Art college graduates in back to basics shock?

Whisper it softly. Painting and drawing are making a comeback in art colleges. It may not be time yet for the traditionalists to break open the champagne but the signs are that we are witnessing a renaissance in conventional art forms. Installations along the lines of Tracey Emin's bed, and performance art – people being videoed dressed in strange clothes and walking through cornfields – are still with us. But according to Vaughn Grylls, director of the Kent Institute of Art and Design, the end of year shows this summer exhibited more painting than in recent years.

"At our show there were some very good painters on display with a real ability to draw and use colour," he says. "And there were people making sculpture out of concrete, metal and wood, which are not easy materials to deal with. They are difficult physically and intellectually because you have to think through how to deal with stuff that is not user-friendly."

The return to traditional sculpture contrasts with recent years, when sculptors have tended to follow the conceptual path trodden by the Brit Artists, of which Emin and Damien Hirst are the most celebrated exponents. They might use a video projector to project onto forms made of such materials as polystyrene or foam, which are easier to handle than concrete, metal or wood.

You can see what is coming out of British art colleges at the Fresh Art fair sponsored by The Independent at the Business Design Centre in Islington starting tomorrow. This fair for independent artists and studio groups will also be showing the work of graduates from 25 colleges and universities, including the Kent Institute of Art and Design, Middlesex University and Nottingham Trent School of Art and Design.

The irony is that traditional forms of art are experiencing a rebirth at the moment that Emin and other so-called Young British Artists (YBAs) are becoming part of the establishment. The Kent Institute of Art and Design has just awarded an honorary fellowship to Emin, an alumnus of the college.

There is no denying the influence of YBAs on British art. According to Phil Gatenby, programme leader of fine art at Cleveland College of Art and Design, students are still very aware of the YBAs. Tracey Emin has had a huge impact on today's undergraduates in their tendency to look in on themselves and to use a confessional mode of working. At the same time, Gatenby believes we are seeing a return to drawing and painting. "They are opting for something that is authentic and that has meaning to them," he says. "You have to remember that YBA is last century. The ideas of Emin and company go back to 1982. That is two decades ago. They are now celebrities. The generation of today wants to make its own history."

But there is another powerful reason why we are seeing students returning to basics, and that is money, according to John Aiken, director of the Slade School of Fine Art, which is part of University College London. Students who are clocking up hefty debts under the new financial regime have their minds concentrated in a way they never did before. They cannot afford to chase after every whim or to be self-indulgent. And they are not so desperate as they were to be original and different. "They are concentrating on their strengths and not chasing a dream," he says. "There's a new reality in art schools and that's a very positive thing. People are making work which is much more accessible, while at the same time being challenging as opposed to creating something which might be eye-catching or amusing for a short period."

At London Guildhall University, Ian Robertson teaches a group of MA students who are interested in ecology and recycling, and are probably more political than your average first-degree student. Their work is not agitprop but it's not introverted navel-gazing either – though it is quite conceptual.

Inevitably, the students are influenced by their surroundings. Andrew Pok, a Chinese Malaysian who works in a Chinese restaurant to make money for his studies, has constructed a circular table out of used chop sticks. Yak Beow Seah, another Malaysian, has produced a piece of performance art, My Pleasure, where he gives a free massage. "The work explores the concept of giving a service to the public," he says.

According to Robertson, Yak Beow Seah's work is humorous and is making the point that art can be more than an object on the wall. His students have reacted against the work of the YBAs, he says. They see it as overhyped and self-focused. "There is a sense that their [own] work is more outgoing and serious," says Robertson.

Although a return to more conventional art is being observed, notably at the shows organised by the Slade and Kent Institute, this renaissance is patchy. Courses vary, as do the people teaching them and the students recruited. Middlesex University, for example, which incorporated the old Hornsey College of Art, runs a BA course in jewellery in which students can be unashamedly conceptual. That reflects the approach of Caroline Broadhead, a final-year tutor whose work has moved away from conventional jewellery-making to a concern with the human body and installations. A handful of the graduates' work is being shown in the Fresh Art fair.

You can see from the photographs (below left) that it is not jewellery in the conventional sense but a highly conceptual – not to say wacky – take on the wearing of jewellery. Claire Jeffs has taken pictures of people with their hands or fingers stuck through bits of street architecture or London buses under the heading of "Urban accessory fixation". And Madeleine Furness has examined the kind of injuries people suffer from wearing jewellery when they are struck by lightning.

Other colleges have set out to design courses that will help students to get work. Batley School of Art in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, runs a hybrid course combining fine art and design. Julie Wormald's chairs (above left) are sculptures or works of art. At the same time they are functional objects that might be snapped up by a design company. Similarly, Richard Stansfield's white-chocolate cherubs are art. But they are chocolates, too, and it is possible that a chocolate manufacturer might run with his idea. One trend that is discernible is the way the marketing of student art has changed, says Professor Chris Orr, head of printmaking at the Royal College of Art. The Fresh Art fair, which began last year, and the Free Range fair, covering other art colleges in the East End of London, are bringing student work to the buying public directly, bypassing the middlemen. Places like the Royal College of Art don't bother with them because the buying cognoscenti flock to the Royal College's shows. But they are helping the new graduates from the less well known colleges, at a time when the art market is suffering from the economic downturn. And the customers like the idea of paying modest prices (£100 to £5,000) for the work of an artist who might one day be the next Stanley Spencer.

Fresh Art, the fair which gives you the chance to buy art from the the cream of art graduates around the UK is being held from 19-21 July at the Business Design Centre in Islington, London. www.freshartfair.co.uk

ART WORKS ON DISPLAY

Colleges showing at the Fresh Art Fair:
Batley School of Art
Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College
Byam Shaw
University College, Chichester
Cleveland College of Art and Design
Coventry University
De Montfort University
Dunlaoghire Institute of Art, Design and Technology
Edinburgh College of Art
University of Hertfordshire
Kent Institute of Art and Design
London Guildhall University
University of Middlesex
North Oxfordshire College and School of Art
Northbrook College, Sussex
University of Northumbria
Nottingham Trent School of Art and Design
Plymouth College of Art and Design
Southampton Institute
University of Gloucestershire
West Wales School of the Arts
University of Westminster
University of Wolverhampton

l.hodges@independent.co.uk