Past Present.

Welcome to our shows from 2020-2023.

This is a showcase of work by students in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Anglia Ruskin University, who graduated from 2020 to 2022.

It's all of us, together, in a digital show you curate for yourself - not pre-arranged into rooms, courses or disciplines. You do the arranging. Want to see all the red things we made? Or all the work about identity, nature or isolation? Look at what you want to, when you want to, whether it's all the illustration, all the writing, all the movies or performance. You get the idea.

This exhibition is yours for the making. Go explore.

For more information about our faculty, visit the ARU website.
Whilst Anglia Ruskin University remains committed to freedom of speech for individuals, the views and opinions included in this showcase belong to their authors and do not necessarily represent the views of Anglia Ruskin University. If you've got any concerns please contact us.

Sara Roberto

Film - BA (Hons)

I have always loved visual mediums, especially film and photography, as I feel like the mediums that better reproduce reality make it more fun and interesting to bend it. I first experienced this when studying photography in secondary school, producing maximalist photoshop montages with simple concepts based on dadaist art.

What I thought would become a mere hobby developed more when I came to ARU and decided to pursue film. Through my studies, I discovered more about the Avant-Garde and the many female filmmakers that belong to and/or revolutionised the genre, such as Maya Deren, Lis Rhodes and Jayne Parker. These and many other artists inspire me to test the limits of the image and produce rare or unique concepts that are new to film.

I like to explore different film genres, giving greater importance to the image. But I primarily consider myself an experimental filmmaker that explores the relationship between the creator and the means to create and makes the audience aware of those methods. I like to create moving images that seem like a meaningless abstract spectacle at first but make the audience question what they are seeing as they are seeing it and what it means to see it.

Presently, I work exclusively with film, searching social media and new internet trends to inspire me for future projects. My last film, Auto and me or Robots of Everywhere (2022), showcases different public methods of accessing AI-generated art. This practice is one that is still very new and under-documented, and I would like to produce more films that showcase and question what AI generated art means for the future of the art world.

I also like to explore reality-bending techniques in my films. I find it most effective when using reflections in unusual ways or showing the equipment used to produce a film. In Kameroscope (2021), the equipment is very much present in the frame. I feel like showing the equipment used in an unusual manner provokes a fourth wall break that catches the audience off guard.

I plan to restart my work in photography, focusing on photo collages and photographic studies of the body that express the physicality of intangible emotions and how the human mind processes intense feelings (positive or negative), translating them to the human body.

More about this course

Frame taken from "Auto and Me or Robots of Everywhere" (2022). I played with reflections to represent the thin line between AI and human creator.

AI generated landscape image used in "Auto and Me or Robots of Everywhere" (2022)

AI generated portrait image used in "Auto and Me or Robots of Everywhere" (2022)

Still from "Kameroscope" (2021): the camera films a mirror, capturing a distortion of reality created by the reflection of the lens itself.

Photo taken while location scouting for "My Walk in Midsummer" (2021)

Poster presentation for my dissertation that discussed the representation of ball and queer culture in the media, and what allowed this representation to evolve.

"Auto and Me or Robots of Everywhere" (2022) - An exploration of Ai generated art, its relation to the human creator, and its inherent chaos.

"Kameroscope" (2021) - A film about the camera as a protagonist. The film explores new possibilities of framing by focusing on the image reflected on the lens of the camera.

"My Walk in Midsummer" (2021) - Many paths are explored in Midsummer Common, and no matter which one you take, there is always a chance to stop and appreciate.