What is fine art? It’s a question that resists a single answer. But, perhaps the best way to approach it is not through definition but through experience. Previously, I attended a Fine Art degree show at the Birmingham School of Art, encountering a world of ideas made tactile, provocative, playful, eerie and sincere—each piece offering a different reply to that age-old question.
Figurative Works That Redefine What Fine Art Can Be
A manikin of a female figure, constructed from mixed media, greeted visitors like a ghost from a dream, at once vulnerable and defiant. Behind, a haunting triptych of human figures depicted bodies in impossible states: one levitating, one crouched, the third seemingly falling into the void. These images refused resolution, forcing the viewer to linger in the space between motion and emotion.
Accidental Art: When the Environment Becomes the Exhibit
Some of the most striking displays were not part of the exhibition. For example, I found myself mesmerised by paint-splattered parquet flooring in a studio, accidental and chaotic, yet echoing Pollock in its expressive gestures. It made me question where the boundaries of Fine Art lie.
Fine Art Sculpture and the Aesthetic of Imperfection
There was humour and humility also. Bowls formed by pouring paint over spheres, hardening into delicate, imperfect shapes—more accident than intention, but deeply satisfying to see. In a darkened space, projected mandalas rotated slowly on the walls and floor, evoking a trance-like stillness. And in a nod to Barbara Hepworth, four minimalist squares made from insulation board stood tall like silent sentinels of modernism, both homage and subversion.
Tactile Installations: From Fabric to Resin Hands
Texture and tactility ran throughout. Hanging crocheted fabric gently swayed in the air. On the floor, a cluster of resin hands—eerily sprouting mouths—crept across the ground. Strange and surreal, they felt like something from a dream or a psychological fable. Elsewhere, abstract acrylic shapes lay scattered on the floor, their flat colours and curved edges suggesting a playroom and painting.
Fine Art Installations Using Film, Sound, and Food
There were video art installations that confronted the viewer with fragmented narratives, digital distortion and immersive soundscapes. One room also pulsed with images of food projected onto dinner plates, surrounded by leftovers—a meditation on consumption, ritual and waste.
Playful Abstraction and Miro-Inspired Artworks
Elsewhere, a series of Miro-inspired paintings fizzed with colour and form, playful but knowing. Each piece seemed to ask: Can we still find wonder in abstraction?
So, What Is Fine Art?
It’s not one thing. Rarely neat, often deliberately uncomfortable and always profoundly human—it opens up space for reflection, critique and celebration. Sometimes, it whispers. Sometimes, it shouts. It might appear as a mandala glowing in a dark room or paint splattered across a forgotten corridor floor.
Fine art is where thought meets material. It’s where form becomes a question. And in this Birmingham degree show, I found that question being asked over again—in bold, beautiful, and unpredictable ways.
More Images from the Fine Art Exhibition, Birmingham
Browse more photos below I took during the Fine Art BA (Hons) Degree Show at the Birmingham School of Art. Each image captures a different facet of what fine art can be.
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