The Underground was transformed from a nightclub into an artistic display space for Artfest on Sunday.
Artfest was The Undergraduate Review’s launch party for their annual arts publication. The publication includes a wide variety of artwork from students such as poetry, fine art and photography.
To celebrate the launch of this year’s edition, The Undergraduate Review used The Underground as space to invite a variety of artistic Queen’s groups to display their artwork. MUSE Magazine, Queen’s Creative Expressions and Queen’s Creative Writing Club were among the creative campus groups that displayed their work.
The event was headlined by a performance from Kingston’s folk-rock group The Abram Brothers, who played music off their upcoming EP Spend Your Life With Me. There were also performances from acapella groups including All the Queen’s Men, The Caledonias and Momentum.
Artfest was created with a vision of bringing awareness to the arts scene at Queen’s by gathering campus arts groups in one space.
“I wanted art to be represented in all the forms that it could be,” said Laura Bossy, The Undergraduate Review’s editor-in-chief.
The event succeeded in doing this. Visual art was represented in forms of painting, drawing and photography, and was combined with the presence of musical performances and publications.
The representation of various art forms emphasized the dynamic artistic talents on campus.
There was also written artwork presented by MUSE, The Undergraduate Review and Ultraviolent Magazine. Each of these groups had copies of their publication and invited their contributors to read their work during an open-mic session.
“I wanted to showcase art for Queen’s students so they would have the opportunity to put their work out there, and have people come and enjoy it,” said Bossy, ArtSci ’16.
The Underground served as an unexpected and perfectly fitting venue for the event.
“It was originally going to be in Wallace Hall but we decided to move it down here,” Bossy said. “We thought it would be more fun to have down here and it turned out really well.”
Since The Underground is such a familiar space to students, it created a welcoming environment for the appreciation and presentation of student’s artwork. The dim lighting combined with The Underground’s signature low-ceilings and big couches created an intimate and comfortable space for students to present and observe their peers’ artwork.
“I think [The Underground] is perfect for this,” said James Davis, Comm ’15, “More clubs should use it as a space, it’s really cool and unique.” With the event centred on the appreciation of all kinds of art, the graffiti on the walls contributed another representation of art.
“This event is a great creative outlet for creative people at Queen’s to come and gather and check out each other’s clubs, which doesn’t happen a lot,” Davis said. “It’s really a great use of space.”
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