I graduated in Fine Art in 1982. At Brighton, my work was often based on conceptual ideas and used a variety of approaches. I had used sculpture and made books as well as doing installations and time-based work such as video and animation. My tutor at Brighton, Roy Grayson, was very keen that his group should use whatever practice best suited the delivery of the conceptuaI structure. This ran counter to the orthodoxy of the painting and sculpture departments at Brighton at that time.

Painting, in that time and in that place, very much eschewed slavery to anything outside the materiality of painting and the main theme in the sculpture department also seemed to be expressed by the materials. To load a conceptual albatross around the neck of these free spirits was unpardonable. Consequently, our little department in Alternative Practice, was viewed with equal amounts of suspicion and annoyance, being ideas-based, or debased as they would have it.

Of course we reacted to this climate and a certain amount of coat-trailing was indulged in. For example, when an installation by a member of our group was closed down on the grounds of 'bad taste', we hit back at our critics by forming the Bad Taste Society and organizing a successful Bad Taste evening for students.

At Brighton, I developed an interest in using print to facilitate my other projects which were based on language and image. I wanted to use the 'authority' of the printed word and image to 'embed' my work in a world of commercially produced and distributed media. I was also attracted to print as a 'democratic' art practice and I was drawn to the ephemeral nature of photocopied flyers etc.

This was partly because I was uncomfortable with the prestige I attributed to gallery art. I wanted to make work that existed outside what I saw as an exclusive and excluding marketing system. I liked the idea that work could be made in large print runs and exist in the 'real' world. That I was young and idealistic should be no surprise, but there was a serious point to this. I was trying out different approaches to art practice, trying to find something that felt natural to me.

College was a fascinating time. Before I left Brighton, I briefly considered applying to do a post graduate year in printmaking, as suggested by one of the print room technicians who liked my work. In the end, I decided against it and so I left college. Like most students, even now, who don't have a post graduate course to go to, I didn't have the slightest clue about how I was going to put to any constructive use the learning and experiences I'd had there.