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From: Plod Category: Art Date: 16 June 2007 Time: 06:07 AM Review: There is always something a little depressing about degree shows, and this one's depression inducing powers was increased for me by the invite that inspired me to go: "Come and see what I have been up to for the last three years or so". Three years is quite a long time, imagine all that life all that energy, the mechanics of the body, the beauty of our emotions, the breadth of our imagination, could any thing be worthy of those years, of that life? When the sculpture of Alison Lapper went up in Trafalgar square I watched her on TV, awed by her strength, her existence and that of her child, awed by the incredible nature of reproduction and her resilience as I am by many mothers, because there is never much that can really do credit to the process and the energy it requires. I thought that the sculpture was beautiful and excellent, one of the best, but in part I thought that the dumb artist who made it could never quite reach, and express the brilliance of her life, all it was to be her. He/his art was some piece of shit, a mere shadow, a crude semblance of her greatness, a feeble attempt at expressing something of her, couched and comfy, explained away by art talk and references to our old limbless sculptures across Europe, like a failure to intelligently comprehend the beauty of someone's existence. I'm not saying that life is always better than art, and for a start this comparison is somewhat ridiculous, but don't we want art to remind us of how great life is? So these three years have produced a few paintings, and the paintings are a few brush strokes deft they may be. In one a leg is painted, and though I doubt he wants to, the artist reveals his years of life drawing. A sharp line to describe an angular leg, but not all of us have such fine shapely calves, and unless you paint like Freud, fine calves are what these artists want, unable to avoid the temptation, after many years of indoctrination like a well trained dog with a biscuit, to show off their draughtsmanship. Its all so wishy washy, where is the courage, the fearlessness, the only thing these students are afraid of is making an effort, they won't do any thing more than copy a few photographs into paint, to make a nice painting we don't care to criticise. Lets have something incredible, ugly, crappy or kitsch, let me believe that you believe too, that you want the world, not just a poor copy