'FIVE SEASONS'
MA Fine Art Final Show
Resolution 1.3.
David Crawford
'The Fictive Sanctuary of the Hellish Real'
Artist Statement
This Installation is my final 'MA in Fine Art' exhibition work.
It will remain on this website until October 2026.
My MA in Fine Art work has considered the intersection between 'Art and the Occult'.
My academic practice-led research has also explored the 'dark sublime' moments that are increasingly
prevalent in our contemporary age.
My work has been informed by Western esoteric practices, Hauntology and english folklore visual culture/s.
I feel that perpetuating 'mystery' within the image assists in promoting novel ways of 'looking'.
I have had particularly interest in audience affective responses to art and speculative dystopian
futures.
I work in a range of materials including paint, drawing materials, video and photography.
The other web-pages on this site will alter over time to reflect my ongoing fine art work.
Brief biography
David was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England.
He has had a passion for Fine Art since his formative years.
After graduating with a Fine Art BA (Honours) degree he worked as a full-time photographer.
During his later professional career David worked within the private and public sector/s.
He has presented several key note addresses at National conference events and taught in UK
universities on a range of topics.
His CV includes a range of professional and academic qualifications. e.g. David studied Art History at 'Oxford University' in England and at 'The British Institute of Florence' in Italy.
As an established artist his work is actively sought after.
He has exhibited internationally and across the UK.
His work is held in numerous private collections.
'The Fictive Sanctuary of the Hellish Real' Installation.
This is what remains of ‘The Fictive Sanctuary of the Hellish Real’ Installation work that took place on
the evenings of 26th - 30th June 2026, in Newcastle Upon Tyne, England.
Currently there are only these audio-visual fragments that remain assembled in some semblance of
order.
Everything else physical, now 'endure' as separate objects.
The psychological residue is out in the world, condensed in the minds of those that encountered the
work.
Perhaps the ‘carnivalesque’ anonymity reduced audience psychological defences.
The masks further facilitating the emotional infiltration of the experience.
A time of ‘exploratory play and mirth’ within the 'uncanny'.
This was the surprise in the 'Sanctuary'. The audience ability to become enraptured with objects.
The audience behaviours now loop forward to inform novel future practice.
Please be advised that written words have no affinity with this work.
I will therefore not attempt to specifically describe it further through descriptive, literal meaning.
The size and dimensions of the images are too, no longer relevant here.
Better to 'sink' into this imagery.
Letting go of rational appraisal, going deeper into an encounter with symbolic, audio visual residue
and fragments.
Here is the installations epitaph.
Here is a visual valediction.
The affectivity of the work was in its proximity to humans.
Now it is cold and dismantled through distance.
The 'puppet quest' is over.
Its singular object identity extinguished in the hybrid assemblages of a post digital world.
In the fifth season the machine doesn’t care, it only manifests digital concern without consequence.
Here are celebrations of ‘human glitch aesthetics’. Marinating slowly in 'cuneiform' dreams.
Here are ‘Hurrian songs’ of symbols old and new.
Resurrecting visuals from ‘Assyrian dream books’ to peer dimly outwards - afresh - towards our mutual
dystopian destiny.
Here are the chosen images and together they are distinctive enough.
Better to let them percolate a while, obliquely and through dreaming.
'FIVE SEASONS ONLINE SHOW'
WHEN: 20.8.26. - 15.10.26. OPENS: 17:00 HRS GMT.
We are a group of visual artists connected by mutual threads of art woven together during our MA Fine Art Degree Course.
We have shaped a shared, rich tapestry of our experiences and now respond in our own way to the title of our exhibition “FIVE SEASONS”, creating a legacy that speaks to the Fifth Season, another way of being.
Our show is a platform which unites a common theme, champions devotion to our work, and explores individual strands of meaning.
We have nurtured our practices and each other, given encouragement, welcomed our differences and cherish the opportunity to embody our creativity.
Our aim is to engage you, the viewer, in our experience by letting you into our inner worlds, revealing ourselves, our ideas, hopes and dreams.
Let’s have a dialogue and travel through the exhibition together.
Kate Aimson, David Crawford, Murray Hamilton, Maggie Taylor and Terrill Welch
WHERE AND HOW
There are multiple entry points for our online exhibition. To begin, click on any one of the artist’s website links below:
‘Eerie Tangible’. Photographic image. Kate Aimson.
Kate Aimson. My practice-led research is firmly based in the East Midlands of the UK and the traditional technique of English Paper Piecing (EPP).
http://kateaimson.wixsite.com/my-site-1/the-unknown-land
‘Turn the Hearts’. Scanography. Murray Hamilton.
Murray Hamilton. I am a visual artist based in the East Midlands of the UK. Specialising in scanography, my practice-led research examines global events through a theological lens.
https://scanarttherapy.wixsite.com/murrayhamilton
‘Route to the Sea’. Oil painting detail. Maggie Taylor.
Maggie Taylor. My painting practice reflects my subjective feelings, and I use a reduced palette to capture the moment and tensions at play within the cultural landscape of the Humber Estuary of the UK. My practice-led research explores line and space, memory, absence and nostalgia, seeking a quiet stillness, evocative of time and place.
https://maggie-taylor-art.co.uk/beyond-words/
‘Shifting Shapes in the Tides’. Oil painting. Terrill Welch.
Terrill Welch. My online gallery connects to my studio and physical gallery at Mayne Island on the southwest coast of Canada. Using a nature-centric, reparative and autoethnographic practice-led research lens, my painting practice has focused on an intimate study of the seafloor, connecting art and nature one brushstroke at a time.
https://terrillwelchartist.com/terrill-welch-five-seasons-ma-fine-art-final-show/
