THESE ARE THE VOYAGES OF NTU FINE ART ENTERPRISE 2007
by Naomi Terry

Welcome to your whistle stop tour of the 2007 NTU Fine Art degree show. I have just been informed that the up and coming newborn species of NTU Artist have been spraying their creative juices all over the place, revealing a concoction of undiscovered civilisations, foreign lands, and new ways of thinking. So sit back and relax, you are about to be transported to a world where no one has gone before…

...full review including Hannah Phillips & Tom Wingroves' machines...

Greeting us is Hannah Phillip’s Cookie Machine, it likes to say hello by failing to successfully give us a cookie. Yours will be thrown on the floor with the rest, adding to the pile that covers its feet. The broken treats give off a smell….oh the smell…that sweet sugary aroma. It tickles the tastebuds…… (Sorry, got off track for a second there!) The machine has good intentions, even though it can’t quite throw a cookie straight into our hand, it can still sense our presence and is mechanically perfect.

It is purposely dysfunctional; the mechanics are so good that if she had wanted, the artist could have made it work perfectly. It begs to ask the question; does it matter if it functions properly? Which is a good point; we spend our lives constantly striving to succeed, getting disappointed by our failures, when is there any need? Surely like this machine, sometimes failures are more interesting than if they had been successful.

Moving on into the most spacious area of the show, we are welcomed by another invention; the dirty metallic Tattoo Machine of Tom Wingrove. Being drip fed by ink to supply its thirst, the perspex encased conveyor belt has a dark essence. The needle attached, pierces the pinned down pig’s flesh gently, and viciously embeds it with a line of blue ink.
On walking around this contraption, the drips and remains of the mechanical process can be seen, and combined with the potent sickly stench of rotting animal flesh, it strips the beauty and art form of tattooing back down to it’s raw essence.
As with Phillips’, Wingrove’s machine is well constructed and exposes it’s workings in a refreshing and interesting way.

Samuel Mercer, Time MachineA machine that fails to reveal its mechanics, and for a brief moment allows us to imagine it as real, is Sam Mercer’s Time Machine. Occupying the majority of the lower area, beyond the spiral stairs, sits this cream coloured beast.
Reminiscent of a giant worm-like creature, it’s opening is approximately seven feet high, tunnelling down and round to one foot. A video displayed alongside gives humorous details of how it should be used to travel back in time.

On watching this, one cannot help to imagine what it would be like to disappear into the depths of space and time, re-visiting a lost moment. Maybe this is part of what Mercer is contemplating and what better way to encapsulate it than in a time machine. However, there are no suggestions of machine other than the video, no obvious mechanics or buttons as with the previous inventions; it makes me wonder if it was originally intended as time machine? Nonetheless, it is still an excellently crafted piece of artwork.

Overall, these are three interesting and diverse machines created by three of the many talented artists of NTU Fine Art 2007. There is no doubt after seeing this exhibition that it is only a matter of time before the newborn species of NTU Artist take over the world or maybe even the Universe!

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