was really different and the first live music crit I have been to, which included a performance from Alex and this painting above that resembled the sound. The music was really atmospheric and Alex even broke out a screwdriver at one point to get a particular sound which really got everyone's attention. I think the piece is a great idea as it is a different approach to include a live music performance. I would like to see more of it rather than just the recordings. As well as the music I am looking forward to seeing how the visual work progresses too. An idea at the crit was for Alex to make the drawing/painting part a participatory aspect in which other people could be invited to try and represent the sound which would be good to see how it turned out in other people's interpretations.