The Annual Student Exhibition in full swing

The Annual Student Exhibition, which showcases works by undergraduate members of the Fine Art Department, is running during winter vacation and festival period to allow Grahamstown locals Festival-goers to admire the striking artworks.

Visitors to the exhibition will be able to view a variety of artworks in all media, including paint, photography, sculpture, print media and digital installations.

This year, a print media project based on the Dada Exquisite Corpse has been executed by two groups of four second-year students working collaboratively. The result, eerie six feet tall linocut works, can best be described as chillingly good.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, a video installation of second year student Luke Calder portraying a day in the life of a pet cat, is a far more light-hearted work to spend some time absorbing.

Entitled “My Cat Tom” it kept audience members, including a number of children, enthralled. Elsewhere in the gallery Francois Knoetze’s works entitled “Reconstruction” present the viewer with a new way of looking at hardware such as old video machines and computer motherboards.

Zany twirls and curlicues of wire spring out of the piece in cheerful flourishes, and an old telephone becomes a bird flapping away towards the skylight.

A Festival fixture since the early 1990’s, this year’s Annual Student Exhibition will certainly give returning visitors the satisfying sense of having seen bright young talent in action, and will bring them back again next year, hungry for more of the same.