KS3 Art Competition!

Thirteen KS3 students at The Ravensbourne School entered an art competition held at Ravens Wood School on the 23rd of March. This gave the students a chance to collaborate their talent and creativity with different students throughout the borough.

Star Skills 200: “Dynamic Design”

Year 8 Students from the Dynamic Design group (part of the Star Skills 200 Initiative) have worked on a brief set by Miss Powell (Lead Teacher of Geography) to design a detailed display based on “The River Story”. Students were asked to visually represent the journey of the river to go along side their cluster work in MFL, Maths and Geography. The students used their broad range of Art skills to create a stunning display which will be displayed in the Humanities corridor.
Miss Scruton Teacher of Art
“I found creating this display very enjoyable as I got to be very creative. I expect my fellow students enjoyed it as well. It will be placed in the Humanities Faculty and I am looking forward to seeing it there”

Rebecca Little Year 8 Student

Y7 Visit to the National Portrait Gallery on Friday 12th March Cross-curricular Art and History

On Friday 12th March budding artists from Year 7 attended an Art History and Portraiture workshop at the National Portrait Gallery. Followed by an inspiring talk by Mr Merrony about the hidden symbolism in Tudor portraits.

Charlie Cornwell reviews the day:

In one word, I would describe the trip as ‘enjoyable’. On the train to Victoria I imagined I would enjoy myself and the others would as well. The trip on the Underground was fun and when we arrived at the gallery, I was amazed at the size of it, and soon realised that today would be great. It was fun when we were walking around looking at historical paintings of the gallery. At four pictures of the Queen by Andy Warhol, we stood and listened to the guide talking about it, and my legs were absolutely killing me!

We were given boards and sheets of A3 paper to do a sketch of one of the painting. When we had lunch in Trafalgar Square, it was very nice looking at the scenery of the fountain and Nelson’s Column, but there was dozens of pigeons and a few seagulls whizzing over our heads! After lunch we spent some time looking around Nelson’s Column. At around two o’ clock, we started to walk back to the station and enjoying London for a last few minutes.

Mr Merrony and Miss Underhill commented:

‘The Year 7 students were fantastic ambassadors for the school on their trip to the National Portrait Gallery and Trafalgar Square. They were motivated, inquisitive, well mannered and fun!’

Raglan Primary School Mural!

BTEC Year 12 Art and Design students are currently designing a mural collaboratively for their BTEC Community Art unit to brighten up the upper school wall at Raglan Primary.
Students have spent the first Half Term putting together initial designs for the wall. They then visited the school and spoke to the Deputy Head as well as the school’s student council to get their ideas. The current design is work in progress!

“Thank you so much for bringing your students to visit Raglan yesterday. I was so impressed with their ideas and the way that they worked with the children.
They were inspirational, an absolute credit to the school. It was a pleasure to meet such a focussed group who had worked so hard to prepare and research for their module.”

Well Done Year 12!

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

Legacy of Hope

The Art Department have worked to a brief set by the R.E Department to complete a set of handmade butterflies. The most striking designs will be entered into a competition which will see The Holocaust Museum in Houston, USA , display 1.5 million butterflies in 2012 to remember all the children that died in the Holocaust.
The butterflies have been made by Year 8 students in their Art and Design lessons, after Miss Wright found an inventive technique to create the butterflies. The designs were meant to represent the tragedy of the Holocaust and also symbolise a sense of hope as these children will not be forgotten.

Miss Scruton Teacher of Art

Gallery Visits 2009 - 2010

Year 10 took a trip to the Victoria and Albert Museum to study crafts and textiles from around the world in November. This inspired some excellent imagery for their ‘Visual Skills’ coursework.

Year 11 GCSE and BTEC students and Year 13 BTEC students experienced the big, the bad and the most brilliant of Modern Art during two visits to the Tate Modern in January, walking around in Miroslav Balka’s ‘How It Is’: a huge, dark box stood in the Turbine Hall, and under the scaled-up ‘No Title (Table and Four Chairs)’ by Robert Therrien. It was a mind-expanding experience for all who attended. Year 11 GCSE students even produced some ‘Conceptual Art’ of their own on their return!

Year 8 Star Skills and Art and Design students took part in a fantastic ‘Narrative Art’ print workshop and were told the stories of the work of Rembrandt, Van Eyck and scores of other famous painters in the Dulwich Picture Gallery. They behaved so well that they were allowed to visit the Mausoleum, where the tombs and statues of the gallery’s patrons were on display!

Year 8 Star Skills and Art and Design students took part in a fantastic ‘Narrative Art’ print workshop and were told the stories of the work of Rembrandt, Van Eyck and scores of other famous painters in the Dulwich Picture Gallery. They behaved so well that they were allowed to visit the Mausoleum, where the tombs and statues of the gallery’s patrons were on display!

Coming Up: Year 12 AS and BTEC look at Saatchi’s collection in Sloane Square, Year 7 take on Portraiture at the National Portrait Gallery, and a select group of Year 9 go on a BANKSY tour of East London……