Speculations
10 May - 13 June
Online Exhibition
Thomas J Mills
Olga Young
Nicholas Pratt
Hermioney Mills-Rogers
Csenge Vojtonoszki
Molly Pemberton
Courtenay Bes-Green
Daisy Mellor Gunn
Shams Drury
Hannah del Herrera
Sam Reed
Speculations is one of four online degree shows by third year Fine Art students at Sheffield Hallam University.
If we travelled beyond our consented ‘world’ into other imaginaries, we might find other ways of being, doing, and existing. Informed by the potentials of magic, fantasy and alternate histories / futures, the works in this group challenge the frameworks that prescribe our reality.
More information about the artists can be found towards the bottom of the page.
Who Do We Want To Become?, four posts holding four paintings; signpost; A4 printouts.
Painting posts each 180cm; painting each 60cm x 42cm; signpost 122cm
Thomas J Mills
We, found object piece and animated gif.
Found object piece: 4m x 4m
Olga Young
PLAN, multimedia on whiteboard, 120cm x 90cm
Nicholas Pratt
The Dreaming, video
Hermioney Mills-Rogers
Alchymia, digital photography
Csenge Vojtonoszki
Les Traductions, animated gif
Molly Pemberton
This Mythology is Ours, oil painting, variable dimensions
Courtenay Bes-Green
Count to Six, painting, 110cm x 75cm
Daisy Mellor-Gunn
Top: No Tunnel, lino print, 21cm x 29.7cm, and stickers
Bottom: No Trespassing, digital edited drawing, 21cm x 29.7cm
Shams Drury
Soul Retrieval, acrylic painting, 70cm x 80cm, and digital collage series
Hannah Del Herrera
Trinity, acrylic and pencil on wood. Series of three, each 30.5cm x 40.6cm
Sam Reed
Thomas J Mills
Thomas J Mills approaches his work with the intention to initiate an inner conversation about new age spirituality combined with the existential expression of life, all presented under the visual narrative language of speculative fiction.
His practice is focused on painting and world building which can become a combination of 3D modelling and digitally manipulated photography. By operating with these materials Mills is able to present to his audience abstract renditions of other worlds, metaphorical civilisations and narratives which follow characters that explore the observation of consciousness.
The desired effect of the art work is to present to his audience the opportunity to firstly explore the false realities in the work, but further to objectively observe the state of that reality and on reflection objectively observe themselves and the state of their own reality.
To achieve this Mills returns to such themes and inspirations such as Carl Jung’s archetypes, William Blake’s states of consciousness, the interconnectedness with the natural world, environmental and political change, Cezanne's doubt, in addition to the similarities between the speculative fiction and spiritually, when also taking into consideration sacred spaces.
Olga Young
My project is based on the book ‘We’ by Zamyatin. I have not taken this work conceptually in the sense of trying to create a static understanding of the work to be imposed on it and so destroying the work with the inanimate understanding of bourgeois logic – the logic of death – but tried to allow the work to live and speak for itself.
I chose to work on different shaped ‘canvases’ (used pallets and offcuts) found in a skip – objects with a memory of their own creation. The images on these are in some instances necessitated by the nature of the object to be painted on, in others by their places in the overall composition of the installation.
The aim of the piece was to stir a sense of community where different people, even though they are not necessarily strong individually, can become very strong together and reject or fight against the tyranny of institutionalization. The unity of individuals rejecting the enforced unity of the ideology.
Nicholas Pratt
The Freemasons are a mysterious organisation with medieval origins. Within both fiction and reality, their true intentions have been disputed; are they all part of a huge international conspiracy or do they simply put on charity events every so often? Their modern approach to PR is inclusion and transparency (your favourite celebrity is probably a Mason), but when the BBC are asked to leave the room at a specific point whilst filming a documentary, it leaves me wondering…
I want to create my own Freemasons lodge. I can not do this legitimately, so I have devised an ingenious plan to break into my local lodge and steal all of their symbolic ornaments and tools. Me and my hand-picked crew are raring to go.
