Stef Cartwright - 'Black & White' Photography
The Art Department was thrilled to be able to welcome back one of their past pupils as an exhibitor in the School’s BonBernard Gallery. Stef Cartwright left Dean Close in 2006 to attend the Chelsea College of Art and is the second pupil to have their post-school work exhibited.Having completed her Art Foundation course in London, she then gained a 1st Class Honours degree in Photography at Nottingham Trent University, also winning a Photography Bursary during her time there.“My work is mainly portraits, which are all hand printed in black and white in my dark room at home. Although I love to work with film, I also carry out digital commissions. I suppose my granddad has had an influence on me as he loves photography and has taught me how to use Photoshop,” comments Stef. “I have loved coming back to School and seeing all my work on display is a real thrill. The school’s support in the run up to the exhibition has been incredible and it’s interesting to talk to the younger students in the Art Department and show them the possibilities of an art degree.”
Richard Gilbert - Ceramic Sculpture Workshop
Lower Sixth art students have been fortunate enough to take part in a sculpture workshop directed by the artist and teacher, Richard Gilbert. The aim of the workshop was to sculpt a life-sized head out of clay. Through teacher-led tasks, pupils learnt how to analyse the proportions of the face and how to capture the contours and various subtle features of the human head to bring their pieces to life. It was interesting to observe how unique and varied the outcomes were due to their own personal responses.
The three hour time limit gave the pupils incentive to work quickly and to be expressive. Due to the fact that there was no fixed image to work from it was an extremely instinctive and liberating way of working which really allowed them to be more experimental and ultimately led to originality of the outcomes.
The Richard Gilbert workshop was both a valuable and rewarding learning experience and was enjoyed immensely by all. It gave the pupils confidence to consider exploring this medium in the future, in response to a brief.
NATIONAL TOURING EXHIBITIONS
MATISSE: Drawing with Scissors. Late Works 1950 - 1954
The French painter, sculptor and designer was one of the 20th century's most influential artists. His vibrant works are celebrated for their extraordinary richness and luminosity of colour. This exhibition featured 35 lithographic prints of the famous cut-outs, produced in the last four years of his life, when the artist was confined to his bed. It includes many of his iconic images, such as The Snail and the Blue Nudes.'There is no gap between my earlier pictures and my cut-outs', Matisse wrote; 'I have only reached a form reduced to the essential through greater absoluteness and greater abstraction'.
PETER BLAKE: Alphabet
Alphabet is a set of bold and colourful silkscreen prints, one for each letter of the alphabet, produced by the artist in 1991. Peter Blake emerged in the 1960s as one of the leading British Pop Artists; he is most famous, perhaps, for his cover design of The Beatles' Sergeant Pepper album in 1967. Alphabet characterises his method of working, incorporating 'found' imagery from postcards, magazines and popular ephemera. From the familiar Z for Zebra, to the esoteric P for Pachyderm and iconic K for King (Elvis Presley), these screen prints reflect his humour, nostalgia and eclecticism.
DAVID HOCKNEY: Grimm’s Fairy Tales
In 1969 David Hockney made a series of prints to illustrate six fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm; a book was published the following year in a limited edition. Since then the etchings have been exhibited and admired throughout the world. Hockney is a natural draughtsman and the elegant lines and tonal variations of his prints precisely capture the mood of the tales. Whereas earlier illustrations tended to depict the crucial moments in stories, Hockney uses an array of imaginative graphic techniques to highlight descriptions in the text.The exhibition provided inspiration to Lower Sixth artists who were looking at Hockney's drawing techniques, and to Remove pupils who were working to the theme of figures and emotions.
PICASSO: Historie Naturelle
A stunning set of 31 prints depicting animals, birds, insects and other creatures was on display. The images, started by Picasso in 1936 for the picture dealer and publisher, Ambroise Vollard, were created to accompany the classic text, Histoire Naturelle, written in 1749. Combining a wide variety of techniques, including lift-ground aquatint, etching and drypoint, Picasso produced images of great clarity, immediacy and beauty. Each picture is quite different in style to the next, and in one you can clearly see Picasso's fingerprints used over a bunch of grapes. Pupils in Remove, studying art, worked on their own animal-themed projects, taking inspiration from the Picasso exhibition.