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.

Lon Kirkop

MA Printmaking

My work is a collection of my personal experiences, thoughts, and beliefs. Most of my work is created as a reflection of what I go through. Although the final results might look different from one piece to another, because of aesthetics and media, somewhere along the process there is always something that ties them together. My methodology is concerned with working without a fixed outcome to allow me to more intuitively work with my identified subject matter. Recently, I started creating multidisciplinary work that incorporates my writing, printmaking, sound and performance.

In my work, I like to speak about subjects that are in some way or another controversial and considered taboo. I find the exploration of such boundaries intriguing and this motivates me to investigate these specific subjects further. Such subjects are not commonly tackled in my local context, which is perhaps a reference to the conservative roots of my culture.

Apart from being a visual artist, I am also a traditionally published author, playwright, lyricist, music composer, and theatre practitioner.

This work Lura F'Ġuf Ommi (Maltese for Back Into My Mother's Womb) addresses the pressures we, as artists, face when talking about sensitive subjects in the ever-present context of social media and Cancel Culture, and how these virtual forums, can lead to self-censorship and rejecting the true nature of oneself.

The work is a multidisciplinary piece combining, lithography prints, poetry and live performance. It is devided in two space, one for the live performance where I am shaving my hair and the other for a life size lithography print of myself doing the same action as in the live performance. The poem Lura F'Ġuf Ommi is projected in its written form on both myself and the print.

This work talks about how sometimes, even without knowing, one can fall into the trap of absorbing all the pressure put upon oneself and end up resolving to self-censorship in advance of how the work might actually be perceived.

The shaving of the hair is an active metaphor for giving in to the apprehension of these pressures and trying to change to be accepted and be acceptable as LGBTQIA+ artist in an international context.