Student art sells for £8,000 at charity auction
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Published
25 April 2023
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Students from the BA Visual Arts offered 108 pieces of work for sale at the auction, which was titled “Ork-shun”, including paintings, photographs, drawings, garments, and books, even the custom-made gavel.
Works were also donated by UEL’s teaching and technical staff, alumni students and professional artists, including Donna Mclean, Juliette Losq, Samuel Zealey, Simon Monk, Karen Knorr, Tom Hemming, Tyler Steele and Russell Heron.
The event was opened by Richard Wilso of the Royal Academy of Arts, and the auctioneer was Julian Alexander, Lecturer in Film Production.
After intense bidding, £8,000 was submitted for the works on sale. The proceeds will go to support the Visual Arts End of Year Degree Showcase.
As part of the process, students were involved in every part of the auction, including collecting the art, managing the cataloguing, organising the event, processing orders and distributing the work to their buyers.
A selection of the art available to buy at Ork-shun
Stephanie Bexiga, BA Fine Art, said, "The experience was a tremendous success, better than we could’ve hoped! We knew we wanted to make this the best auction UEL has ever seen, and we succeeded in that.
"It was a great experience learning about how art is not just created, but distributed, sold and presented. These are things we may have to do in our future careers, so having some experience of them now is vital for our development.
"We all worked well together as a team and helped each other out where needed during the event, and the feedback we received was fantastic. I look forward to attending next year’s auction as an alumnus."
A room full of people bidding for the pieces of art at Ork-shun
Professor David Tann, Dean of the School of Architecture, Computing and Engineering, said:
We’re extremely proud of the incredible work that our students produce and delighted to give them an opportunity to sell the pieces that they have spent time making. We have such a talented cohort of students, and that is reflected in the high-quality work that was available for auction.
We are a multi-disciplinary school, and our visual arts students work with a wide range of techniques, including painting, sculpture, installation, video, photography, printmaking, film, new media involving 3D scanning, virtual reality, AI and robotics.
"It is vital that our students get to experience and learn the process of buying and selling art pieces, which will be essential as they develop their careers and grow as future artists."
For more information, see visual arts at UEL.