Bath Spa MA Graduates Show: Of Echoes and Fragments

About

This exhibition showcases work by four artists who graduated from the MA Fine Art programme at Bath Spa University in 2020. Mark Burch, Daniela Corrêa Fortes, Marco Piccari and Afu Shaafiu were selected due to their fresh approaches to painting practice.

Whilst the exhibition celebrates their individual concepts and processes, it also acknowledges certain threads which connect them to one another, such as the significance of memory, experiences of time, and a sense of place.

Mark Burch's Roomination paintings present unoccupied interiors, which are at once familiar yet slightly removed from actual experience, resulting in an uncanny sense of place.

Daniela Corrêa Fortes' paintings also occupy a space between reality and illusion. Her intimate canvases present ordinary things with personal connections, provoking involuntary memories and associations for the viewer.

Marco Piccari explores memories through objects placed within indeterminable space and time. His paintings focus on that which is banal, unusable, and ephemeral, yet bound up with valuable experiences.

Meanwhile, Afu Shaafiu's large-scale paintings of vibrant colour and fractured spaces are based on conversations between his past and present self, and are an extension of his ideals of tolerance and peaceful co-existence.

Each artist, in one way or another, explores ideas of time or memory, and considers the meanings we consciously or unconsciously inscribe onto objects, people or places.