The Shape of a Spell
The Shape of a Spell presents the work of ten emerging artists from universities across the South Coast
Part of CVAN South East’s Platform Graduate Award, The Shape of a Spell brings together the work of ten emerging graduate artists, who transform landscapes, materials, memories and lived experiences into alternative ways of seeing. Through painting, sculpture, photography, film, textiles and illustration, the exhibition moves between the familiar and uncanny to create imagined worlds rooted in folklore, memory, local histories and deep time.
This year’s selected artists are Lucy Grant and Maisie Rose (Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton); Katherine Bouleau and Ana Carceller Córdoba (UCA Farnham); Kai Grizzle and Sian Chungh (Chhainguns) (Southampton Solent University); Lauren Rufford and Helena Jane (University of Portsmouth); and Phillippa Todd and Madeline Drake (Arts University Bournemouth). The graduates studied across Fine Art, Photography and Illustration, bringing their own unique approaches to making, materials and subject matter.
Across the exhibition, making becomes a kind of spell: a way to preserve, transform and reimagine the world. Rocks and caves, bodies and horses, streams and ponds, domestic spaces and abandoned places become sites where other possibilities can emerge. Through personal mythologies and parallel realities, the artists invite us to slow down, look differently and consider what might exist alongside the reality we know.
