Student successes

Summer Churchill shortlisted in the Book category

A personal response to the book, 'The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas' by Ursula K. Le Guin. A story of a utopian city with a dark underbelly. A child must be kept in constant misery in the basement of the city, so that the people of Omelas may live in a perfect society.

This is a webcomic and I wanted to use animation to suggest an atmosphere of disquiet, which is foreshadowed in the book. I utilised a limited colour palette to illustrate the beauty of the city changing as the city's dark truths and the reader's realisation sets in. The story poses a moral quandary and it was this aspect that I chose to explore further, with a character and his decision to leave.

Alice Combe shortlisted in the Research category

I created this project in collaboration with visually impaired (VI) members of the Royal National College for the Blind (RNC), to expand public understanding of VI. Based on interviews, I created a series of portraits of people with different VI, in the way that they see.

This portrait depicts artist Lennie Jordan, who has Keratoconus - a non-inflammatory eye condition in which the normally round dome-shaped clear window of the eye progressively thins causing a cone-like bulge to develop. The purpose is to educate people about the different types of VI people have.

https://www.alicecombe.com/

The Eel Suitcase

The decline of the critically endangered European Eel (Anguilla Anguilla) has had a significant impact on a staggering breadth of species, including birds, mammals and fish, and both marine and freshwater species. The Eel Suitcase collaborative project engaged with the plight of the eel by creating a series of eel related artworks and publications.

In 2018 The Eel Suitcase ran several student projects, one of which took a group of University of Plymouth students from illustration, creative writing, documentary photography and publishing to exhibit eel artworks at the European Parliament in Brussels and create an eely guidebook of the city.

More recently the Eel Suitcase collection was exhibited at The London Wetlands Centre, The Dutch Church and The Natural History Museum.

Oxford University Museum of Natural History

Year two Illustration students have been working on briefs set by scientists from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History relating to the museum collection and public display. This year student artwork relating to the very first living organisms, has been put on display as part of Interpretative Panels within the Discovery Aspiring UNESCO Global Geopark, situated in Port Union, Newfoundland . The site will be visited by UNESCO evaluators later this year as part of the process of the area securing full global geopark status. One student took the opportunity to visit Port Union where she undertook a week-long residency.