I was taken along to a private exhibition on Tuesday of an artist called Gbenga Ilumoka in The Millinery Works Gallery. Ilumoka had had previous exhibitions at this gallery before as a solo artist and also part of a group exhibition and it was also interesting to find out that he used to be on the Fine Art course at Middlesex. I was quite excited because I'd never been to an actual private exhibition before but I was slightly disappointed when I saw the work.

The exhibition was called 'Reflections' with the idea coming from the 'close scrutiny and observations of objects in relation to eachother'. The paintings reflecting certain aspects of the artists life with colour and light playing a huge part in his work.

One side of the room was covered with still-lives and nudes, the other side being more of landscapes and natural surroundings. To me the paintings seemed very bland, it wasn't very exciting or stimulating, it was all quite ordinary. Don't get me wrong, they were good paintings, I could never paint like that but it wasn't the kind of work that I'm interested in. Some of his landscape paintings appealed to me as they had quite a similar style and feel to Cezanne's work, bright rich paintings of vine yards in Spain filled with yellows and greens.
However the painting of a pair of old trainers just put me off really, it's not something that I myself found particulary intersting to look at, which is where I think the more personal aspect of the artists work plays a bigger role. It was a good exhibtion with a variety of good paintings but it was just not something I was interested in personally. By the end of the evening, I was more interested in the free wine and crisps!