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ABSTRACT
The student exhibition is a format and a genre which is both under-theorized and under-historicized. It is not properly contextualized or explored within the field(s) of contemporary art, curation or fine art pedagogy. This paper maps, analyses and discusses the student exhibition in terms of the format, the potential, and the institutional agencies, with reference to the relevant pedagogic literature as seen in relation to the wider field of contemporary art practice, exhibition practice, and curatorial praxis. For this article, the central example of the student exhibition is the degree show. This event is not just the ‘showcase’ for individual students or cohorts, it is the public face of the institution. This is notable because it positions the student exhibition in general and the degree show in particular as a nexus between the vision and reputation of the institution and the individual student’s artistic production and future career.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Isabelle Gressel, Martin Newth, Kirsty Noble and all the staff and students on the Fine Art Programme, Chelsea College of Arts.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Katrine Hjelde (PhD) is an artist, lecturer and researcher working as Course Leader for the Graduate Diploma Fine Art and as Senior Theory Lecturer, BA (Hons) Fine Art, Chelsea College of Arts, UAL. As an artist, she exhibits in Great Britain and Europe, collaborates with the architects practice b+r and works with the collective FLΔG, a group formed at Chelsea College of Arts in 2010, comprising artists, students, former students, staff and researchers. FLΔG explores the relationship between art practices, art education and pedagogy, looking at forms of knowledge production and dissemination in the art school and beyond.
Notes
1 In 2012, the UK government increased university fees to £9000 for Undergraduate Home/EU students. This was a significant rise after fees were first introduced in 2001 by the Labour government. Before the increase, the fees were capped at £3000 in 2004 (Anderson Citation2016). Brexit is the planned withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union on the 31 January 2020. European students in the UK currently pay the same fees as Home students; this may change after Brexit.
2 Rike Frank and Tirdad Zolghadr have undertaken interesting, but not yet published, work on the degree show based on their work SLOHAGENHALLAH with Gerard Byrne and in collaboration with the art academies of Oslo, Copenhagen and Ramallah.
3 This approach, therefore, excludes a large number of other HE institutions in the UK as well as the many alternative non-accredited art schools that are now gaining importance in the field. In the UK, they range from School of the Dammed, Open School East, Turps Banana, to Islington Mill Art Academy. These projects can be seen as agents for change or certainly becoming a force which is informing the ongoing discourse around art education. This paper is aware of this sector but it was not part of the research project on this occasion due to focus on governmentally accredited HE Fine Art Education and the ‘insider’ researcher approach (Robson Citation2002).
4 The concept of institutional isomorphism was initially developed by Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell where it appears in their classical paper ‘The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields’ (Citation1983).
5 End of year exhibitions are common, as are end-of-programme exhibitions such as those at the end of a BA or MA, which happen after the award of the degree. In Germany, the Runtgang (English: tour) is a social event not connected to assessment where, for instance, at Universität der Künste Berlin, they open the doors to the workshops, ateliers, studios and rehearsal spaces of all four faculties: Fine Arts, Design, Music and Performing Art for three days. The MA exhibition at Chelsea College of Arts is now placed after Unit 2, so it is no longer a degree show in that it does not determine the final award. The final assessment takes place after Unit 3.
6 A Unit in the UK university system is sometimes also referred to as a Module. This will differ from university to university: a BA degree will carry 120 credits for each year of study and these credits are divided into elements of study which are called Units at UAL and Modules at universities like the University of Reading.
7 A is the highest mark and we use plus and minus for emphasis. The letters correspond to a number system so an A+ is 15, A 14, A– 13 and so on, which is used to compute the overall classification as more than one Unit will count towards the final award.
8 UAL have a policy document on Intellectual Property Rights for Staff and Students (Ownership of Student Work Citation2019) and an intellectual ownership advice service.
9 The Research Assistant, Isabelle Gressel, digitally and manually word-searched every Fine Art programme course handbook at Chelsea, Camberwell, Wimbledon, Central St. Martins and London College of Communication, BA, MA and Graduate Diploma levels. We created an Excel spreadsheet which noted college, course, handbook title, section, subsection, page number, and full reference. Each reference was then copied and pasted into the Full Reference section. This process was complete on 23 May 2017. However, some UAL Fine Art courses included in this process have been closed, revalidated (or created) since this time.
10 For instance, it has been adopted for the University of Bergen, Faculty of Music, Art and Design, Norway.
11 In September 2019, UAL introduced a new assessment system for 2019/20. The rewritten system has only five criteria and the descriptors are level-specific. The system is applied to all subjects and disciplines within UAL. The new five criteria system was developed from feedback from students and staff suggesting that eight was too many. Another concern was to be able to make the criteria level specific to level 4–6 on Undergraduate Courses, which fewer criteria could better accommodate.