Coventry University’s MA students are showing off their work in exhibitions at two venues this week.
The Lanchester Gallery at the School of Art and Design, and the fifth floor of the building, plus The Herbert art gallery up the road are both housing a collection of screenings, installations and performances.

At The Herbert, Doppelganger is a striking photo performance piece by Charlotte Wilson, showing sinister masked creatures in different poses – a load of goat-headed black-clad people on some rough ground near a housing estate, a crow-headed figure leaping about in a wood and a scene of crocodiles. The characters look at the darker side of JM Barrie’s Peter Pan.
The scenes are all shot in places Charlotte enjoyed going on holiday when she was younger, including Dartmoor, and she plays all the characters in the performance piece. The opening night was a family affair with mum and gran there – though it seems in the Wilson household wearing the masks is kept in the family anyway. At gran’s 80th Charlotte photographed everyone wearing the goat mask for a memorable family picture which sadly isn’t shown.
Charlotte said she switched from painting to making the masks and photographing herself in scenes for the MA. She’s found she’s a lot happier with this sort of work and plans to stick to it. The masks are also on show with the photos and can be tried on.
Also at the Herbert, is Gossip from Home by Heike Wischmann, a mocked up ice cream van, looking at the flow of information and gifts from east and west Germany. Several installations in one room are fun and entertaining.
At the Lanchester Gallery there are several graphic design and animation works. Yujue Wang has created some lovely characters out of paper to go with his film, and Mohan Subramanian looks at masks in the 21st century, creating some trippy and amusingly sinister images on film.
On the fifth floor there’s lots of different types of projects on show, though a personal favourite was Suchi Shah Pathok’s Life by Design where you can add ‘leaves’ to a metal ‘tree’ growing in a dark room, while pleasant Indian music plays.
The exhibitions are only on until Thursday, September 29, so don’t miss out. (According to the Herbert website it ends on October 5 – who’s right, I don’t know!)