The students and department of the BA Fine Art, Liverpool John Moores University are thrilled to announce Edible Degree Show.
The exhibition, as with last year’s Degree Show on Mars (degreeshowonmars.com), is a response to the current moment. A year on from the first lockdown, this exhibition is a return to earth. Taking, in part, inspiration from the language that video games and Netflix have enveloped us in, the exhibition infers lockdown exhaustion and takes place in a series of virtual fridges. In addition, during the exhibition’s run week by week, artworks will be recommended by a number of global leaders and personalities in the artworld, prizes selected by the Directors and curators of Tate Liverpool, Bluecoat and the Liverpool Biennial, along with a series of residency prizes at the Royal Standard, CBS studios and Bidston Observatory.
A year ago, a fridge was brought into the Fine Art studios with a view to it becoming a Gallery. Fridge doors are, after all, where most of us first exhibit our artwork. The various lockdowns meant that this fridge never realised its potential to house an ongoing series of exhibitions throughout the year. Instead, while that gallery-fridge was confined to long-term storage in the studios, we have been confined to our homes, where we have been obsessing over our own fridges and their contents.
Fridges have become a strange and unacknowledged focal point to our enforced domestic stasis. We obsess about keeping it stocked, worry about it being empty. We constantly go to it for comfort. It has become a kind of totem over lockdown. A shrine that gives us life and extends the life of our food. It is also the temple that guards the vaccines that we pin our hopes on.
This curatorial framework serves as a platform for the graduating artists to create meaning from our global common experience. The exhibition attests to a lived experience of a year in lockdown and to the conditions of the graduating students’ making work at home, who turned this disadvantage into a means to make meaningful and relevant work at a unique point in history.
The exhibition is in a series of fridges. Cold storage units gathered with the mysterious monumentality of a domestic Stonehenge in another storage unit – a warehouse. Each fridge stores an entire world. Each a vision of where we are at, what we have been though, and where we are going. Edible Degree Show (edibledegreeshow.com) is a moment of sustenance on the journey out of lockdown, or into the next lockdown. It is a space where this year’s graduating artists can reflect on a year in storage, a year where everything was frozen.
Artworks recommended by: Sung Tieu, Artist; Russell Tovey, Actor; Zoe Whitley, Director, Chisenhale Gallery (further selectors to be announced)
Participating artists: Gold Akanbi, Seren Ambrose-Ellis, Hannah Archer Davies, Joe Boddey, Sarah Bristow, Gabs Cantarelli, Carly Irene Childs, Bethany Cooper, Mel Cornes, Carys De Gruchy, Demi Doherty, Charlie Donnelly-Dobson, Alice Duggan, Olivia Foo, Ishbel Glover, Vanessa Glover, Holly Jones, Jacob Kavanagh, Taby Kaye, Roman Kenny, Renee Kenny, Trudey Linton, Stevie Lowe, Charlotte Lunn, Max Mander, Jasmine Maudson, Alex May, Collette McDonald, Niamh Mossop, Paddy Nelson, Ieva Padane, Jessica Povall, Frankie Robb, Courtney Rogers, Jasmyne Sandhu, Moon Scott, Hatty Seddon, Sara Selman, Kirsty Sturgeon.
edibledegreeshow.com
Instagram: @edibledegreeshow