For the students the Degree Show in the visual arts is different from other exams, indeed different from other subjects, offering as it does the chance to deal with feelings, emotions, attitudes, even beliefs, in an expressive way within the plastic arts.

Most other exams are incremental, a test of knowledge and its retelling. The nearest thing to a degree show would be publishing a first poem – in other words, giving your intimate thoughts to the world all at once. And there is a double bind: partly it is producing art to order, for the date of the

assessment, the culmination of three or four years work. Through all the soul searching, the honest effort, the angst, despair and the pure joy (maybe at completing the task!) what the student feels and thinks about subject matter has to be there on the day, whether complete or incomplete, saying everything or saying nothing or saying something in between about who they are.