Diplom

Paula Crabtree

Dean
Department of Fine Art
Bergen National Academy of the Arts

The Department of Fine Art, students and staff, at Bergen National Academy of the Arts (KHiB) is very proud to open the final diploma exhibition at Bergen Kunsthall. This is, to a certain extent, the end of an era. These fourteen graduating students represented here, are among the last Fine Art students in Norway to complete their diploma, a diploma they have earned from studying four years based at the Department of Fine Art in Bergen, a diploma which is presently at the highest level in Fine Art education in Norway.

Of course this does not mean to say that these graduating art students have spent all these four years ensconced in their studios within the Department, isolated from the outside world. No! Not by any stretch of the imagination! This group of students has traveled beyond the institutional walls in search of information and ideas pertaining to their own studies and art projects. Several have exchanged to other Academies such as Berlin and Malmö and Oslo. They have worked in countries as diverse as France, India and USA. Moreover, many of them have participated in shows, screenings and conferences both locally, and nationally, as well as beyond the Norwegian borders. In other words they have already made some transitions from being art students working inside the institution, to becoming artists independent of the educational institution.

This transitional characteristic is part of the programme at the Department of Fine Art. It demands that the student attains an ability to work independently. In this way students are on the way to being prepared for professional art practices in the sphere of the contemporary art world, where critical reflection is central to the discourse of being an artist today.

This diploma show represents the culmination four years of artistic work by fourteen individuals, of the processes involved in making their own art, of the dialogues necessary to feed and inform the individual students and their work, and of their understandings of the world around, not only the contemporary art world, but more generally of the times we live in. These interactions with the world at large are evident in the works and artistic development that are presented here.

Yet, this is not a chorus of closely harmonized voices. Rather the works presented by these students represent diversity, an assortment of distinct voices with different approaches to and discourses with their surroundings. With a conceptual and theoretical foundation at the core of most of the work, the diploma show includes video, installation works, sound pieces, three-dimensional works, drawings and paintings, albeit in an expanded field, as well as works that use a combination of different media.

The differences in and between the art works presented here also represent a significant aspect. Energy is created; it leaps out from between the meeting points of different ways of thinking of and conceptualizing art projects. These junctures are the places where sparks can be, and are activated. Discussions and exchanges of ideas that are fired by these meeting situations enlighten and engage different forms of artistic practice that can be perceived in this exhibition.

Despite the diversity of expression and thought, these graduates are, nevertheless, a group of individuals with strong links between them. Bonds which have been forged throughout the course of the four years of study spent mainly working alongside each other, if not physically in the studio spaces, then in terms of theoretical and conceptual development. It is the factor of engagement with the surrounding world, contemporary art and otherwise, that has been at the foundation for the students’ shared study time at KHiB.
In their different ways, all of these individual emerging artists will go on either to develop their own professional art practices and to discover their own place within the contemporary art world or to make noteworthy contributions to the broader field that characterises contemporary art. Some of them will move to other parts of Norway, others may move outside of the country while some will choose to remain in Bergen forming new and closer ties to the professional art community already established in the city.

Paula Crabtree