A sense of belonging - Exploring the meaning of gathering through the lens of UAL students

For artists, the sense of community is elemental to continue to pursue intricate creations. And what hosts more value in what we do, is to gather.

Gathering our ideas, our concerns, our aspirations; gathering our techniques, our tests, our outcomes and our failures. gathering all that makes us better artists.

I recently had the opportunity to attend Gathering, an exhibition building on Arts SU’s ongoing research into student wellbeing, focusing on three critical areas: sustenance and nourishment, creative materials and resources, and financial hardship.

At The Bomb Factory near the ever-vibrant Covent Garden, I was offered a refreshment and a warm greeting, surrounded by artwork yet to be explored but that made me feel at ease at first glance. Each piece aligned with the idea of finding a sense of belonging, of exploring where we can situate meaning to our experiences through the premise of "What sustains you?" promoted by Arts Student's Union.

This idea nourished my visit and kept me thinking about what else we need as students to feel supported and encouraged to continue pursuing our mediums amidst our present circumstances.

It can't be denied that dedicating one's life to the arts and creative industries comes with many challenges that might seem daunting at the beginning of our careers. Full of hopes of where our creativity might take us, initiatives like Gathering offer an ideal first step for students to feel validated and seen.

As I walked across the door, the first artwork to explore was A Hoarder’s Nest by Jaqueline Ito and Jade Emsley, both BA Fine Art students at Central Saint Martins.

This collaborative piece, created with branches, cyanotypes and a rabbit plushie as a center figure, emphasizes the act of gathering as a response to the rising costs of materials and how students are not always able to afford them. The artists used what they had in hand, domestic objects or wasted materials, affording to create a piece that is as intimate as it is impactful.

Each leather scrap is the reconciliation of the layers within us, pathless, imperfect, fragile and sometimes distanced despite their closeness. Serena relies on the materiality to communicate her message, an intention that she delivered from the crafting process of her artwork, allowing her as well to nest a connection to her roots.

I reached out to her to understand Fragments of the Self and her process better; her story is resembled in her creation and it’s important to honor how she views her world.

Coming from a matriarchal family of patter cutters, she notes that “garments were made to last, cared for, and respected. Some of those pieces are still in my wardrobe today, and I wear them. That mindset has shaped the way I see making, not as trend-driven or disposable, but as something with emotional, material, and generational weight.

Continuing my walk around the gallery, I was then met by Theeratatt Tongbai’s painting, who is a BA Fine Art Painting at Camberwell College of Arts.

This piece features a heron standing by the shore. Offering a deep meditation and a profound meaning beyond what we can see, this artwork is an attempt to meditate on life's fleeting nature, contemplating on an abyss of emotions—loss, peace, and melancholy.

On the next wall, the imposing work of Lucinda Coulthard was featured. An exploration using charcoal as a medium, her piece, Finding Wildness, captures the frequencies of nature and the city through her body in Camley Street Natural Park.

This piece resonated a lot with me. Living in a major capital city is an experience that scopes a large range of emotions, sometimes good, sometimes bad, makes me seek comfort in spaces where I can retract from it all. In Lucinda's art I found a refuge in the nature that she captured, which served as a reminder of how nature is always present and how important it is to also rely on those feelings and experiences to nurture our practices.

As an MA Material Futures student, her work explores nature as archive and environmental connections, engaging audiences in multisensory experiences of nature in the Anthropocene.

MA Fine Art Drawing student, Jingshan Ding, presented Vent I & II, an exploration of the iterative process of bark breakage and formation, mirroring the fragility and resilience of living organisms, including human.

With her background in Biological Sciences, she uses cracked tree bark as a metaphor for human fragility and resilience, probing the inner power of small individuals.

“I wish viewers feel encouraged to look closer, to see the seemingly ordinary in a fresher way, and to feel the hidden power of nature.”

For me, her piece served as an inspiration to reconsider the microorganisms and the function they have to sustain other bigger forms of life, much as a metaphor for the sentiment of gathering.

A very unexpected and fascinating piece was Security by Karol Amrita Prakash. What can be more necessary than comfort, and comfort provided by touch, which the artists stated to be a growing absence in our daily lives.

For Karol, this piece “is a journey to recognizing my disengagement with reality. Through its conceptualization, and even making, it has helped me become more aware of myself and recognizing that I'm but one cog in the machine. That awareness is incredibly assuring. Through engaging with Security, whether simply by sight or feel, I hope to communicate this sentiment.”

Attendees were welcome to interact with the artwork, which offered a momentaneous space for comfort, for grounding and, perhaps, for relief.

Karol is an MA Spatial and Interior Design student at Camberwell College of Arts, exploring topics in relation to community, primarily trying to re-channel a sense of physical (or material) rather than digital relationship with our environment and community.

This was Karol’s first stitched project, and an interesting approach to a topic that is probably shared amongst many of us. The engagement with materials and the processes we adopt to craft our ideas is as relevant as the final outcome, and in this case, it stands with purpose for other students to question the possibilities within their own practices.

I appreciate this initiative by Arts SU to open the debate of support and how to better support students. My take from Gathering stands with the importance of allowing students to cross boundaries with their creations, supporting the ideation, making process and result.

What is art for if not to be shared?

And I hope we can see many more upcoming exhibitions that allow more students to gather.

Post-Grad Stories

Post-Grad Stories is a thriving online platform of postgraduate voices. Here you can share thought-provoking experiences, practices, thoughts and articles about what matters to you.

Download the PDF Guide to writing articles for Post-Grad Stories.

UAL Post-Grad Community

Established in 2013, Post-Grad Community is an inclusive platform for all UAL postgraduate students to share work, find opportunities and connect with other creatives within the UAL and beyond. Find out more.