Lucky Romain vs. Bansky

For those of you in Bristol over the summer, you will have been aware of the phenomenon which was the Banksy exhibition, held at the City of Bristol Museum. Banksy is an underground graffiti artist who is... well, really, rather talented. No one expected how popular his exhibition would be. There was an estimate of perhaps up to 100,000 people visiting the exhibition. In fact, this number turned out to be approaching half a million! Consequently, many people had to queue for hours to enter the museum. Some people were reported to even to have queued for as long as 6 hours, only to be turned away because the museum was closing! Fortunately, one of our students, Romain, was among the lucky half a million to have the opportunity to see the exhibition, and he has taken these unique photographs for us. Thank you, Romain! (Congratulations on your nearly perfect TOEIC score, too!!!)

For more information about the exhibition, visit BBC News.

Anti-Smoking Campaign

Exhibitors: Amnah, Jeremy, Yuka, Jin Yee, Marc, Mohamed, Taoru, Zhi Lin

Escape From Fluency: Visit to the Photographic Exhibition 'Exposure'

There are usually only two reasons for finding myself in the old part ofhte city on Corn Street. To me it is famous either for the finest dining experience at San Carlo Restaurant. Followed by a £200 bill or for an adorable bookshop called Stanfords. But this time it was none of these reasons. Turning into a small alley we were advised to keep our mouths closed due to the high risk of swallowing small insects that inhabit this alley. Its other remarkable feature is the double yellow lines on each side, regardless of the fact that you can hardly manage to ride a bike there.

Eventually, we arrived at our final destination feeling very excited. The room where the exhibition was held was very bright and spacious. On the walls, the artwork, which was made by the photographers who had finished a two-year foundation course, was ready to be exposed to the outside world.

Each of them had a display of around six to twelve pieces. All had different styles, messages and feelings. The art sometimes could be about viewers' creativity - what they can see behind a simple image of a flower or a wall of bricks. The first photographs that I caught sight of were by a Ukranian woman called Olena Wills. In her work you could see a nude woman who was just about to eat a raw piece of meat. Another image is of another nude pictured from behind and was covered with printed flowers. There was a real magnifying glass attached in case you wanted to enlarge her stunningly beautiful backside or paintings.

Other eye-catching images with slightly different nature were called Broken Dolls, comprising divine gold frames, girls with make-up like dolls and old newspaper backgrounds. Those works particularly impressed me so that I even wanted to buy one of them, but the prices for the images were exorbitant (that's for you, Peter), which immediately put me off. Rachel Wall's work was also fabulous. Energetic Brazilian dancers with rather impressive breasts were key features of her work, 'Capturing', as she says, 'moments of joy and happiness or sadness in our lives'. She also had a series of landscape images, enhanced with Photoshop. Well done to you, Rachel.

The overall feeling was excellent. Some of the pieces have great potential. So, people, keep doing what you are doing and you will definitely succeed.

P.S. The impression could have been even better with a glass of wine offered upon entrance.