seen each other ’ s pieces in production , or around the Art department , so unlike most guests , we were conversant with the images . However , on the wall , by some magic of their mere arrangement , they seemed to be cast into new dimensions of meaning . When asking other art students to describe the feeling of seeing all the work on the walls , some did use those words I shy away from , but the word most frequently used was ‘ indescribable ’.
For me , this was truer for no work more so than my own . Talking to visitors about my work made me realise the profundity behind the paint . When I began explaining my work to guests , I was not trying to force oblique meanings to materialise from thin air as we had joked on the train , but rather , I was unlocking meanings and references latent in my imagination and finding new ways to express them . As Elsa Lamptey , another student , succinctly put it , ‘ Seeing the way people engaged with my work changed the way I felt about it .’
Because my exhibition was about race , there was also another layer of seeing the way white people engaged with it . Quite a few stood in front of the pieces , perhaps trying to find the appropriate response to give , others nodded solemnly . In a way that I found fascinating , my exhibition had become a critique of itself . When I got home that night , I felt a palpable sense of loss . I had spent a good portion of the evening shaking hands and talking to people who all told me in that same avuncular tone that ‘ I should be very proud of myself ,’ and asking me what I was going on to do , that I felt I had not experienced the exhibition in its totality . Luckily for me it was on for three more days , so on Saturday I went again .
Going on Saturday was a completely different experience . I really started to notice the diversity of all the work , so diverse that it was hard to nail down even overarching themes . I noticed another artist , Madelyn Morris , used personal experience to deliver what felt to me like political commentary in the same way I had . She later said : ‘ I wanted to commemorate and capture the experiences of many women in my family . If [ that ] is feminist then that is definitely a dimension to my work that I am proud of .’
However , for the most part , the focuses seemed to be less societal and more process-based with people citing form , materials and expressionism as the focus of their personal exhibits . There seemed to me to be a particular interest in landscapes , perhaps because it was one of our earlier tasks to start giving us inspiration . There was a heavier focus on urban landscapes as opposed to natural ones . In some people ’ s work , this did have a societal critique to it . Tom Broome , who made an exhibit almost completely about renderings of landscapes , said , ‘ I explored how urbanisation has affected different populations .’ However , this was not the case in all the pieces .
Overall , I was really humbled by an opportunity that even a lot of artists who work professionally do not always get – to see our labour of love ( and the IB ) culminate in a moment that everyone could witness .
Ifedotun Olarewaju , Upper Sixth
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