Art Students Impress at the Saatchi Gallery

On the 26th of February, Ms Ashman, Miss Garrod and Miss Judah took Year 11 GCSE and Year 12 AS & BTEC Art students on a study visit to the ‘Empire Strikes Back’ exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery. We were first given time to look around the exhibition and make drawings of what we considered would support our individual projects. It was a really nice gallery and all the displays were linked together either by subject or materials. After we had finished looking round the gallery on our own, we were taken on tour by one of the gallery staff and given more detailed information about key exhibition pieces. In one of the rooms we were taken to, there was a speech by Ghandi displayed out of sculpted, artificial bones. In another room there were lots of pots and pans which had been formed into the shapes of 1) a spaceship and 2) a bucket with flowing water. These sculptures had been created to show how developing countries have revolutionised and now have more than they used to.

In the afternoon, we attended a workshop where we were asked to create our own sculptural piece inspired both by the exhibition and our own experiences. We were given resources such as: a glue gun and household recycling objects. Each group had a few objects with which we could create our own piece. My group had a lot of knives and forks, a silver tray and a mini teapot! We fitted the forks together and glued them onto the tray as if they were a roof and entwined wire through them all. We then glued the mini teapot to the side of the tray and wrapped wire round the lid, curling the wire at the top. The forks were to represent a community leaning and relying on one another and the wire represented the problems that they were solving as a group. The teapot on its own outside was to represent an outsider from maybe another community that isn’t welcome with the others, and the wire wrapped around that represented its’ problem and how it had to solve the problems on its own. The artist who led the workshop was really complementary about our work and said that she did not expect to see such strong ideas from secondary school students! This was a really good workshop as we were making abstract art that was meaningful and, if displayed, people could relate too.

Molly Coxon 12AH