Yesterday saw the opening of the school exhibition at the IMPACT Gallery at The Royal Armouries. The kids from the four school had a 4 hour celebration/opening and they were all really pleased to have their work on the walls, and at 14 have started calling themselves published or exhibiting artists which is great. There has been a real team atmosphere surrounding the whole thing, work from the schools was mixed in with work done by myself and the other students, and work done by the lead artists Lizzie and Peter.
It was great to see them so excited about it, but I found it very difficult to get any other response from them. They had a very simple questionnaire to fill out asking them what they liked, something that surprised them, and three words to describe the exhibition. Some of the words coming from myself and the other students for this question were: Empowering, accessible, considered, heartfelt, professional and having great potential. The kids found it much more difficult, and when prompted came out with good or cool. I think this is a reflection on both art and English education in school; they were so excited about the work, but couldn't find any words to describe it.
The exhibition will be up now for around 6 months. I think seeing it up on the wall along side exhibits which almost glorify weapons is very odd. I think it is confusing for the viewer to look around a museum exploring and celebrating ancient and modern weaponry, then to be confronted with not only art, but art which has the complete opposite message to the rest of the gallery. It is situated in the IMPACT gallery, which was set up by the mother of a boy killed by another youth with a knife. It was intended to highlight the dangers of carrying weapons and provide facts about gun and knife crime that would hopefully dissuade young people from using them. I really don't think it is very successful though. It is very wordy and very stereotypically' 'museumy'. I found it boring and I like museums, so If a board teenager was shown around I don't think any of the messages would get across. I know most of the kids were just impressed with the weapons and didn't seem to feel uncomfortable with the fact that they were real, very sharp and had the potential to kill. I think this is another example of how today's young people are being desensitised to the things they should be wary of by the media, televisions and computer games.
This is very interesting. You have touched on something that Wittgenstein was working on for most of his life. He realised that having the words to say things, was intimately tied up with the limits of an individual’s language. In fact he stated, ‘The limits of my language mean the limits of my world’. He believed that by mapping the possibilities of thought we can define the limits of our reality. For an artist this can be a very useful thinking tool. You can use it to edit and evaluate what you do and decide whether or not what you are doing extends our awareness of reality and if so what type of ‘new word’ or ‘additional language element’ are you creating?
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