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MDX artists dazzle at Millfield School's acclaimed annual graduate show

25/02/2019
Glass artist Sharron McLeod and photography-inspired printmaker Wai Wong feature in MA & other Postgrad exhibition

Two recent MDX Fine Art Master's graduates have had work selected for a prestigious annual postgraduate show which opened this week at the Atkinson Gallery at Millfield School, Somerset.

Wai Wong and Sharron McLeod, both graduates in Printmaking, feature in the MA & Other Postgraduate Show alongside artists across all media from almost 20 universities. Each university can nominate up to five students whom tutors believe represent the highest quality and standards in their personal artistic practice. The show, first held in the 1990s, embodies the Atkinson Gallery's mission of supporting aspiring artists and bringing high calibre art to the South West.

Wai Wong, a keen photographer who makes highly detailed, sometimes hyper-real prints using a variety of techniques, has won a host of awards since graduating last summer, including Printmaking Today’s State of the Art prize, the Gwen May Recent Graduate award and the East London Printmaking Press prize at the National Original print exhibition.

His print Strangers 2, a series of inter-related, interlocking representations taken from street photographs, has been chosen for the MA & other Postgrad show. In addition to his appearance at the Atkinson Gallery, he has been selected for HIT 2019, the Haugesund International Festival of Artistic Relief Printing, in Norway in May. He is enjoying learning his craft in more depth alongside other printmakers at the Norman Ackroyd-designed Print Room at City & Guilds where he is completing a residency. He has submitted work to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.

Sharron is a glass artist, combining printmaking with glass and ceramics - her preferred media because they "accurately reflect the very fragility of the memory they capture". Her work, fragile linkages - glass casts of padlocks in an array of rusty colours - appears in the show. Sharron says she is "intrigued by structures on our landscape that mark themselves out as an anomaly and are often under appreciated... It is the rusted and bowed physical effects that turn them into a sculpture in their own right, as a source of inspiration". During her course, she was encouraged to mix mediums and she relished the opportunity to experiment and develop her practice through access to the whole range of university art and design facilities. She continues to teach fused glass techniques two days a week. In the next few years, she hopes to exhibit more and expand her studio business.

"The show is highly selective - to get two students selected from the Printmaking MA is a major achievement" says Associate Professor in Painting and Printmaking Steve Mumberson. It runs until Saturday 23rd March and the gallery's opening times are Monday-Saturday, 9.30am-5pm.

Recent exhibitions featuring MDX alumni have included Tamu Nikwane's one person show Blue Plastic at the Zabludowic Collection in Chalk Farm before Christmas, comprising installation, video, found object sculpture and written pieces which form narratives about his connections with Zimbabwe and his life in London, and Corinne Charlton's show at The Muse at 269, Notting Hill, with work about her former life as a model. In Eastbourne until 28th April, Figure Study II is a curation of the collection at the Towner Art Gallery by the Towner's Director, MDX fine art graduate Joe Hill.

An exhibition of sculptures, paintings, photography, drawings, installation, textile and sound work by second year BA Fine Art students, Sense of Something More, has just been held at the Islington Arts Factory in Holloway.

Find out more about studying fine art and printmaking at MDX

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