T his year, we turned our attention to celebrating our history at Dulwich College with a spotlight on the lives and achievements of Black Old Alleyni- ans. A team of students have been exploring the College Archives and researching, in conjunction with the Wo- dehouse Library and the Archives department. Through engagement with our history, we aim to uncover and discover more about diverse histories, together with the lives of and contributions made by those individuals to the school and wider community. During the Michaelmas term, students in the Lower School were challenged with this year’s Lower School House Art Competition brief: they were presented with the profiles of inspirational Black Old Alleynians and tasked with the creation of an artistic response to these individuals. OUR HISTORY Lower School students threw them- selves wholeheartedly into this year’s competition, says Ruth Spencer Jolly LOWER SCHOOL HOUSE ART 2022: Many students chose to create portraits of the profiled individuals, though we enjoyed receiving some really cre- ative interpretations of the brief too. Students embraced sculpture, collage, paint, Photoshop, animation, Minecraft and we even had some amazingly well-researched and crafted documentaries in the mix too. Joint first prizes were awarded to Leo Spencer (Howard) and Jason Chiliquinga Wisniewski (Grenville). Both stu- dents used very different media to create a portrait of the same Old Alleynian, Chiwetel Ejiofor. Leo used the digital drawing software Procreate to create a tonally sophisti- cated rendering of his likeness. Jason’s sensitive pencil rendering of Ejiofor held us with his unflinching gaze. The resulting sculptures, sprayed with luscious colours, come alive in the basement space of The Store
Second prize was jointly awarded to Henry Butterworth (Sidney), Milo Warner-Rubio (Sidney) and Solomon Eames (Spenser). Henry was inspired by Ejiofor’s film The Boy Who Harnessed
the Wind and built his own windmill, which encapsulates the values of the central character. Milo found inspiration in the legendary living black artist Hew Locke and impressed us with his handling of acrylic in the rendering of Locke’s likeness. Solomon went to tremendous lengths to transform a photo of Ejiofor into a digital image and then used a painstaking printing process to metamorphose this into a painting; we loved reading about and seeing Solomon’s production process. Joint third prize went to Olivier Badzioch (Drake), Teddy Johnson (Marlowe) and Nicholas Gregan (Raleigh). Olivi- er’s sensitive and subtle silhouette had a beautiful tactility to it. We really enjoyed Teddy’s Kehinde-Wiley-inspired digital portrait and Nicholas also captured a charming portrait of Chiwetel Ejiofor using Procreate. This year we have also awarded two research prizes to Joshua Clark (Drake) and Malachi Scott (Howard) for their incredibly well-researched documentaries. Joshua went to incredible lengths, visiting a museum and digging up archival footage. We were blown away by his commitment to the project. Malachi created an immensely personal and heart-warming mini documentary about his own fam- ily history at Dulwich College. Special mentions go to Eleazar Bediako (Grenville), Flynn Halfweeg (Sidney), George Ayres (Marlowe), Jonah Norris (Spenser), Mark Gill (Drake), Ollie Di Marino (Spenser) and Spike Davidson (Raleigh) for their excellent contribu- tions to the competition. Many more students have also been highly commended. We would like to offer a huge thank you to all of the Lower School students who threw their efforts into the competi- tion; they made judging a very enjoyable experience. ◎
THE ALLEYNIAN 711
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