Diana Davis

BA (Honours) Art & Design Practice

Human-centredness promotes various damaging forms of epistemic remoteness, for by walling ourselves off from nature in order to exploit it, we also lose certain abilities to situate ourselves as part of it.’ ‘Environmental Culture’ 2002 by Val Plumwood, (environmental philosopher)

Throughout history our relationship with the natural world has been marred by an anthropocentric vision. We are now witnessing the effects of exploitation and devastation of natural habitats whilst in search for fashionable fads.

For this body of work, I have researched tulipomania, orchidelirium and galanthomania. These are names given to obsessive behaviours that have resulted sometimes in extreme transient wealth. Demand became so high for broken tulips in the 1600s that the price of a bulb was valued equivalent to that of a house. Many orchids and snowdrops are still hunted today and consequently need be guarded to keep them safe from extinction.

Inspired initially by the early Dutch flower painters, Rachel Ruysch and Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder for their accuracy and attention to detail and also Karl Blossfeldt,’s striking botanical photography. My work is drawn originally from live plants and then enlarged by at least four times. These are completed in black sumi ink on paper.

Julie Eaves

BA (Honours) Art & Design Practice

Have you built your ship of death, O, have you? O build your ship of death, for you will need it. The grim frost is at hand, when the apples will fall thick, almost thunderous, on the hardened earth. And death is on the air like a smell of ashes!

Taken from “The Ship of Death” from the Last Poems by D.H. Lawrence,1932.

The vessels in these works are votive offerings, talismans in boat form, symbolising dedications of faith and hope that in this age of anxiety, uncertainty, and transition that human, animal and plant life will survive the tremulous changes that the Anthropocene age has wreaked on our planet.

The vessels act as metaphors for our investment and mediation with the divine. They are spiritual arks, little boats for the soul, our places of safety and security in uncharted waters. Fragile and vulnerable they represent our only protection on a voyage into the potentially calamitous unknown.

Boats and ships have and are buried deep in the human psyche and in recent times their social, ethical, and ethereal aspects have come to the fore. They are the conveyers of our past and future, endowing testimony and currency for the hope that we will be blessed with enough time to prevent us slipping into the scared void and the waters of oblivion.

Lily Hall

BA (Honours) Art & Design Practice

“My culture is my identity and personality. It gives me spiritual, intellectual, and emotional distinction from others, and I am proud of it”

MF Moonzajer

This body of work depicts a series of portraits of two individuals bearing traditional Celtic markings. Throughout my life, I have always felt that Cornwall has been overlooked as a Celtic Nation. Although mining has been well documented, Cornwall’s Celtic history seems to have been tossed to one side; I want to change that.

My goal for this project was to show a series of portraits of two individuals looking at the viewer bearing traditional ‘woad’. As if they are begging the viewer to at least acknowledge the Celtic identity of Cornwall, historic or present. The portraits are created through different mediums, Acrylic, Charcoal, and Digital.

Rosemary Herman

BA (Honours) Art & Design Practice

This body of work represents the area in North East Wales where I grew up.

The river Dee was an area of industrialisation and growth throughout the 20^thC and looked enticing yet something to be feared due to fast-flowing tides, unstable sandbanks and quicksand. I wanted to bring colour and beauty to something I had been made to fear.

The river Dee was also the barrier we had between England and Wales, and it punctuated our identity as Welsh. The two paintings of the river Dee signify negotiation on all levels, how we negotiate our paths through life and how we learn to deal with the things we fear. When approaching North Wales from the busy highways and Motorways leading North, these mist covered hills in the distance represent home.

The colours in these mountains are breath-taking, especially combined with the shafts of sunlight which regularly break through the cloud base and the effect that its proximity to the coastal areas has on cloud formation, these are the features that punctuate this piece of work.

Sophie Mallard

BA (Honours) Art & Design Practice

‘Patterns are a human cultural universal’ – Westphal Fitch

My work is rooted in the psychology of pattern design and its effects when pattern surrounds us. Patterns have been shown to induce positive psychological effects, and my work aims to reflect the joy and calming nature in being surrounded by patterned surfaces. Each piece begins with a hand carved lino pattern that is then transformed to be applied to many surfaces, using a combination of screen and block printing. The nature of craft is at the heart of what I do, and each item is completely handprinted and handmade, using local and ecological materials where possible.

Rachel Rose

BA (Honours) Art & Design Practice

This collection of hand-built plates takes its inspiration from medieval illuminated manuscripts and traditional English slipware pottery. Using the sgraffito technique the illustrations are etched through the coloured slip revealing the red earthenware clay body beneath. These processes combine to create visual narratives inspired by my own family life.

The images illustrate a significant moment from my daughters’ childhoods but are also intended to symbolise something more profound. Each plate represents an emotion or state of being; joy, serenity, wonder, transformation, connection and fearlessness, experiences that as children we access easily, whereas as adults navigating busy days in an often uncertain world, we tend to overlook.

