By: Sue Tansley, Head of Art and Sarah Jones, Teacher of Art.
In order to collect visual information for their art exam, Year 13 Fine Artists and Photographers visited the London Galleries.
Fine artists initially chose between the National Gallery and the Portrait Gallery dependent on selected themes. ‘Humour’ provided a light-hearted genre and the Portrait gallery the source for such mirth. The theme ‘sunlight’ proved to be more elusive on a rainy day in London but Turner provided some light relief in the Tate Britain. The crowd pleaser David Hockney did not disappoint with something for everyone with 6 decades of Hockney’s art and a myriad of styles: from pencil colour portraits, large scale Expressionist words, cubist inspired four seasons video walls, double portraits, the iconic ‘bigger splash’, brightly coloured landscapes to i-pad drawings. It’s now time to stand back, reflect to see the ‘bigger picture’.
Photographers had an entire day at the Tate Modern with three exhibitions to view. Starting with the Radical Eye modernist Photography collection, on loan from Sir Elton John. They followed this with mixed media, king of the pop art collage, Robert Rauschenberg and then moved on to the controversial work of Wolfgan Tillmans. The latter never failing to result in wonder, disgust, laughter and confusion in just one exhibition.
All were rewarded with a trip to Stratford Westfield afterwards for supper. As this will be their last art trip with the school it is a credit to this exceptionally lovely year group that their company for the entire day was an absolute pleasure.
