As thousands of final year students handed in essays and finished exams
over on the University of Southampton’s Highfield Campus, final year Arts
students were working hard to complete their final projects at Winchester School of Art (WSA), ready for their Degree Show – three years of work culminating in one final exhibition,
celebrating their achievements at WSA.
As one of the university’s satellite campuses, WSA is sometimes, unfortunately,
overlooked by many students at Southampton. The Winchester campus is where all
the Arts students of the University of Southampton can be found – with courses
such as Graphic Design, Fine Art, Fashion Marketing and Illustration available,
amongst many more. The University of Southampton has so much more to offer than
the courses found on Highfield or Avenue campus.
WSA is an utterly inspiring place to be when
the exhibitions are on!
I have posted previously about my trips to Winchester; at only a 7
minute train ride away, I’m simply moments away from a change of scenery and a
few hours in a very beautiful city. WSA is somewhere that all Southampton
students should become familiar with, and with future sabbaticals at SUSU
hoping to forge an even closer relationship with the campus in the next year or
so, the connection between Highfield and Winchester should become closer than
ever. Excellent news for any future students reading this!
Winchester School of Art campus is picturesque and peaceful!
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to support some of my graduating friends at
last year’s WSA Degree show as I was finishing my undergraduate degree, but
this year I was free and went along to have a look! I was able to meet my
friend and ex-Wessex Scene Editorial Team member Bronwen Rees, whose work was
exhibited, for a bit of guidance and a chat before I made my way around the
exhibition.
The exhibition was spread across the entire campus, which really
emphasised the idea of it being an event for the whole University, combining
all areas of art which might otherwise stay separate. I could really see that a
huge amount of work had been put into each project that meant that each one was
highly individual and reflected the artist’s or designer’s personalities
wonderfully. There was far too much to really go into detail about on this blog
but I took photos of a few personal favourites.
Bronwen’s piece discussed the effect of Twitter on language and spoken
and written word. She had created a
Twitter page, @LossOfLanguage, to
discuss the effect Twitter has had on communication and speech, and had altered
a selection of books to ‘spoil’ them for readers, emphasising the effect it has
on literature too.
Bronwen’s piece, which she said: ‘Is about how we use twitter and how
it is impacting our ability to write and form sentences, as well as how it
impacts literature’
As a fan of Twitter and social networking myself, I loved her project.
The small details of her work, which was not only incredibly interesting but
very easy on the eye, really stood out and demonstrated how many different
methods of graphic design there are. I feel very honoured to have such a
talented friend, and it was so great to finally see what she had been working
on!
I also chatted to two Fashion Marketing students who were kind enough
to talk me through their work and explained what drew them to studying the
subject.
Fashion Marketing student Julia Camwell with her project ‘Move to your
Own Rhythm’
Julia Camwell’s exhibit demonstrated her work on the famous fashion
brand French Connection, which focused on transforming ‘the tired French
Connection brand into a compelling, premium, contemporary. edgy and innovative
fashion brand’ (quoted from the magazine produced for the exhibition). She
explained how she didn’t even know that this course existed until she visited
another university to study fine art, where she stumbled across a talk for this
subject. She found that WSA was the best place in the country to study Fashion
Marketing, and has never looked back!
Aphrodite Koupepidou, who also studied Fashion Marketing, with her
project ‘The Urban Artist’
I was also able to talk to Aphrodite Koupepidou about her work; she had
taken the popular fashion company Urban Outfitters, and experimented with the
store layout, enabling the customers to produce photographs, graphic designs
and paintings to be displayed alongside products, forming a strong relationship
with the company’s target market. I thought her display was incredibly
attractive and professional.
As a student who has spent her university life with her head buried in
books, it was inspiring and refreshing for me to see what else is possible with
a university education – it’s not all about essays and reading lists. These
people are incredibly motivated and passionate, and this is even more obvious when
you see all their work together in an exhibition like this one.
Fashion design examples on display, with catwalk videos and portfolios
out for visitors.
I enjoyed seeing the huge range of work on show; from chunky unique
knitwear and modern menswear, to mesmerising installations; from film and
paintings, to innovative marketing ideas and skilled fine art work. I was able
to spend two hours walking around with something new around each corner. For me,
I was definitely looking at the work of future successful designers and
artists. And as someone who studied fine art at A Level, and Textiles at GCSE,
it brought back memories and made me wish I could experiment with art once
more.
Graphic Arts student Jacob Coy’s exhibit was stunning…
and smelt delicious
thanks to the coffee beans!
I previously visited the John Hansard Gallery on Highfield Campus. What
with that, and the WSA campus, there is so much local art and design available
for everyone to see and experience.
More design examples which really caught my eye!
Some installation art on show
I felt that the event could have been better advertised across the
University – I only knew about it thanks to having a number of friends at WSA. I’ve
had some amazing times at the Winchester campus and I think, when the new
Student’s Union is finished, it will be more inviting for Highfield students to
visit – and more WSA students would be invited into Southampton! There is
definitely an exciting future to look forward to. WSA is a fantastic place to
be on its own, but its connection to our Southampton campuses just makes it that
much more special.
The WSA Degree Show is only on until Sunday 23 June, so I recommend if
you have a spare hour or so to pop along and take a look while you still can!
Entrance is free and it’s open to the public, with some items on sale. There
will also be a show in London at the end of July.
I had a fantastic time immersing myself in the world of art and design
at WSA and hope that many more of you enjoy it while it’s still on show. Congratulations
and good luck to all the students, too!
Joanne
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