Francis Davidson
While helping catalogue the Modern Art Oxford archives, I came across some lovely letters written by a group of 7-year-olds who had visited an exhibition of collages by Francis Davison in February 1982. Davison, who died in 1984, was relatively unknown for most of his life, only achieving any sort of recognition in the 1970s and 80s, with the Oxford exhibition and one at the Hayward the following year his only major shows. His work was always pure abstraction, using only found paper, usually torn and pasted onto card. The children were clearly inspired, as you can see from the drawings that they made of the collages they produced. Those children will now be getting on for 50. I wonder if any of them became artists?
John Muafangejo
John Muafengejo was a Namibian artist known for his woodcut prints. Modern Art Oxford held an exhibition of his work in 1991 entitled I was loneliness. The Nigerian poet Odia Ofeimun was invited to write poems to accompany each print. In the archive, I came across a set of reproductions of the prints and poems. What was most exciting about the discovery was that you can see changes made to the poems, presumably by Ofeimun himself. It’s so interesting to see his creative process like this. I wondered if the poems were ever published, but, although there is a book called I was loneliness containing Muafengejo’s complete works, I haven’t been able to find them. I wonder if the Modern Art Oxford archive is the only place where they exist?