The Fine Art Degree Show: Lancaster University
A digital print of a fallen arm resting on a bedsheet, poised somewhere between surrender and death, bears the words ‘Shared Skin’ across the flesh. This was the first work I encountered in the LICA Building: Nico Sharma’s ‘I knew you under its touch, and it knew us (Mud poem)’ (2026). I noted the phrase without knowing it would become a fitting reflection for the exhibition itself. Rather than a collection of individual practices, the degree show gradually revealed itself as a conversation between artists, each contributing to something larger than the sum of its parts.
I was aware of the temptation that comes when visiting a final degree show, to look beyond the work itself and to ask who will succeed, who will develop this practice further, who might become the next significant artist. Lancaster University’s The Fine Art Degree Show, spread across the Peter Scott Gallery, the LICA Building and the students’ studios in Bowland Annexe, quietly resists that impulse. Rather than encouraging speculation about future careers, the exhibition demands the works be experienced now and understood as significant pieces. These are not nascent works awaiting future validation. They exist fully in the present. Across the exhibition, bodies, landscapes and imagined technological futures speak directly to contemporary fears, hopes and critical perspectives. They make runways for future lines of flight, certainly, but they are also unapologetically of now.
Originally published by Corridor8, July 2026.
