Labyrinth Gallery Shows work by top Brighton College Arts Pupils
Emerging exciting artistic talent has been identified in the Brighton College Leonardo Competition. Two talented visual artists were selected from 683 entries spanning literature, art, photography, coding, film making and musical composition to be shown in Labyrinth Gallery in the Lanes.
The Leonardo Competition is Brighton College’s annual creativity competition, hosted in the spirit of honouring the boundless ingenuity and artistic prowess of Leonardo da Vinci. The competition has proven to be a beacon of creativity, innovation, and collaborative spirit at the College. The history of the competition and the earliest mention of the Leonardo in the school archives is in 1948, when the ‘Leonardo Cup’ was launched to stimulate cultural activity in the College. The Leonardo’s first donor felt a concern at the rapid growth of a materialist outlook in society and felt a desperate need for young people of vision and intellectual courage. The emphasis of the competition back then, was on boldness of conception, originality, intellectual honesty, and a spirit of adventure. In the late 1990s it seems that the Leonardo wound down until it was resurrected by one of our Old Brightonians, Mr Philip Mitchell, in 2019. More than 75 years have passed since the Leonardo was introduced and Brighton College still values originality and creative vigour.
This year pupils could choose from two themes; journeys and freedom. Two young artists, Kelly and Matthew, have been selected and praised by the judges for their artistic daring, research, technical ability, and original responses to the themes.
Matthew is an A-level photographer at Brighton College. His passion for photography began when he chose it as a GCSE option; he scored 100% in the subject. For him, photography is about capturing different perspectives of our world in a single frame that may tend to be overlooked, in order to give the viewer an alternative and more diverse outlook than before. Therefore, in this project he intended to explore the concept of journeys from multiple angles, and in turn he produced these six pieces. After A-levels, he plans to continue his own journey in photography by keeping it up as an activity at university. He is very excited to be showing his work at Labyrinth.
Kelly is an exciting young artist also in the Lower Sixth at Brighton College. Alongside her passion for art, she is interested in literature and theatre. Literature often serves as a source of inspiration for her art, as seen through the incorporation of a quote from her favourite Chinese book in her marker drawing. The magic of anything creative lies in its uniqueness, as the creator is also unique in this world; every art piece is like a tile from the mosaic of the artist, or a keyhole offering a glimpse into the garden of their minds. She thinks there is something profound about sharing a part of oneself with the world, hence her dream is to become an artist.
Labyrinth gallery is a dynamic and inspiring space in the lanes which supports and encourages young artists in their journeys, as well as engaging the local community. This marks the first collaboration between Brighton College and Labyrinth and they hope it will be a very positive one. You can view Matthew and Kelly’s work from the 17th to the 23rd June 2024.
