Future Map 01

Revieewing a student show can be taxing for the art critic. Not because the work is bad - far from it - but because your eyes have to go into a whole new gear of analysis once you don't know any of the names on the labels.

Darling, you actually have to work!

And there's a lot to get through - 130 works forming the cream of this year's student shows at Camber-well, Central and Chelsea schools of art, and the London Colleges of Fashion and Printing. Moreover, all work from all departments is pretty much slung together on the basis of six loose themes - so your stage make-up photographs are hung next to paintings, graphic design, textiles, and so on.

Of course, there's the inevitable run of copycat works: if I see any more moody nocturnal photography à la Rut Blees Luxemburg or would-be Julian Opie computer graphics I shall scream. However, a number of people stand out from the sludge of mediocrity.

Roland MacDonald's enigmatic table top landscape tableaux, populated by soldiers made from playing cards and toothpicks, look like nothing I've ever seen before. I also like Salvatore Arancio's delightfully simple installation The Ballroom Dancers, in which black and white slides of elderly faces are projected onto a rotating mirror ball, accompanied by four scratchy gramophones.

Rebecca Pozzan's half-childlike, half-photographic drawings are peculiarly compelling, and I'd like to see more.

A couple of works oscillate (more and less successfully) between graphic design and conceptual art: a contour map of Hampstead by Anna Sjöstrand turns out to show all the crimes committed there in the last quarter of 2000, while Mukhsin Hanifiah provides a frustratingly complicated chart of Muslim women's life choices, depending on whether they are raised secular or fundamentalist.

Fashion is displayed in a mini-boutique area, which works well, but doesn't give enough space to the more dramatic outfits, like Fabienne Pappalardo's exquisite emerald green ruched dress. Textiles are also innovatively hung as large screens flapping from the ceiling. I doubt if bookbinding will ever rivet me, so at this point I'll leave you to investigate this energetic show for yourselves.

Until 14 December. Future Map 01 London Institute Gallery at Millbank, SW1. Tel: 020 7514 6127.