Sur//face

The BA (Hons) Fine Arts graduation showcase where 'surfaces' are not boundary or exterior to be overcome, but conditions through which relations turn perceptible.

To engage with a surface is to enter a field of tension, between depth and appearance, stability and flux, the visible and the withheld. The prefix sur- signals that which exceeds or overlays, unsettling any singular plane of reading.

Across the works, surfaces are understood as stratified fields, going through processes of construction, erosion and reconfiguration, and acting as sites for gesture, material and time to communicate.

Rather than revealing an underlying truth, they function as sites where layered processes remain present, where what has gathered continues to reject containment. Surfaces operate as both structure and event: a condition in which forms emerge, recede and remain in states of becoming.

Within this field, the face is not approached as a fixed image of identity, but as a surface in formation, dispersed across materials, gestures and many layers of temporality. It appears intermittently, partial, not fully present and yet as excess, resisting a singular cohesive state.

Together, the works presented by the graduating cohort of the BA (Hons) Fine Arts programme articulate surface as a condition of stratification, emergence and excess, where visibility is continuously negotiated, and where what comes into presence remains contingent, unstable and open.

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BA (Hons) Fine Arts