Degree Show Talent Scouts

This week, hundreds of art students in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen will arrange their best work around their studios, sit down, and wait for fate to walk through the door. Students at Dundee’s Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art have already packed up their degree shows, but they might yet be wondering whether fate paid them a visit undetected.

Curators often pass through the degree shows with an eye for new talent, some just browsing, and others with exhibitions to fill. Collectors of all price brackets are on the look-out for bargain treasures, and critics hunt for new discoveries – or in the interest of good copy – new trends.

Everyone knows that Jenny Saville’s entire degree show was bagged by Charles Saatchi, a collector who likes to buy in bulk. Every so often a new Saatchi discovery is splashed across the media, a fact of which every new graduate must be acutely aware.

Whether everyone wishes for such a meteoric rise to fame and fortune, or just a friendly hand up into the world of professional art, the degree shows are a pivotal time. Students are briefed to face a world where business acumen and media-friendly talk can open doors which talent alone might not. Sitting in front of the culmination of years of work, they’re all psyched up, waiting to be discovered by more than their own granny.

“There is no other time quite like it,” says Wendy Law, an independent arts consultant based in Edinburgh. As well as buying work for her own collection, Law advises other collectors, and for her, professionalism is key. “If you’re meeting someone face to face in your degree show,” says Law, “then you are selling your work, whether it’s in a monetary sense or a promotional sense. It’s an ideal opportunity and it shouldn’t be squandered.”

But not all talent scouts like to talk to the artists in the degree show setting. François Chantala is Director of the Thomas Dane Gallery in London, and one of this year’s selection panel for Standard Life Art & Design, a London exhibition drawn from the pick of the Scottish degree shows (exactly the kind of show in which Saatchi first found Saville).

“It’s a really difficult moment of their life,” explains Chantala, “where some of them are going to stop in the next couple of years, and some of them are going to continue. I don’t want to participate in putting on any extra pressure. I prefer to be more invisible.”

Chantala hopes to glide through the corridors of this week’s degree shows unnoticed, picking up on the most interesting art, but not necessarily the most polished. “At such an early age,” he says, “I would really not expect someone to be perfect. I think that would be a mistake…I would rather see someone who is making a crazy statement, not knowing what is going to be next.”

Chantala is clear that selecting work for an independent exhibition is very different from scouting on behalf of his gallery. He doesn’t need to worry about finding “someone who fits in the programme”, and can simply pick out the work which interests him the most. At this stage in artists’ careers, he feels, their focus should be entirely on their art.

“Since the early nineties,” he says, “it’s become incredibly professional. Expectations are very high; they expect to sell out their degree show when they should be focussing on their work. At 20 or 22 years old you don’t want to think about selling out your show. It’s the wrong message that we, the art world, have sent to them.”

Toby Webster, Director of The Modern Institute, is equally wary of “hyper-professional… robot-artists.” For him, the emphasis should not be on business or communication skills, or even on smooth presentation. “You just want them to concentrate on making work,” he explains, “and have the confidence to do what they want to, and to be honest for me, that’s what professionalism as an artist is.”

Although Webster doesn’t visit the degree shows with the intention of picking up new artists straight away, sometimes he does just that. Last year he made a discovery fresh from Glasgow School of Art, but for now, he’s reluctant to reveal their identity. For Webster, the degree show is just the beginning.

“In order to do my job,” he says, “I need to know the artist. Of course I can shift product but it’s not about that. It’s more about knowing the work, and getting to know an artist is part of the process.”

So while overnight success is possible, it’s not the most common outcome. And just to really terrify all those nervous art students, the final word goes to Wendy Law: “Sometimes it’s just by sheer serendipity that an artist makes it.” Good luck.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 08.06.08