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I started out doing a degree called ‘drawing and applied arts’. It was pretty loose and the tutors were awful so I transferred to the illustration degree, which was great and I suddenly started actually learning things I wouldn’t have just learnt on my own anyway.
I do remember my time on DAA fondly though as I got to piss about so much more.
I had friends on the fine art course. Their output varied wildly, from amazing technically skilled painting and drawing, to upturned yoghurt pots on the floor and someone standing outside the campus canteen screaming.
Edit: I’m comfortable with seeing value in all of those examples of art, by the way! I seem to remember it was a Ski yoghurt. The most profound and symbolic of all yoghurts.
AlexD-
I had friends on the fine art course. Their output varied wildly, from amazing technically skilled painting and drawing, to upturned yoghurt pots on the floor and someone standing outside the campus canteen screaming.
I was totally in the second group :) It was the mid 90s, height of YBA and no one was doing actual skilled drawing and painting stuff (well, except in Scotland)
Things I did included:
a wardrobe lined with purple feathers and a breathing fan at the bottom
hanging bags of water over a goalpost for local footballers to burst
flooding my cubicle with salt water over the Easter break to grow salt crystals on wedding dresses
a 7 foot tall corridor of overlapping water bags. The best bags were Kwik Save ones so I got them to "sponsor" me by giving me free bags
a cast brick wall across an alcove in a warehouse with perspex bricks with swimmers projected into them. Cine film loops because LCD screens and video projectors were at least £thousands, probably 10s of thousands. After uni I had a "job" doing projections in nightclubs that were also cine film - I spent every saturday in fear in case they jammed and caught fire.
tape loops hidden in the drains outside uni buildings. Magnetic tapes and personal stereos, no MP3 players back then either!And my degree show was doll house furniture that was not made by me.
brokenbetty
Is that a Fine Art degree? I spent mine making installations of out of found objects and at times just projections. The nearest I got to actual making stuff was making plinths! (Not quite true but very close). So when I join drawing classes I never mention I have an art degree, just that I used to do drawing at school.