New Art West Midlands has opened its doors again to shine light on some of the stars of the region’s art colleges – with one of the exhibitions having a particular theme this year.

The exhibition is held across four venues and shows works by artists who have graduated from the region’s six art schools – Coventry University, Birmingham City University, University of Wolverhampton, University of Worcester, Staffordshire University and Hereford College of Arts – in the past four years.

More than 180 people entered and just 31 were chosen to show their work across this year’s galleries: Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, mac Birmingham, Worcester City Art Gallery & Museum, and Wolverhampton Art Gallery.

NAWM was launched this year with a private view at mac, and it was soon clear there was a thematic choice to the works. The mac exhibition had been curated by Jessica Litherland who moved there from Rugby Art Gallery and Museum last year. She said she noticed a lot of artists were working with environmental themes, and she thought this would link in with the gallery being in a park, and wanting to get more involved in its setting.

I could only find one Coventry University graduate showing at the mac, and she is Renata Juroszva, whose works explore the “relationship between femininity and domesticity” and are based on her photographs of domestic spaces filled with female models. Domestic Routine is a set of nine monochrome drawings showing women doing small tasks such as taking a bath or going upstairs, creating ideas of privacy and intrusion.

Jade Hamilton (ex University of Wolverhampton) has combined (above) various found objects around the idea of a post-apocalyptic future where humans have used up the earth’s resources to such an extent they have created an environment where it’s virtually impossible to breath normally. Mannequins wear gas masks attached to small ‘microcosm planted biomes’, glass domes full of greenery. They are impressive if sobering.

Some of the other works on show at the mac are not easy to look at.

Megan Evans (ex BCU), is showing Natural Collection, a selection of works made from pastel, and cosmetics, looking at people’s ideas of self presentation through deciding to change their appearance. There are some slightly gruesome images of faces cut open for facelifts, dental work and other facial surgery. They make their point about the ugliness and unpleasantness gone through in the search for beauty.

Halina Dominska’s work is quite fun. It looked at first like a big pink canopy, with flesh picky bits hanging from it; it relates to the skin, to senses and reactions. Called Bound to, it is made of soft silicone, fishing wire and pressure sensors, with bits that start pulsing in a triffid-like manor if you stand close to them.

Sarah Zacharek (ex University of Wolverhampton), is interested in travel, and also inspired by the work of Hamish Fulton. In Re:Discovery she traced a route determined by photographic negatives of her late father’s journey to Torun, his home town in Poland, although she had no first-hand memories of him and no connection to his heritage. She has combined his photographs with ones taken where he had stood, also photographing the street she stood on, together with sounds from the journeys.

Natalie Ramus (ex Hereford College of Arts) has produced large photographs of hands that at a distance look as though they are painted with henna; but no, it’s a hand stitched lightly with human hairs. Hand Stitched is apparently about using shock to prompt the spectator to reconnect with their body. It’s certainly quick shocking.

 

Jenna Naylor (ex Staffordshire University), has created some charcoal and marker pen drawings, one bravely on tracing paper reaching across the room and others on the wall, called Botanical Hybrids, which show her interest in classificatory systems and taxonomy, and “use the space between fact and fiction”. They look like a mix of under sea life and plants.

All four exhibitions of NAWM are on until May 14. Looking at the exhibition catalogue other works I’d like to track down (both by Coventry University graduates) are some colourful mixed-media anti-capitalist, anti-austerity landscapes created by Coventry University graduate Daniel Smart, and Natalie Seymour’s digital photo collages of an empty college building in Smethwick which fuse images of the interior and exterior to create monumental images.