This works like bird spotting. I have compiled a check-list of works I expect to see whilst wondering through any art-school BA or MA show in London.

1. Photography:
(a) Depressing industrial landscape.
(b) Up-close portraits of people with no make-up on looking very serious. Usually 6ft high and back-lit.
(c) Photographs of trans-gender or androgynous people (ooh...is that a boy or a girl?)
(d) Installation which involves walking into a little room decorated like a 1950's sitting room. There is a fireplace and a chair. Surprisingly, all the photographers work are displayed in kitch frames, and hung amongst three flying china ducks.
(e) Japanese people looking unhappy (see video art).
(f) Third world children playing in ethnic clothes/ third world children smiling at camera/ third world children looking hungry.
(g) third world adult selling food in third-world market stall, with strange look of contentment.
(h) Suburban English/American people looking depressed/bored/ugly.
(i) Self-portrait Reconstruction in style of Rembrandt painting.

2. ILLUSTRATION:
(a) Moody Kafka inspired Pen-Ink drawing of person on their own in a box/field.
(b) Drawings of Victorian people and/or 1920's dancers.
(c) Drawings of Empty rooms.
(d) A comic strip in which nothing happens, except somebody gets depressed
(e)Work produced using illustrator clip-art.

3. GRAPHICS:
(a) A project involving lots of post-it notes.
(b) A project involving sending out postcards and getting other people to send them back.
(c) Surveys compiled into a very well designed book.
(d) A projection or photograph of the designer looking dead serious.


4. Fine art:
(a) Video Installation: Starts by entering a small black box. Sound of baby-screaming make you want to leave immediately.
(b) Video of very poor person from shit part of Britain looking miserable.
(c) Video of very depressed Japanese person.
(d) Video of nothing happening over a long period of time (i.e a fence closing, a light flickering on and off.)
(e) Video about a stripper.

5. Fine art Painting:
(a) Ginormous 'abstract' canvas painting using every colour known to man.
(b)Portrait of Naked women looking upset/menstral.
(c) Painting that is copied from a photograph, and so looks very flat.
(d) 'Untitled.'
(e) A painter that refuses to paint.
(f) Artist who works on a minute scale, only working with tiny pieces of string.

6. Animation:
(a) An 'obscene' hand-drawn animation involving characters picking their noses, cocks growing out of their heads, fanny's sprouting from the bogey that come out of nose etc...
(b) Any brightly coloured 'abstract' animation that triggers epilepsy.
(c) 'Japanese anime' inspired work involving children that fly like birds, intertwined, united by love. This whimsical start is concluded by horrific animated violence with chainsaw sounds and screaming Japanese schoolgirls.