Free Range

This post is about a week too late to be of any use to anyone, but I've been busy so tough! The last two Thursdays on the trot I've taken advantage of the new East London Line to whisk me from Brockley up to the Truman Brewery on Brick Lane to see this year's Free Range graduate photography shows.

The brainchild of a lady called Tamsin O'Hanlon, the idea is pretty simple, Free Range groups together roughly 18 universities' degree shows and displays them in one venue, with two weeks per discipline (Art, Design, Photography, Fashion etc.). The sum in this case is most definitely greater than the parts. Most arty degree shows consist of a selection of proud but slightly bewildered looking parents traipsing after their drunk offspring, praying that their debt-ridden kids can find some sort of gainful employment after three years of being 'creative'. Instead you end up with what was the largest, most inspiring display of photographic work I've ever seen under one roof – albeit still with plenty of bewildered parents and drunk students wandering around.

It may just be that Photography students are a bit more savvy than the Art & Visual Culture students I studied with, but this bunch seemed a whole lot more professional than I was back in my day. The only slight disappointment was that although virtually all of them had printed up business cards and postcards, there were a noticeable few (probably about 10%) that didn't have web addresses you could visit.

Given that any talentless pleb can have a free Flickr account or blog (and I'm certainly proof of that) it seems unfortunate that some people would miss out on this once-in-a-lifetime promotional opportunity. I do appreciate that most students are massively stressed when getting ready for their degree shows but when your typical visitor wakes up the next day nursing a mild hangover from mixing their drinks at the various free bars, those web addresses are the only real visual reference to help aid their memories, or help them promote the work they liked through a blog such as this for example. Anyhoo, now that I've finished my patronising rant, onto the more interesting stuff like listing the great photographers whose work I admired.

First up has to be Claudia Moroni – without her tireless networking on Flickr I wouldn't have known about the show in the first place. As well as being adept at self-promotion, she is also clearly an extremely talented photographer who was showing a fascinating series of portraits of living statues:
http://www.claudiamoroni.moonfruit.com/

In no particular order, here are the others whose work caught my eye enough to nab one of their cards. I stupidly didn't think to take any notes as I went around so any comments are based on my somewhat addled memory:

Craig Madden – Beautiful, minimal abstract pieces

Jamie Sinclair – Great portraits of people holding their breath upside down
 
Natalie Davis – Panoramic portraits of swimmers

Portia Webb – A truly fascinating and insightful series about giving birth

Tom Griffiths – A great series about the elderly in society

Helena Tkalez – A personal series about her grandmother's house

Axel Hesslenberg – A study of an English vineyard

Nicola Ann Naylor – Atmospheric portraits and landscapes

Nathalia Ophele – Stunning Icelandic seascapes

Ochi Reyes – Transforming a skin condition into art

Lorenzo Durantini – Deconstructed video tapes

Rachel Brown – Study of the Peace Camp at Faslane, Scotland.

Three of the cards I picked up listed sites that don't seem to be working at the moment, or haven't been constructed yet, but I'll list them anyway as hopefully they'll sort it out soon:

Steven Kenny • Zoe Stafford • Christina Panayi

Phew, all done. Although you're too late for the photography shows this year thanks to my tardy typing, there's still Design, Art, Interiors and 'Mixed' to go between now and the end of July. Brick Lane's always worth a visit anyway and if you get really bored or sickened with jealously of these bright young things you can always pop into Rough Trade and buy some music instead – you really can't go wrong..