Despite the appearance of mundanity, everyday remains flooded with a myriad of updates about conflicts and wars across the world. Though seemingly indirect, artworks mirror external political and social conditions. In the Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard’s novel The Morning Star (2022), individual characters carry out daily tasks while at the same time being deeply suspicious of others’ motives and malicious intentions. Some strange events take place in the novel.
For instance, a priest reads a prayer for a man who is being buried in a cemetery but later she sees the same man in a supermarket carpark; or a shop assistant panics when the café she is sitting in catches fire - but she seems to be the only person noticing the fire. The characters are always testing if they are living in the same reality shared with others. There is only one observation shared among them. They all notice an enormous and powerful star in the sky, rising like a gigantic moon that may be affecting everyone - or the star may be the cancerous symptom of collective anxiety.
2026 collection part one
Explore the student work for 2026 BA (Hons) Fine Art
The twentieth century cannon of existentialist philosophy Martin Heideggger in his influential book Being and Time (1927) discusses how one relates to others in the chapter “Being-One’s-Self and Being-With”. While Heidegger acknowledges others have a determining role in formulating one’s self, he also sees ‘others’ as similar to oneself, only multiplied in numbers.
The uniqueness of one’s experience, or sense of “being in the world” is both acknowledged and at the same time disregarded. Art is therefore a form of construction that attempts to bridge self and others. This “other” may not be like “me”, and may be radically different, and yet communication is still possible through art. The curator Nicolas Bourriaud (2022) in his book Inclusions: Aesthetics of the Capitalocene, thus, defines art as “a relational regime, a specific way of understanding reality”
In the studios one day, a student explained to me how she decided to paint a seascape with hermit crabs. Against the common perception that hermit crabs live like a lonesome and solitary recluse, they do in fact help each other. This supportive community is built on the empathetic understanding of others’ vulnerabilities. This catalogue powerfully demonstrates individual quests of all the artists, and yet it also conveys the implicit attempts to be with unique and creative minds of others in the same moment.
2026 collection part two
Explore the student work for 2026 BA (Hons) Fine Art
Fine art academic support staff 2026
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