My work revolves around the absurdity and humour derived from reappropriating things like history, stories, information, and pop culture. Within this piece I am displaying now, I have used a combination of drawing, graphic design, writing, and photography to create some conceptual art with amateur overtones.
Hermioney Mills-Rogers
My work explores the relationship between flora and fauna, ultimately between humans and nature. Humans have an innate need to affiliate with other life such as plants, fungi, and animals; we have a desire to be near nature. Humans often forget or overlook the fact we ourselves are part of nature. I have developed a series of ideas observing the growth and development of living things around me, moving and reproducing within its own environment. The mood is internal and rather a subjective state focussing my art on woodland areas and nature, taking on various forms intended to draw in the viewer and create new cycles of thought and associations.
My current work “Interconnectedness” are multimedia pieces. My arrangements invite the viewer to move into a space of tranquillity and thought, relying on our desires for beauty, poetics and seduction of the natural world. My work displays the ways that human form can connect with the environment. Komorebi to the observer can range from a pleasant ambience for a walk through the woods, to generating feelings of awe, which in the right place at the right time verges on transcendental.
My style is that of a visual story teller, creating pieces intended as an image or perception of a subject at the time I viewed it. My objective is to create work that appeals to the senses and emotions, making one think about their surroundings. Art influences society and can change opinions affecting the fundamental sense of self.
Csenge Vojtonoszki
Art and science may seem two vastly different disciplines, but they have benefited from each other for centuries. The development of techniques, materials, experiments, new discoveries and different perspectives are all due to the relationship between art and sciences. In my work, I am playfully experimenting with the idea of alchemy from medieval times to turn bones into “precious stones”, using basic chemistry and curiosity. I do believe, in modern days, art and science will still be useful to each other’s progress, whether that progress is developing new artistic techniques or to make science more accessible and understandable to society.
Csenge Vojtonoszki's Facebook page
Molly Pemberton
This is not my work, this is a digital copy of my work.
Digital images and information disseminate across the globe thanks to the immediacy of the Internet. Thousands of copies and reproductions proliferate as we consume more and more content, day by day. Copies and reproductions that may not truthfully represent the reality they seek to imitate, leading to an understanding of reality that is compromised.
As our reliance on and credulity of digital media threatens our sense of reality, we may parry its impacts by returning to the tactile, for it is materiality that separates the digital from the handmade. Using handmade techniques at each stage of the process, ‘Les Traductions’ places emphasis on the handmade in contention with the digital, exploring the way in which reproductions may transform the meaning of the original and the effect this has on our perception of the original.
Courtenay Bes-Green
Inspired by classical paintings and stories, my work explores the use of image manipulation and social media to produce new mythologies, fractionalisation, and polarization. ‘This Mythology is Ours’ rethinks the source of power in a postmodern, globalised world, speculating on some of the effects of sophisticated algorithms on politics and the public. This piece is heavily influenced by Hieronymus Bosch’s ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’ and there are direct thematic parallels. For example, the vivid warning of the consequences of overindulgence, particularly of sensual pleasure in Bosch’s piece, is translated in my painting to overindulgence of visual stimuli and distraction. I attempt to parodically highlight that although there are centuries between the 2 paintings, there are still behavioural and sociological similarities. Cold War Steve’s satirical collages with their echoes of art history were particularly influential as they closely reflected my own style. Composing small digital scenarios alluding to Bosch’s symbolism, current news stories and Baudrillard’s analogies, led me to assemble them collectively into one discombobulated microcosm.
Daisy Mellor-Gunn
Since losing a young family member to suicide two years ago my work has dealt with my feelings of grief and death. I have wanted to understand the role death plays in art yet without making it to morbid or obvious. Classical painters such as Edward Millais and John William Waterhouse use characters from plays, story’s or myths to resolve ideas surrounding death within their paintings. I love the way this subtracts the artists own personal experiences from their work.
