Showcasing Art
Welcome to our art showcase.
In this section you’ll discover a world of art at Morley College London. Browse through the work of students who have studied with us on a range of art courses ranging from short unaccredited courses to HNCs and HNDs.
Art end of year shows
Advanced Painting: A Brush with Paint
Venue: Barry Till Gallery, Morley College
Exhibition dates: 7 to 27 June 2024
A group exhibition of contemporary painting from this year’s Advanced Painting course, taught by Steve Wright. With its focus on personal development, this display ranges from lyrical landscapes to paintings that seek to capture the multi-sensory experience of specific locations, or that imagine a future where Artificial Intelligence is part of the everyday. What they have in common is the aim to create something meaningful and personal out of a brush loaded with paint.
Students featured in this show are: Karen Blake, Louise Cook, Jane Fairclough, Reiko Hara, Siobhan Howatson, Jane Keelan, Hugo Knox, Raquel Leis Rivera, Komal Patel, Madeline Spruntulis, Kitty Wass, Pauline Withers-Born.
Steve WrightThis group of students has been through a lot together, helping each other through moments off loss and illness, sharing the excitement of new discoveries in painting and energetically discussing artworks, whether in the sstudio or on a gallery visit. There is a sense of anxious anticipation around ‘A Brush with Paint’, our upcoming exhibition, selecting work to show and working hard to finish work in progress. We will curate the exhibition as a group, finding connections between this pleasingly diverse array of paintings.
Jane Keelan
Jane Keelan is exploring the connection between painting and music to create an immersive, atmospheric experience for the viewer. A professional flautist, Jane has composed her own ‘soundtracks’ to her latest paintings, accentuating the mood, or giving it a wry twist. She has been drawn to tunnels and walkways that lead the viewer into the distance, where a lone figure maty be seen, their back turned to us.
Louise Cook’s landscapes respond to the broad sweep and overlooked details of her local common. She has experimented with different formats for her paintings, from squares, through diptychs and triptychs, to this most recent, with its cinematic sweep and exaggerated colour.
Karen Blake
‘Gravity’ is a painting that explores the movement and sensations of a specific landscape. Karen spend part of her time on the West Coast of Scotland, whose landscape is punctuated and enlivened by the cries of birds as they flit across its wide spaces. This painting depicts the fall of rocks and debris from a cliff face into the sea, apparently weightless until they hit the ground or water.
Reiko Hara
Reiko used this portrait of her sister, Nobuco, to improve her skill and understanding of the colour mixes and brushstrokes relevant to portraiture. Reiko began by posing and photographing the sitter, then gradually simplified the background to set off Nobuco’s skin tones, hair and relaxed pose. Like many portrait painters, Reiko persisted through countless changes until the eyes and mouth felt just right.
Komal Patel
Komal’s professional life is in medicine, and she brings her specialist knowledge of psychology to bear on her paintings and collages. These are imaginative and intimate, exploring emotional states linked to particular places and moments. Komal has used paper collage to develop ideas and compositions, a strategy borrowed from the Surrealists: accidental juxtapositions can create new and striking images with a sense of poetry and mystery.
UAL Foundation in Art and Design End of Year Show
This show is the culmination of a year’s hard work by our Foundation students. Our students benefit from an intensive and structured programme of study in fine art practice, which helps generate ideas, develop critical thinking, encourage experimentation and develop research methods. Student also take the opportunity to prepare a portfolio of work for application to other study pathways, with many looking forward to continuing their studies at degree and postgraduate level.
Catharsis
Course: UAL Level 3 Extended Diploma Graphic Design & Illustration Year 2
Co-curated by the teaching staff and students at our Chelsea Centre for Creative Industries. All with a shared passion for collaboration, excitement and playfulness, this exhibition presents painters working with sound artists, performers linking with musicians, fashion designers collaborating with photographers. Witness as our students move between subject areas and carve their own path, giving them the confidence to enter the industry with a unique body of work.
