Viewers at the poster exhibition at the art gallery of BK College of Art and Crafts. Picture by Sanjib Mukherjee

Bhubaneswar, Oct. 29: Third-year applied art students of B.K. College of Art and Crafts recently organised a poster exhibition titled Prachira Patra.

The exhibition aimed to convey social messages through posters. Ten students made 25 odd posters for the exhibition.

Manish Kumar Sahoo’s work, which showed a tattered globe that has been stitched and repaired, was an appeal to all to save the planet. Raj Kishore Lenka’s poster exclaimed that a tree had laid down its life to provide the paper for his art. His other poster on global warming showed two human silhouettes extinguish a fire that has caught the earth.

Manoj Choudhury’s poster depicted a girl on sale along with toys. The image of the girl with a price tag expresses crimes against women. His second poster showed vanishing tiger pugmarks with the message to save the national animal. His classmate Amarendra Behera also highlighted the plight of women by showing a woman stepping from a red background to a black one. “The red shows the precarious conditions in which a woman leads her life and the black symbolises the dark future she is heading to,” said the young artist who also preferred to use of synthetic paintbrushes instead of brushes made from whiskers of sable and squirrels.

Ashutosh Mallick urged one and all to work hand-in-hand to halt environmental degradation.

A number of girls also took part in the exhibition. Lipsa Rani Bhuyan gave expression to her concerns for elephants that are hunted down for their tusks. While Jhunu Tudu pleaded the case of the rapidly disappearing owls, her friend Ranjita Khatua felt the same agony for peacocks. Jhunu relied on few basic colours and Ranjita uses myriad hues.

While most students have used poster colours, a few also opted for mixed media to giving their art a different look and feel.

“Poster is a comprehensive yet creative way of communicating a message to its viewers. While brevity is the essence, colour and composition are the aspects that attract the viewer. The students have put in their best efforts to send out a strong message across through the medium of art,” said head of applied art department of the college Gajendra Kumar Padhi.

The exhibition is on at Chitrabithi, the art gallery of the college, and will continue till October 31.