Inspiring Art and Art History Students

On 1 December, Year 12 and 13 Art and Art History students visited two exciting Art exhibitions in central London: Lynette-Yiadom Boakye’s ‘Fly in league with the night’ exhibition of paintings at the Tate Britain and the ‘Strange Clay: Ceramics in Contemporary Art’ exhibition at the Hayward Gallery to provide fantastic inspiration and stimulus for their Art coursework.

After visiting Lynette-Yiadom Boakye’s exhibition, which brings together around 70 works from 2003 to the present day, Art History student, Rose in Year 12 said:

"As I came away from her exhibition and reflected, I was struck by her ability to create high-effort loose artworks, featuring large parts of bare canvas and unfinished details which gave her work a sense of transience, movement and immediacy, focused on giving Black people a voice and space for representation.

As Yiadom Boakye puts it, "it isn't so much about placing black people in the canon as it is about saying that we've always been here, we've always existed, self-sufficient...and in no way defined or limited by who sees us". The carefully constructed titles of her artworks were significant, the ones which struck me most were "bound over to keep the faith", "Daydreaming of Devils" and "Black Allegiance to the cunning". By comparing these artworks we notice that she uses a range of scales, tones and characters, some imagined and some from life."