States of Being

From January 2024, MA Fine Art students have taken temporary collective ownership of B Gallery. Rather than planning a series of exhibitions in advance, they have decided to programme as they go along. Like a game of consequences, each subsequent project will act as a direct creative-curatorial response to the previous one.

'States of Being' is the second project in their programme: a group exhibition curated by MA Fine Art student Irina Lomasa. Noticing a strong figurative element in her coursemates’ work, and an interest in portraying emotional states across a diversity of media and approaches, Lomasa sought to bring these ‘states’ together in an exhibition of what she describes as “escalating intensities”, attempting to capture essences of emotion in the language of the body.

Richard Kitson (whose exhibition 'Joanne' directly preceded 'States of Being') presents a ‘traditional’ painting, made in a quiet setting with a sitter over a long period of time. For Lomasa, here the act of painting itself emits peace and tranquillity. Like Kitson, Nathan Beaton’s works foreground an artist-subject relationship, though here it is coded as erotic or even lustful, representing a state of private physical intimacy. Irina Lomasa positions her own work at the extreme end of the emotional spectrum, with imagery that evokes human pain and existential suffering. The sculptural works of Luke Irving and Phee Jefferies here attribute human qualities and forms to non-human objects and materials. Lomasa uses these works to suggest the human tendency to project our emotions onto things. Jefferies’ silicone body parts and skin imitations float, flop and float awkwardly in a state of ironic dejection. With similar humour, Irving’s self-portrait combine of cast metal and cooking utensil perhaps ‘deadpans’ about our hubris and obsession with self. 

States of Being is the second in a sequence of exhibitions in B Gallery during 2023-2024 programmed by MA Fine Art students and Postgraduate Course Leader Dr David Steans.

This exhibition is available to view from 10:00am - 4:00pm Monday to Friday by appointment only for external visitors. Please email curatorial@leeds-art.ac.uk to make an appointment. Staff and students are not required to make an appointment.