“Rajkumar College” by James Mollison
United Colors of Mollison: The World’s Playgrounds at BYU Museum of Art
In the late 1980s and 1990s, what has become known as “politically correct” became culturally ubiquitous. United Colors of Benetton, the Italian-based brand that embraced multiculturalism with its advertising campaigns featuring models from around the world, was at the forefront of this cultural movement, taking risks at a time when the world was changing, standards of norms being tested, social and political conflict being resolved as well as challenged, and pop culture and the news media forcefully responding to these changes. One might say artist James Mollison has been in the thick of such things, artistically, culturally and socially. Born in Kenya in 1973, Mollison grew up in England, and after studying Art and Design at Oxford Brookes University, and later film and photography at Newport School of Art and Design, he moved to Italy to work at the United Colors of Benetton creative lab, Fabrica. Since August 2011, he has worked as creative editor at Colors (Benetton) Magazine. Mollison has an eye for the relevant, with a keen sense for the color and movement of the moment and how best to capture it with inner artistic sensibilities, and with a broad aperture on the world.
Playground, the current show of the artist’s work at Brigham Young University Museum of Art, creates a territory that allows Mollison to reach new breadth and new depth, to express himself as an artist and a journalist in a way that meets an engaging measure of both. The exhibit features 30 large, lucidly colorful photographs taken from a book of the same name in which demographic, economic, geographic, social and political spectra of playground situations are thoughtfully taken into consideration as subjects for the work. Many of these playground situations are captured in politically precarious parts of the world, such as the West Bank, but are juxtaposed against more affluent and politically stable locales.
As indicated in the exhibition material, Mollison began his school playground project by photographing children at his own school in the UK, which then spurred him to explore other schools in the area. From there, Mollison was intrigued to photograph children in other areas. “I became fascinated by the diversity of children’s experiences, depending on their school,” he says. “The contrasts between British schools made me curious to know what schools were like in other countries.” Thus, the similarities and differences between schools around the globe, and similarities and differences between children around the globe, became the critical focus for his lens.
Mollison’s ambition with Playground was prodigious and his ultimate accomplishment is monumental. To see it housed at BYU’s Museum of Art lends a sense of its artistic and global capacity. It is truly a work of contemporary vision at its most meaningful, along the lines of the artist’s accomplishment with United Colors of Benetton, blending artistry with relevancy; poignancy with truth. Mollison has an uncanny eye to visualize his subject with an aim for pure honesty and accuracy, whether the reality be harsh or lofty. Through the artist’s eyes, the subjects are either fiercely current or forcefully relevant, but always genuinely recognizable.
“Al Khan al- Ahmar Primary School” by James Mollison
