Shedding Light

A big highlight of yesterday was my visit to what I think is called Gallery Night. This is the first night of the annual exhibition of selected pieces of their work by our students doing Visual Art, when the artists themselves are around to provide a commentary on what they've got on display for the various folk popping in to enjoy it. Actually I popped in twice, either side of a meeting I had to attend. This meant my viewing of the work was irritatingly touch and go, but at least I got a chance to hear what the various practitioners had to say, well, the seven of them I managed to chat to that is.

And it was after my rather rushed second visit that I realised just how much all the talk had illuminated the work for me. A few years ago I would have considered this a kind of breach of decorum of what art was all about, somewhat puritanically considering that any work of art, whether a painting, poem, song, symphony, whatever, should somehow stand on its own. I'm not saying I would have consciously articulated this notion upon demand, as it were, but I think it was there - as a sort of spin-off of the New Criticism I suppose. Now I'm more than happy for one work to leak into another, for the commentary on the work to become part of its meaning, for boundaries to blur so completely as to be little more than those crumbling walls between fields that remind you of the continuities that lie below.

The unguarded, unpretentious enthusiasm of the artists last night also served to remind me of important it is for individuals within our culture to be encouraged to shed light through their art, whatever form that might take, for our collective health. I've spent much of today happily thinking of some of the most striking images I took away with me. I can't imagine anyone who was around to look at the works on display not feeling a sense of their own world expanding and becoming a brighter place.