At the beginning of the Spring Term parents, friends, teachers and students were invited to view Joanna Solomon’s (Upper Sixth) IB Visual Arts Exhibition.

The exhibition forms an important part of the IB Visual Arts course and provides a platform for students to showcase the final product of their art-making processes.

Joanna reflected on her rationale for the exhibition: “In my exhibition, Peace After the Storm, I presented the effects of lockdown and nature upon our lives; I communicated my feelings of chaos and recovery, loneliness, and peace. Through this, I aimed for the audience to leave with a stronger sense of calm, with the assurance that hope and peace can be recovered and discovered. Additionally, I wanted to convey the importance of nature in times of insecurity, in recovery from anxiety, and in our fragile world.

“My experiences of lockdown have been hugely influential upon this exhibition, informing every work. Lockdown created the conditions to create some pieces, like ‘(Dis)connected’; others were reactions from it, like ‘Torn Apart’. I have reflected on our need for nature, which was exacerbated by the lockdown. Several of my pieces are broken, representing how our world was shattered. In our time of insecurity, we sought the strength, stability and calm that nature brought. Yet I explored nature’s fragility too – climate change has brought great destruction, and the lockdown gave nature a moment of relief. Thus, I also explore the dichotomy of nature’s strength and fragility.

“This exhibition has allowed me to refine my style. I find it fascinating that despite a broad range of materials like ceramics, digital art and etching, I have managed to maintain a minimalistic, delicate style overall, and the same sense of calm. I did not hide the rough edges in order to show my artwork’s fragility and imperfections, which are as much part of the artwork as they are part of us.”

View photos from Joanna’s exhibition here.