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PERSPECTIVES
Kevin Hunt, artist and curator
“I made quite a lot of sculptures that contained
huge amounts of wet paint, and then they’d
dry over a period of months or weeks. They
weren’t particularly eloquent!” Kevin Hunt is
remembering the work he made as a BA fine
art student at the North Wales School of Art
and Design, Wrexham. He graduated in 2005.
“I was grappling with the idea of making an art
object with a sense of mutability,” he says. “I’m
quite pleased in retrospect I was at a small college
and there weren’t lots of people seeing my work –
the pressure was very much just about me and
the work rather than me and the world.”
Based in his hometown of Liverpool since
graduating, Hunt is a former director of The
Royal Standard, an artist-led studio, gallery and
social workspace where he also now has his
studio. A champion of artist-led activity, he is
a practicing artist, curator and visiting lecturer
across the country. And while he has some
reservations about his own degree show –
“Looking back, I wasn’t really making the work
I want to make now” – he has a keen interest
in what’s coming out of the UK’s art schools,
particularly those outside London.
“Degree shows are bit like a circus – all kinds of
peculiar things happen, some of them utterly
dreadful while others can be amazing. The
thing that I love is when you see something that
is great and you think, if this is what they’re
doing at this point in their career, what will they
do in the next two, three, five years”
As for what makes a memorable fine art degree
show, Hunt is adamant that it’s the students
who are already thinking as artists – who aren’t
bound by educational requirements – that are
most likely to impress.
“The most interesting students at a degree
show are the ones that bypass the idea that
it’s this culmination of the last three years and
instead just treat it like another show. What’s
really exciting is when you meet students who
are already operating as artists, presenting
work, putting on shows, working with other
artists away from their close set of peers at
art college.”
That said, Hunt acknowledges that the weight
of expectation generated by the degree show
season is hard to resist. “There’s a sense of
momentum that leads up to it which is just
exciting,” he says. “But when a student rests
all their hopes on the degree show, their own
expectations aren’t likely to be met. It’s just
a fleeting moment, a tiny part of an artist’s
career. And of course you’re also limited by
your own knowledge at that time – you don’t
really know what is possible yet.”
1
Easy does it, installation
view, David Dale Gallery,
Glasgow, 2013, curated by
Kevin Hunt
2
Kevin Hunt, The Money
Cactus, pre-painted wood
and tempered steel, 2013
3
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Kevin Hunt
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