McFilter

Billing itself as "Europe's largest graduate art and design show", Free Range 2006 sounded like an excellent way to while away the Saturday afternoon before heading up to the West End. So when we arrived in London last Saturday we got the tube over to Liverpool Street, and wandered past Smithfield market to Brick Lane.

The first exhibition we found was Negative Positive, a collection of photography from University College Falmouth students. There was a fair range of styles and subjects, and there are examples of most of the photographers' work on the exhibition page. In the order that I came across them whilst wandering round the gallery, I liked Miranda Driscoll (interesting overlaying of nature and household), Lily Wynne-Jones (Solitude and Complete Absence on the linked page), Philip Clarke Hill (windowed frame in particular), Penelope Wakeling (she was showing some interesting architectural shots of Stansted, but there aren't any of her photos on the web), Katy Healy (a series of photos displayed as if frames taken from the movie of her life), Graeme Swift (nice interplay between the images and their captions), Emily Hodge (who also has no photos on the exhibition page), and James Nisbeck (a great selection of urban-scapes).

Next up was Digital Soup, a collection of exhibitions from Thames Valley Uni's Design and Photography departments.

I particularly liked the advertising work from Nicola Mitchell and Jessamy Wood - if I remember correctly, the dancing jacket bus shelter (pictured right) was one of theirs. People waiting for the bus can plug their iPod into the bus shelter, and the jacket shown on the advert dances in time to the music.

There were also a few interactive artworks: Agonies in Distraction was a kaleidoscopic piece involving mirrors, monitors, and rope lights which you could influence by bending and holding an array of LED-tipped wires; and Digiti (pictured left) let you spray virtual grafitti onto an LCD screen by using spray cans which had different coloured LEDs in place of nozzles.

One problem with Free Range being Europe's biggest art and design show is that there's a lot to see and take in. So when we got to Havering College's Design Show we were flagging. I'd like to tell you more about some of the work on display there, but I'd given up taking notes by then, and none of the clutch of business cards I picked up point to websites. It's a shame that more of the work isn't available on the Free Range website either, as the graphic design work of Hannah Marie Clark, Michael Dalton, Jo Bateman and Ian Ericson was interesting enough that I picked up a card, but can't tell you any more than that.