DJCAD MFA profiles

A user's guide to the 2013 crop of MFA students, each with a text commissioned from your correspondent:

Samantha Jack

Samantha Jack conducts a chorus of diverse voices, assembling together the disenfranchised and allowing each of them the chance to speak. Her blankets and umbrellas connote the ideal of shelter, while pamphlets and zines all articulate a struggle against the socioeconomic storm. Incorporating participatory residencies and sculptural interventions, Jack’s project is a tapestry of activism where meanings reside in the artist’s actions and in the changes these acts work to achieve. 
http://www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad/mastersshow/ondisplay/masteroffineart/samanthajack/ 

David Fyans

Inside Stone is an installation whose transfigured components become much more than the sum of their individual parts. The quadrophonic audio allows for the contemplation of time stretched out over the course of aeons, and as the sound makes its way around the central pillar with the light illuminating some 400 sheets of laser cut acrylic, the resultant experience will communicate knowledge received from another place.
http://www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad/mastersshow/ondisplay/masteroffineart/davidfyans/

Yumi Choi

Wasted Beauty (001), 2013

Lookism is an actual thing, a standard for physical attractiveness that’s an inescapable fact of cultural discourse. Yumi Choi investigates this prejudice by representing various objects, forms and rituals in ways that confound our expectations of the beautiful. Women pile on the make up only to appear ridiculous, as objects salvaged from the rubbish bin take on the essence of the sublime.  Surfaces deceive and looks are revealed to be only that, just looks.
http://www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad/mastersshow/ondisplay/masteroffineart/yumichoi/

Krissana Hatta-Atcharakun

Local rites and rituals are seen from an outsider’s perspective in the artwork of Krissana Hatta-Atcharakun. The Gothic and Victorian motifs of Dundee’s church windows are recreated in card, paper and printed patterns. Through the intricate placement of colour, light and shade, the cathedrals’ evocation of the sacred is simulated and maybe called into question.
http://www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad/mastersshow/ondisplay/masteroffineart/krissanahatta-atcharakun/

Kathryn Briggs

A self portrait painted in watercolours and a story told through a multitude of writers, the work of Kathryn Briggs is a monumental journey of self-examination. Thoughts and feelings are juxtaposed  with extracts from classic authors and female friends’ correspondence, creating a sequential artwork that merges fiction and everyday life.

Wasted Beauty (001), 2013

Wasted Beauty (001), 2013

http://www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad/mastersshow/ondisplay/masteroffineart/kathrynbriggs/

Nicole Bennett

The residue of forgotten memories clings to the objects in Nicole Bennett’s installation. Ethereal and delicate, the trappings of domestic interiors are reimagined as the source of dream material. Through this ontological approach to belongings, our home environments are transformed into playgrounds for our collective imagination.
http://www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad/mastersshow/ondisplay/masteroffineart/nicolebennett/

Susanne Lund Pangrazio

The perception of reality, the intimate examination of family memories and an interest in parallel universes are all source material for Pangrazio’s large scale figurative paintings and artist’s books. With careful attention to formal concerns and to time-consuming craft, her work seeks to understand and process the world around us.

http://www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad/mastersshow/ondisplay/masteroffineart/susannelundpangrazio/ 

Anna Orton

Ortonandon is a three-way sisterly tag-team toppling any art-world phallocracy that dares to stand in its way. Anna Orton uses her MFA show to document Ortonandon’s triumph, using painting and sculpture as elements in an immersive installation. Her bulbous golden pawn shop symbols and elaborate floor-bound board games mark out a map of dizzying abandon as the Ortons look over a singular universe of their own imagining.
http://www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad/mastersshow/ondisplay/masteroffineart/annaorton/

Deirdre Robertson

Dundee’s Law Tunnel is the focus of both Deirdre Robertson’s MFA installation and her associated programme of events. This exploration of Scottish subterranea touches on local history, town planning and the legacy of “one of Dundee's greatest sons” Sir Patrick Geddes. It tells the story of a local landmark and its resonance in diverse fields, with the eventual aim of getting the tunnel reopened and rediscovered. 
http://www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad/mastersshow/ondisplay/masteroffineart/deirdrerobertson/

http://www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad/mastersshow/ondisplay/masteroffineart/

Wasted Beauty (001), 2013