Crompton Place Shopping Centre
Bolton BL1 5BU
Old Blue Inc + Pound Empire Store
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Friday 24th - Sunday 26th June 2022
10am - 4pm
(10:30am Sunday)
Alter your view of the world
This year's college exhibition - our first physical show since 2019 - brings together work across the 4 areas of the Holy Cross Art + Design Department - Graphics, Photography, Art + Design, and Textiles. The participating students have navigated a tumultuous transition from school to college life as COVID-19 transformed our normal way of life in all manner of ways.
The students have worked tenaciously and creatively within restrictive parameters, all the while showing a dedication and passion for the freedom and life-affirming potential offered within art making. As college life began to return to (a new) normal and the students were able to engage fully in college life, their work and ideas have flourished. The work in the final show is a diverse record of this group's individual responses to the world around them, at this moment, and their place within it.
It's not too big a statement to say the world as we know it has been altered - and we can often feel passive as we traverse the aftermath of the pandemic. However the work produced here aims to illicit its own change, by provoking the viewers own preconceptions and ideas.
Studying art at Holy Cross has been an extremely enjoyable experience, I truly believe that I couldn't have excelled as well as I have anywhere else. This was largely due to the sense of community that is created within the art department. I never felt "stuck" so to speak as I always had someone to turn to for advice, whether that be fellow students, my teacher or other members of staff in the A+D department.
I have learned a lot from my teacher, and it has opened my eyes to expressing my art through different mediums, rather than just pencil and paper. Holy cross has helped spark a passion for the arts that I am forever grateful for and I hope it will carry on into my time at university.
Whilst studying Graphic Design at Holy Cross, I have learned that graphic design can be many things. During the course we were encouraged to explore many different approaches including model making, brand design, animation, photography, film making and illustration which helped us find our individual styles, I personally found a love for illustration which I explored and developed more freely after learning the skills during my first year. Being surrounded by other graphic design students who all have very different approaches and techniques as shown in this year’s exhibition, was inspiring. Being encouraged to share and talk about our work during lessons together, I found developed a deeper understanding of design. The wide variety of designers and artists we studied during the course, inspired our projects and taught us the basic principles of graphic design. The course gave us aspirations and foresight, and prepared us for our possible future in the design industry.
Through photography, I have discovered a medium that I can use to record and reflect my environment as I find it. In my studies I focused mostly on displaying my own environment with regards to the variety of different environments Britain offers depending on what economic and social bracket you fall into, a topic I have always found to be fascinating. Photography has been both a creative and scientific medium that has allowed me to explore art differently, and to display my experience of British society in a transparent way. A photograph is a way of translating light into a visual message: a way of communicating in a manner that words cannot, for this reason, photographs feel like truth. This is why I find it such a powerful medium to display social environments, because to see is to understand.
Textiles at Holy Cross College enables you to experience textiles as a flexible and diverse subject. Being a student on the course has taught me to draw inspiration from the environment around me. Whether it be architecture or nature that has influenced my work, I have been able to experiment with lots of different materials and processes. The incorporation of a variety of artists and designers teaches you how to develop your ideas and think creatively, taking inspiration from the work of others.
Studying Textiles has given me the ability to be resourceful, learn how to adapt, and use materials and objects around me to develop my ideas. You also learn useful practical skills such as sewing and using digital software such as Photoshop that will prove useful even after your time at Holy Cross College. After being a Textiles student I feel I have gained many new important skills, as well as having gained the confidence to apply these skills outside of education. I would definitely recommend Holy Cross College as a place to study Textiles, as the staff are supportive, knowledgeable and passionate. Textiles requires a lot of dedication and hard work, but as long as you are putting in the time and effort you will gain so much from choosing Textiles.
