Cue Card
Describe a piece of art — such as a painting, sculpture, or photograph — that you find impressive
You should say:
You have 1 minute to prepare. Then speak for 1–2 minutes.
Use your preparation minute wisely
Jot one specific example or detail for each cue point. Specific details — names, places, dates — make answers memorable and demonstrate lexical range. Don't plan full sentences; plan content.
The work of art I'd like to describe is a photograph by the Indian photographer Raghu Rai, which I first encountered in a retrospective exhibition about ten years ago. The photograph shows a woman carrying a child through the aftermath of the Bhopal disaster of 1984 — the industrial accident caused by a gas leak at a Union Carbide pesticide plant that killed thousands of people and left hundreds of thousands with lasting health damage.
The image is black and white, and it shows a woman from behind, walking barefoot through dust and debris, cradling a child whose face is turned towards the camera. The child's eyes are open but have an absence in them that's very difficult to look at and very difficult to look away from.
What I find so impressive about it is the economy of means by which it communicates something almost unbearably large. The woman's posture communicates both exhaustion and determination simultaneously. The child's expression — the openness of the eyes without the animation that should accompany it — communicates the specific nature of the harm without explanation.
I'm also struck by the ethical dimension of documentary photography that this image raises for me. There's something uncomfortable about the fact that a child in a state of profound suffering becomes an aesthetic object — a composition that is, in a technical sense, beautiful. I don't think there's a clean resolution to that discomfort, but I find that unresolved tension part of what makes the image important.
It's remained in my memory in a way that most images I've encountered since have not, and I think that staying power is as good a definition of significance in art as any other.
Approximately 2 minutes spoken at natural pace · Targets Band 7.5
The examiner will ask 4–5 questions on the same theme. These require abstract, extended responses — aim for 3–5 sentences per answer.
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