Students exhibiting in Austria

15 October 2009

Ashley Leach, Hannah Pierce and Graham Thew all graduated with first class honours degrees from the Fine Art programme in 2009. Their exhibition in Bregenz forms part of a series of exhibitions that the Künstlerhaus has staged over the past years, each time inviting a different European academy to select some of their students for exhibition. To date students from the academies of Dresden, Vienna and Cologne have been invited to exhibit their work.

The title of the exhibition, The significance of the previous group should be considered in the negative, refers to the coding of maritime flags and indicates that a message transmitted before should now be taken to be its opposite. The title speaks of the anxieties attendant in leaving art school and starting to operate as an artist in the world. These individual and life concerns in turn reflect the way in which art as an idea and a practice also develops and evolves, by maintaining a relationship to its histories and traditions but also by challenging and contesting the received knowledge of the past – by considering the previous in the negative and straining towards the future.

The invitation for LJMUs participation came about following an exhibition staged last year in the nearby town of Bludenz by Professor Juan Cruz, Head of the Department of Arts in the School.

Following the School's move to the Art and Design Academy earlier in the year, this exhibition builds on the their amibition to be recognized internationally as operating at the forefront of art and design education.