Kids rule, OK
Explore the latest Artangel commission Frequencies by Oscar Murillo
"Murillo initiated Frequencies in 2013 when he fixed canvases on the desks of schoolchildren in a few Colombian schools and allowed them to scrawl doodles and notes on them over the course of a term. Since then, more than 350 schools in 34 countries across the world have received these canvases. The scale of the project is such that Murillo has organised a Foundation to manage the archive.
The results of this mass experiment – now gathered into the sports hall of Cardinal Pole Catholic School where they are organised by country and school – confound the viewer’s attempts at interpretation. Are these scrawled glyphs and messages – which resemble Surrealist automatic writing – artworks? If not, how do we distinguish this mode of creative production from the supervised self-expression that takes place in the art classroom?"