Creative bright sparks light up Sheffield in graduate show

UNIVERSITY graduation exhibitions: a glass of warm wine and mostly proud parents.

So why is the Yorkshire Post at the graduation exhibition of this year's Sheffield Hallam University students? The same reason that BAFTA winning film producer Richard Dale is here.

"On one level you think, 'What could be interesting about degree shows?' But for me the way the work has been gathered from all these disciplines and to talk to the students about why they did that, what was the creative spark, it acts as a creative spark for me," says Dale, who was the man behind the BBC's programme The Human Body and is now creative director of his own film company.

"This is why it's different from other degree shows where they say, 'I've finished the course and here's something to show my mum and dad'. It's a bunch of people getting together and saying, 'Here's the start of our careers, here's what we've done' and judging each other. It's about forward looking, about the beginning of something,"

Dale was in Sheffield earlier this month to help launch Creative Spark, this year's graduation show at Sheffield Hallam University, which runs until June 20.

The degree show is also a little different from the norm because it is spread across the city and not only is it open to the public, people are actively being encouraged to go into the university buildings and see the work on display.

The exhibition also brings together graduating students from a wide range of different departments for the first time – photography, fine art, graphic design, performing arts, metalwork, jewellery, games animation, architecture and engineering.

It is the last of these – engineering in particular – that comes as the big surprise.

Chris Rust, director of Sheffield Institute of Arts, says the engineering students working with fashion students is the perfect example of how two vastly different disciplines have come together for the first time in the making of this show.

This collaboration is seen in a startling exhibition of dissoluble wedding dresses, which have already attracted attention from the media in Australia and Japan.

The dissoluble material was created by engineering students and they presented it to the fashion students to see what they could do with the material.

Rust says: "The engineering students were interested in seeing how the fashion students could express the possibility of new materials and in particular materials that have a specific life cycle.

"When the fashion students were handed this material, they worked on the idea of turning it into wedding dresses."

In one of the many exhibition rooms, one of the campus buildings is now home to six mannequins wearing dresses in various states of degradation – the material dissolves in water.

Rust says: "The wedding is the most conspicuous example of consumption and waste in our society and the dress is the centre of that – this extraordinary piece of material that is the most expensive and least used product you will ever buy. You pay a huge amount of money for it, wear it once and put it away forever.

"With the dissoluble dress the students have come up with a fascinating way of designing a piece of fashion that makes a real comment on society, on consumption, on the state of marriage in society.

"It's a great example of the exciting sort of work that comes from this kind of cross discipline collaboration."

The sheer size of the exhibition, spreading across the city, is impressive in itself, but the quality of work on show – and the quality of the way it is displayed – means these graduating students are getting a taste of professionalism before they enter the world, many of them as professional artists.

Rust says: "In the last few years our art design and media courses have doubled in size, become a huge new thing.

"This year we decided the end of year shows should reflect that and we decided we were going to make a big splash. We have taken over all three of our city centre buildings with over 1,000 students across an enormous range of disciplines all exhibiting their work."

In an exhibition room next to the wedding dresses is a collection of work by the furniture design students and in another room metalwork students are displaying their work.

Richard Dale was particularly taken with the work of John Peters.

The metalwork student had been working on a set of silver shot glasses, but was struggling with the course.

"I was getting quite frustrated, no-one seemed to like the pieces I was creating," says Peters.

"I discussed this with a lecturer and talked about the fact that I have quite a destructive streak and he suggested I indulge that and see where it took me."

Peters took the metal shot glasses he had made and, with the help of a friend who has a shotgun licence, shot them.

"We went to his land and shot the cups. It was frustrating that people didn't seem to respond to the work I was creating and this was a way to take that and say something about the emotions involved in my work."

Richard Dale says: "Often with graduation shows the exhibitions are organised within one specific department. By having students who are working in different disciplines working together in this way, they inspire and learn from each other.

"It makes for a really exciting collection of work."

The exhibition is being held at Arundel Gate Court Building, 175 Arundel Gate, Furnival Building, Arundel Street and Shea Building, city centre, until June 20.