Photography students shortlisted for national competition

With over 33,000 submissions, A Level Photography students, Evie Davies, Hannah Kettle, Ellie Owen and Evan Day faced stiff competition to be selected and have their work showcased at the Royal Academy of Arts’ Young Artists’ Summer Show between 13 July and 8 August 2021.

Now in its third year, the Young Artists’ Summer Show is an open submission exhibition for students aged 5 – 19 studying in the UK and British schools overseas and selected for both on-site and online exhibits were students, Evie Davis and Hannah Kettle.

Talking about her inspiration for her piece ‘Running out of Lockdown’, Evie said: “Running Out of Lockdown” was taken during the first few months of the first COVID-19 lockdown where everything was new and strange. I came across Laurie Simmons who created a series of images based on suburban houses and household items. These houses and items have legs creating surreal images which made me think about how apt it would be, instead of using mini doll’s houses like Simmons, to actually make a house that can fit a person inside relating to the current situation and photograph it. My image is inspired by the idea of exercising once a day within your household. I titled it ‘Running out of Lockdown’ as everyone was longing for normality to return.”

Commenting on her achievement, Hannah said: “I’m so excited to have my work shown in such a high-profile competition. The inspiration behind my piece ‘Clumsy’ all started when I researched old films and found that all of the leading actresses in the films were aesthetically perfect and an example of the western beauty standards, such as Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, and Kim Novak, but were shown to be inferior to their male counterparts.”

She added: “I started to realise that women were seen mainly for their face and outward appearance and asked the question, what is a woman without a face? I wanted to use satire by taking away my face in the series of photographs I took, and playing the role of a woman who’s either always in the kitchen, always fixing her appearance, is always in the background or is clumsy. This is where the name came from. Clumsy is the perfect title to show how humorous and ridiculous the stereotypes actually are.”

Students Ellie, with her piece titled ‘Sand as Feet’ and Evan with his piece ‘Death of an Industry’, will see their work appear online.

Along with successes for our talented students, A Level lecturer, Amber Banks-Brumby has also been shortlisted for the Sixth Form Colleges Associations (SCFA) Curriculum Innovation Award, which are due to take place at the SCFA Summer Conference on the 16^th and 17^th July 2021.

On her students shortlisting she said: “With the Royal Academy receiving over 33,000 submissions this year, I am so thrilled to see not just one but four of my amazingly talented students work selected to make through the judging process. It’s a great showcase for their work to be shown in such a prestigious and long-standing exhibition.”

NSCG offers a range of Creative Arts, Film and Media vocational courses and A Level subjects where students’ artistic talents are developed in our art faculty which contains specialist studios and industry-standard equipment.

For more information on studying Photography at Newcastle College visit nscg.ac.uk, email info.newcastle@nscg.ac.uk or call 01782 254254.