Author:

Abstract

School Desk Confidential is a series of drawings and writings made on wooden school desks, exploring experiences of alienation and difference in the education system. A recent study by Young Minds (2016) suggested that three children in every classroom will have diagnosed mental health issues, and the consequences of feeling alienated and unwelcome at school can be significant and far reaching. The artworks produced as part of School Desk Confidential expose issues of alterity and transgression that might be considered unacceptable in direct conversation with peers, while the dual status of graffiti as creative art form and act of defacement are held in balance as the desks become repositories of collective memory, re-worked and re-contextualised by multiple authors.

Keywords: Artistic research, education, school, identity, mental health, folk art

How to Cite: Wright, L. (2019). School Desk Confidential: Critical Commentary. Roundtable, 2(2), 6. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/rt.56