The Greek myth Persephone really resonated with me as I loved the irony within her story- she is the goddess of spring and growth yet remains living in the underworld, married to Hades, for six months of the year. In my piece ‘Count to six’ I have depicted a halved pomegranate with six seeds before it. This is to represent the six pomegranate seeds Persephone ate in the underworld- keeping her tied there during the winter months, yet allowing her to return to our world for summer and spring. The morbidity in the title is suggesting she is counting down the days until she can be in our world with her mother Demeter. I loved this metaphor for mental illness within Persephone’s story- she is the goddess of growth yet resides with the deceased six months of the year. This to me speaks to the strength of those suffering with mental illnesses- the perseverance and resilience because of the understanding that life will get brighter.
Shams Drury
My art work is mainly detailed ink drawings that are inspired by ancient landscapes and archaeology, I also make prints, practice photography, work with clay and experiment with ancient crafts. I’m interested in prehistoric heritage, developing an insight into spaces and places through arts and crafts, exploring the pertinence they have in the modern world, particularly regarding our changing relationship with the environment and technology, sociality, and religion. Recently I have become familiar with digital editing software to further develop my drawings.
‘No Trespassing’ is developed from a lino print ‘No Tunnel’, which was in turn made from a photograph I took at Stonehenge between lockdowns in October 2020. During this time the stones had taken on a different energy, with gatherings canceled due to the Covid-19 pandemic and visitor access intermittently closed altogether.
These works are in response to the UK government's decision to construct a £2 billion expressway road tunnel through the Stonehenge World Heritage Site, causing severe destruction to natural, historical and sacred sites that are intrinsically linked with the monument. The ‘No Tunnel’ lino print was made into an edition of biodegradable stickers, which were sold via social media with proceeds going to the Save Stonehenge WHS CrowdJustice, raising funds for the High Court case against the transport secretary. ‘No Trespassing’ makes a broader argument about the Crown ownership of Stonehenge. As a bill in parliament threatens to criminalise trespass, travelers and protests, with the impending tunnel plans, raising further questions about the future of the Stonehenge landscape, and so arguably also the rest of the country.
Hannah del Herrera
I’m interested in how our personal mythology creates connections to ancient historical symbolism, and how this interacts within the contemporary, modern society. Through my practice, I want to study how investigating the unconscious mind through art and ritual can enrich human life – reforming connections between one another, mother earth, and the universe.
Through paint, sculpture and ritual, I uncover the human unconscious; building a personal mythology which draws on dream, memory, symbolism through history and contemporary culture, psychoanalysis and spirituality. My practice explores the surreal-mind and I allow it to unfold into a physical reality, where as an onlooker, I can interpret myself in all of my vulnerability. It often feels alien and definitely magical.
The world inside me smears into actuality and I (and others) get to watch as these two worlds bounce in tandem. This unfamiliar perception of my own existence reaches outside of my bodythrough my fingertips and reveals the imagination, and symbolism of the soul. With this Idiscover lost and uncertain realities; gaining a new chance to assemble missing pieces of the narrative of my existence.
Sam Reed
My work aims to represent a sacred realm of spirituality and emotion. I try to make works which stand apart from social constructs and narratives. Instead, I explore the abstract idea of metacognition.
To me the realm of metacognition is sacred and spiritual, and cannot be completely understood or depicted, and this is why I pursue it, because it shifts constantly into the unknown. This impossibility of expression reminds me of my own place within the eternity of life and the universe.
The materials I use are often oil and acrylic,or charcoal and other non traditionally bound pigments. But the materials themselves have no importance in my work. They merely serve to create an image that becomes a portal for the soul.
The process of making any single artwork is a journey, and my experience of making work is a spiritual one. I have no concern in my work for concepts in which the focus is humancentric. Instead, during the process of making the work I try to consider realms that go beyond myself as an artist and an individual: realms in which I am not centered as a person.