Work by graduating fine art students at York St John University is on show at two sites in the city. CHARLES HUTCHINSON drops by for a look.

YORK St John University’s Fine Art degree show may be called Bungalow, but it is presented on two floors. One at the university’s Fine Art Studio in Lord Mayor’s Walk, the other at New School House Gallery in Peasholme Green.

So why is the selection of work on show by this year’s graduating students so called? “The degree show offers a collection of investigative art practices that utilise and reach across an eclectic breadth of themes, materials, and mediums; despite coexisting under the same roof for the past three years,” says head of fine art Helen Turner.

“Bungalow presents a level playing field for those participating to resolve ideas and concepts they have been working towards; an interdisciplinary showcase of working practitioners that are now ready to move on and move out.”

Excuse Helen’s pun, but Bungalow promises no “house style”, she says. Instead it provides 2D, 3D and digital artworks; fresh talent and ideas now realised in this “pinnacle exhibition”.

Among those taking part is Alex Loughlin, whose work When Pigs Fly is a sculpture of a toy parachute soldier sculpted from insulation board and finished in a high-gloss resin.

“My work involves the creation of contemporary sculpture concerning itself with a form of general agnosticism in an analysis of human experience in its entirety, rather than strictly questioning religion,” he says.

“I work with the idea that there’s no such thing as fact, just opinions varying in credibility. While we choose to believe one of these opinions, in my work I aim to remain somewhat ambiguous in my motives when creating work using extremely recognisable westernised objects.”

Influenced by IKEA flat-pack furniture, cheese puffs and more besides, Amy Jones specialises in textile installations and sculptures with the invitation to play, interact and encounter. She is exhibiting Machinic Assemblage, a hand-made tent with creature-like forms that represents her concern with sculptural voids in space and time as she creates a poetic dialogue between objects, people and space.

Sculptor and artist Mark R Binks’s Psychic Islands has an island centrepiece, illuminated by two projectors projecting a video of a programme that “draws”.

“I create work through exploration inspired by personal experiences and sometimes drawn from the fantastical realm of my imagination,” he says.

“In this project, I’ve explored the subconscious by critically analysing and confronting my experience of suffering from episodes of sleep paralysis in which I have hallucinations of creatures and experiences that are beyond this world.”

Olivia Sanderson’s Pink Berry Passion sculpture consists of plastered forms, painted in various colours, balanced, rested and suspended within each other, as well as support from a wall. “My practice attempts to transgress through various mediums,” says Olivia, who explores the boundaries of deliberate chance through stacked and suspended sculpture.

“Using industrial materials that require physical exertion on a human scale, I develop an awareness of the figurative aspects within the forms that seemingly rely on each other for necessary support. I’m interested in the fragility that each sculpture holds, and its inability to ever be duplicated.”

Kim Lancaster’s Multifarious video piece is projected on to several standing wooden panels spaced out and placed in various distances from the projector. “I use found imagery as a way of exploring how I feel towards the growing social obsession with the need for materialistic things, commercialism and the ‘you-are-what-you-own’ concepts,” she says. “I also concentrate my work on creating weird and wonderful imagery that is aesthetically pleasing.”

• Opening hours for Bungalow are 10am to 4pm today, Sunday and Tuesday to Friday.