Reflection 

Art Society: A Year in Review
By Sophia Proudman

It goes without saying that this has been an unforgettable year. It seems like a lifetime has passed since we hosted our first taster sessions back in September. Back then, you would’ve been laughed out of the room for suggesting we’d be finishing off another year at UCL on Zoom! Fortunately, though our year may have been cut short, we at Art Soc really made those 5 months count. Let’s take a look back together at our year in art. 

Autumn/Winter
We kicked off the autumn term with a signature Art Soc night out: a trip to the iconic Tate Late at the Tate Modern. Those of you that have been to this will know this is not an event to be missed, and it was lovely to see so many of you there. Other highlights of our taster fortnight include our life drawing classes, which were packed out with newcomers and Art Soc veterans alike, and our Drink and Draw in the newly renovated Phineas. We also held Illustration Workshops, a street art tour in Shoreditch and gallery visits to the National Gallery and Tate Modern. After Reading Week, our social calendar was filled with wholesome events like the tie dye social, Christmas card making and of course, the Winter Arts Ball to see off 2019. 

Spring
January started off strong at Art Soc. We hosted the Refresher’s Drink and Draw, visited the Misbehaving Bodies exhibition at the Wellcome Collection, and most importantly, announced the subject of our 2020 Exhibition: Natural/ Unnatural! Some of my personal favourite events of the second term were the themed Life Drawing sessions, especially the Floral Females class, inspired by Kehinde Wiley, and the class featuring a contortionist. February also saw the start of Ilga Leimanis’ Oil Painting course, which produced some fantastic work, and the trip to the Serpentine Sackler’s ‘On Venus’ exhibition by Patrick Staff. In spring we also hosted a life drawing session relating to the Natural/ Unnatural”  exhibition theme alongside the exhibition worhsops which included a painting session inspired by the collection at UCL Grant Museum, a sculpture workshop and a collage workshop. As March came around, we hosted perhaps one of our most popular events ever, our Drink and Draw x Pole Soc, which was simply stunning and so much fun too. 

Summer
As we all know, things came to a pretty abrupt halt around mid-March. However, we hope that even with Art Soc temporarily out of action, you all found some time to relax and create from wherever you might be. 

For all of our members: thank you for coming and getting involved, we really hope you enjoyed being a part of our community this year. 

For those of you that submitted pieces for our exhibition: we truly appreciate all your hard work, and we’re so pleased to be presenting them to you today.