Where are they now? Catching up with BA Fine Art graduates
- Written byGrizelda Kitching
- Published date 01 July 2021
This year's UAL Graduate Showcase launched on 30 June. As the class of 2021 celebrate their achievements and make plans for their future careers, we spoke to 3 BA Fine Art graduates from previous years to see where they are now.
Since they graduated, Andrew Hart, Emanuela Ogunji and Serena Huang have all progressed their practice: they are exhibiting globally, continuing their studies at a postgraduate level and exploring teaching.
Emanuela Ogunji graduated in 2020.
My practice is very much about everyday happenings and how I respond to them; how we as humans respond.
An inquiry into how one reacts to the environments they find themselves in, my work explores how your body fits with the ebbs and flows of the place, the thoughts that come to mind and the questions that are evoked. Responding through movement, textiles, sketches and film, I often work with recyclable materials or lost objects. I like the idea of adding something new or continuing the story of the materials I gather and collect. There is always a 'to be continued' aspect of my work, whether visible or not, because one's response is the work.
Since graduating I have found myself creating several different things - from books to short film diaries and physical artwork - all related to my practice but manifesting in different forms.
'Selah' work by Emanuela Ogunji
Throughout my time at Chelsea, I discovered that my written work was not just a part of my creating process but were also pieces of work themselves. Deeply inspired by the writings of the Psalms, I have started to create books that bring together my photographic, digital and written work.
The 'Selah' series started with my degree film - an exploration of the environments I find myself in, how my body responds and those moments of stillness in the everyday. Now my desire is to continue to explore in the form of film, personally and with other creators.
Serena Huang graduated in 2017
I work across video, installation, text, sculpture and performance to create fragments of speculative narratives in a fictitious reality. Interested in mythology, the slippage of history and the theatricality of now-here reality, my work questions the staging of truth and the hierarchal relationship in material culture. I employ theatricality as a bridge between fragmented materials to act as a negation of taxonomical classification of knowledge. By enacting the performativity of objects, highlighting the overlooked and dramatising the familiar, I offer 'nowness' that evolves from a past on an alternative trajectory.
At Chelsea I gained a lot of technical skills and found my interest in an art practice that allowed me to develop my practice further. I have been shortlisted for prizes and exhibited in China and the UK regularly, including shows co-curated by my Chelsea alumni peers: Jun-Jun Liu, Andrew Hart, Janek Nikson and Zsuzsa Benki. I met a lot of good people at Chelsea that are now doing many different things and we always support each other in any way we can.
I got an offer from the Royal College of Art Contemporary Art Practice MA before I graduated, but I didn't enroll until a year later. During that gap year in 2018, I went back to China. Luckily, I got offered a solo show at Banana Jam Space, a gallery space run by a Chelsea alumni, Butter Chow. I asked my final year tutor, the course leader of BA Fine Art, Martin Newth to produce a write-up for the show, which was very helpful.
After graduating from the Royal College of Art, I received the endorsement from Arts Council England to apply for the Global Talent Visa. For me, it is one of the best things that happened last year! I can now develop my career as an artist in the UK. Meanwhile, I am doing a PgCert at UAL and working on my next project.
View more of Serena's work: https://serena-huang.com/
Andrew Hart graduated in 2017
My practice is an ongoing investigation of the symbiotic relationship between painting and sound. I respond to this open question through various mediums: painting, sound, performance, installation, video, text, language and collaboration. The generative shifts of my practice respond in the same way as improvisation. I am currently working through themes of cross-modality, narrative and sub-cultural dissonance.
I was awarded a scholarship to study MA Painting at the Royal College of Art. I graduated from there in 2019 as one of the six award winners of the Tiffany-Outset Studio Award 19/20: a free studio for one year, that was a productive time.
I performed at 180 The Strand with Larry Amponsah at Theaster Gates Collective Intimacy. I also took part in the PLOP residency run by the artist Oli Epp and curator Aindrea Emelfie.
Collective Ending, an artist run space by fellow Chelsea graduate Billy Fraser along with others, hosted various exciting and notorious shows in the South London area that I was a regular participant in. Another artist initiative by fellow Chelsea graduate Ellie Pennick who runs a roving gallery, Guts Gallery, has regularly shown my work. I also showed in a two person show at Tiwani Contemporary with Charmaine Watkiss just after the lockdown in 2020 that lead to representation by Tiwani Contemporary and a solo show 'The Listening Sweet' that recently closed.
In between all the art I also studied a PgCert in Academic teaching in Art and Design at UAL. I am now qualified and have been teaching at Chelsea and across UAL colleges.
I partook in a residency at Beaconsfield Gallery Vauxhall, a way to think through my final submission for my PgCert. It was an amazing moment, sharing and learning with invited participants. I was also awarded an ArtAngel 'Thinking Time' Award in May 2020, a very valuable award that gave 20 artists support.
My advice for current students and recent graduates is:
Be open to learning and listening, but also be sure and confident in the choices you make in your making, as they were the same choices that got you onto the course. You have to be even more creative in the way your work is seen, embrace the challenge.
View more of Andrew's work: https://andrewpierrehart.com/
View work by this year's graduating students on the UAL Graduate Showcase 2021
Find out more about BA Fine Art