My hope is that this collection offers a moment of resonance, connecting people to their own personal narratives.

Gary Trevenan Small

BA (Honours) Art & Design Practice

This body of work considers the Diaspora of the Cornish and in particular the mining life of Joe Small, the last ‘Hand Bar Driller’ in Cornwall. It also examines the homogenisation, deterioration of a culture and, in particular, the Cornish. Change is inevitable in any culture but the question is…. Is it always for the best?

Industry and customs familiar to the Cornish way of life have deteriorated, like rust eating into metal. It never sleeps until the metal becomes a weakened version of its former self. The richness and colour are eaten away and eventually rust becomes dust.

Decision makers in the shadows, who have no interest other than financial, encourage the path of rust. What was integral to an indigenous people has systematically become homogenised. We rely heavily on tourism and this in itself has become part of the problem. As someone very close to me once said ‘They are concreting over Cornwall boy’

The work and my storytelling through song are an echo of the richness this Duchy once had.

Sarah Williams

BA (Honours) Art & Design Practice

For this body of work I have found inspiration in my own journey here on this wonderful course. It’s all about reflection and self-sacrifice.

I have experimented with the size of vessels made taking inspiration from those made by the Mesoamerican people by giving them a primitive feel but on a larger scale. The outers are unglazed but some are coated in slip, each are given the texture of linen. The insides are coated in a dark slip and then given a clear glaze to bring out the colour.

The wall pieces are inspired by the ritual the Mesoamericans used for sacrifice. The skeletal figure is based on their god ‘Chaak’ who had hearts given as offerings. The masks are there to represent the priests who carried out the ritual. The vessels are displayed on a plinth as a representation of the sacrificial altar and to ensure the viewer is in prone position whilst viewing. Inside the large vessels is for the viewer to discover.

Jonathan Wills

BA (Honours) Art & Design Practice

This series of work represents the relationship between the area of Drsokyn on Perranporth beach and the beach itself in Perranporth by showcasing the different elements that occupy it around the seasons. From the dull overcast days in the autumn and winter months, to the warm vibrant sunshine days in the spring and summer months.

As a child, growing up in Perranporth the beach always felt like great place to spend summer holidays exploring the caves and rock pools, however it wasn’t until I became an adult that my view on the beach changed instead of it being beautiful to explore the caves and rock pools but now it was more about the spectacular views and atmosphere the beach and the area of Droskyn became as a safe haven from the everyday world to reflect and feel close to the ocean and my childhood.

My style of work is landscape and seascape photography, this series of work mostly intertwines with each style of photography by focusing on the seascape element in the photos of Droskyn and the landscape element is shown thought-out in the beach scenes on Perranporth beach.

Kay Connick

BA (Honours) Art & Design Practice

The body of my work explores the concept of time, it’s mystery and fragility. The three clocks in ivy, symbolise the gradual development of the moon and its phases as it travels in time.

My intention was to create a feeling of limbo which was not wholly separate from time but unmoored from it. My work is generally conceptual which is open to interpretation.

Scanography is something I became aware of last year and since then I’ve become hooked, it is a technique which uses a flatbed scanner to create photography, the process captures digitized images of objects for the purpose of creating printable art. Printing onto clear acetate enables you to layer various images to produce one piece of unique artwork.

Charlie Adamson Hammond

BA (Honours) Art & Design Practice

In this body of work, I consider everyday consumption. For some, everyday consumption has become public: the online world is oversaturated with images of daily life without actually depicting anything, distorting reality. Nothing can ever be as it is seen through a camera, because something is always offscreen. I use representational images, zooming in to make the viewer aware that there is something offscreen, and distorting and dissolving the images without crossing over into complete abstraction.

The photocopier is used as a tool of artistic production, and occasionally as an image itself, connecting mass production with a ‘cottage industry’ of domestic book production.

Books and posters, among other objects, are hung on clothes horses. These art works can only be viewed by interacting with them and the clothes horse. The clothes horse suggests the domestic and every day. The clothes horse is placed into a ‘gallery’ space and, as a result, the encounter with the everyday object, and its consumption, is transformed.

Michelle Redmore

BA (Honours) Art & Design Practice

My artistic approach aims to provide a visual representation on animal welfare within the modern factory farming industry. I want my artwork to serve as a voice for animals who are powerless to speak or protect themselves and I hope to communicate through my work that each animal has their own feelings and emotions.

Although it may be unsettling to portray the realities of animal cruelty, I want to raise awareness about how many animals are suffering in inhumane conditions and this is the only life they will ever know. Animals are just as important as humans, so animals should not be subjected to any pain and suffering for the requirements of people's needs.

Some animals are forced to live their lives in darkness and never see the light of day. For this series of artworks, I have created each animal's form in a dust of chalk, like ashes. The animal in darkness, lit only by a small quantity of light. By using only using black and white, this can convey deep emotion and these two non-colours are often associated with life and death.

Every animal has the right to live a good life and have a life worth living.