51Âþ»­

An exhibition featuring work by second year Fine Art students at 51Âþ»­ Leicester (51Âþ»­) has gone on display in the city.

LCB Depot presents Elemental Encounters: State of the Art 3 in its Lightbox Gallery as part of its creative talent programme. The exhibition features paint, print, photography sculpture and moving image.

Students have been involved every step of the way from curation to installation, spending the weekend setting up the exhibition at the Rutland Street venue ready for the grand opening today (Monday 15 April). will run until Friday, 26 April except Good Friday and Easter Monday.

Amber Jesson project lead said “For our first exhibition as a collective group, we’re really excited to showcase the diverse practices from a number of our artists to the city of Leicester.

“The exhibition explores a variety of different techniques employed to create artwork, each of which portrays the artists individuality and creative drive. We are proud and excited to show off the developing talent of our 2nd Year Fine Art students at 51Âþ»­.”

Ten students formed a committee to direct the project and they received more than 40 submissions for the exhibition. A panel of four students chose the final 25 artworks.

Matthew Smyth, a figurative artist, said: “It was important to us to have the diversity of artwork. “This will be the first exhibition for many of our students and I think they will have learned a lot.”

Danny Guo, a painter, added: “We wanted to bring in all the elements of Fine Art so there was representation from different disciplines – paintings, sculpture, prints and photography, moving image. There’s a huge variety for people to see.”

Students from 51Âþ»­’s Fashion and Photography courses have already been featured at LCB Depot. Next will be students from 51Âþ»­’s Design Crafts course who will showcase their work from Thursday May 2.

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On Saturday, the students will be leading a family workshop for St George’s Day which includes making dragon masks and a giant dragon being created in the space. It runs from 12noon to 4pm and is free.

Amber added: “I’m really pleased with it. I had an image in my head about what it would look like, but this is much better than I’d thought it would be!”

I am very impressed by what they have put together,” said Chris Slowe, who runs public engagement at LCB Depot. “There’s a lot of hard work gone into this exhibition and there’s a lot for visitors to see.”

The students work will be seen by members of Leicester’s creative community as there is a Create networking event for creatives on Thursday night in The Lightbox, and the closing party takes place on Last Fridays, the street food and networking night held every month at LCB Depot from 4pm to 10pm.