G R I F F E N 2 0 2 3 | 1 1 Edmund Perou (2007) is another AFU animator who found his way into the film industry. Now based in Los Angeles, Edmund is currently working as a Creative Project Manager in Entertainment Marketing for IMAX. Jack Bradley (2015) made a number of award-winning documentary films in his time with the AFU. He was also a member of the BFI Young Film Academy. After leaving Abingdon, he studied English at Bristol before winning a place on the directors’ course at the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield. Now in his final year there, he is preparing for his graduation show at BFI Southbank in February 2023, in which his latest film Nighthawks will premiere. Before that, he made 22 Weeks, which follows a group of pigs on a farm in Sheffield. Mark Pluck (2006) initially made strides as a tennis player before heading for advertising. In his words, he “soon saw the error in his ways”, and moved into film production. He now has four films to his name, the latest of which – Hornbeam – has been nominated for the BAFTA qualifying Iris Prize and will soon be aired on Film4. In January 2023, he starts production of You Are Awful, a new feature film. Of all the arts,‘fine art’ is perhaps the discipline that gives a school-bound teacher the fewest clues about the future direction his or her charges might take. Follow the fine art path, it seems, and you’re as likely to end up creating your own fashion brand as exhibiting your work in a prestigious art gallery.As it happens, two recent Abingdon artists have done exactly that. Heyse Ip (2014) describes himself as a “multi-disciplinary artist and researcher” based in London and Hong Kong. His current work in moving image, performance, sculpture and sound explores themes such as the power dynamics of surveillance in public spaces, which he views “through a lens of absurdity and humour”. When Heyse completed his MA at the Royal College of Art in 2022, he already had a growing list of solo exhibitions to his name. Luke Derrick (2014) has started his own fashion brand – called, simply, Derrick – one year after graduating from Central St Martins, and the label has been attracting a lot of press attention. His first collection explored the idea of how we might dress post-pandemic. Inspired by a desire to relax the traditional rules of tailoring, Luke is making what one reviewer called “couch-to-club clothes for the modern man.” Of all the Abingdonians working in the arts, perhaps Matt Copson (2010) comes closest to embodying an idea of the arts as an open space in which any idea can be conceived and expressed in whatever its most appropriate form might be. That, certainly, seems the only way to make sense of the incredible range of Matt’s work since he graduated from the Slade School of Art in 2014. To be fair, his degree show gave fair warning of his intentions, as bronze sculptures, paintings, a furry fox head, films, projections, a lighting and sound installation featuring a recording of Matt delivering a text he’d written in iambic pentameter all combined in an immersive viewing space that took the form of a fox’s den, into which viewers had to crawl to experience the exhibition. Here was a young man, you felt, in full possession of the kitchen sink, and determined to use it well. In October, this zest for free-ranging creativity found its ultimate expression as Matt co-created a new opera, Last Days. Based on a film of the same name by the American director Gus van Sant, the opera received its world premiere at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and featured a score by Oliver Leith alongside a libretto by Matt, who also provided the art direction and co-directed the performers with Anna Morrissey. These included Henry Jenkinson (2012) in a searingly effective non-singing cameo as a sinister magician. Matt’s opera received standing ovations and rave reviews, and will transfer to Los Angeles in 2024, where it will be conducted by composer Thomas Adès. The production cemented an impression, at least for me, that wherever you look in the arts, you will find Abingdonians who are bravely developing their talents and working to fulfil the promise they first showed at Abingdon. Jeremy Taylor Director of Arts Partnerships & Abingdon Film Unit Henry Jenkinson in Matt Copson’s opera Last Days The cast and creative team take a bow after the first performance of Last Days Matt Copson after the first night of Last Days Mark Pluck’s latest film
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