Art

What better way to conclude our exploration of sculpture than a visit to the Sainsbury Centre at the University of East Anglia? The Sainsbury Centre has a fantastic collection of sculptures and other art works, some dating back thousands of years and others created this year. Children explored the Sediment Spirit exhibition (https://www.sainsburycentre.ac.uk/whats-on/sediment-spirit/), Permanent Collection and outdoor Sculpture Park. Within those three sections of the day, children were given freedom to explore their own interests. Some chose to explore as many of the thousands of exhibits as possible, while others became captivated by individual artworks and spent a long time with them. 

After a picnic lunch in the Sculpture Park, we went into the studio to create some sculptures of our own, led by artist Hannelore Baxter who introduced students to reflective artworks by artists Lygia Clark, Lynn Chadwick, Rana Begum, and Anish Kapoor, who all use sheet metal within their creative practice. Students then created 3D forms from flat materials and played with lighting and colour to create sculptures that might reflect, refract, and perhaps even move. Through the use of photography, students were encouraged to imagine their work on a much larger scale as maquettes for huge sculptures or perhaps even buildings. By placing tiny human figurines in, on and around our sculptures, the scale suddenly became huge! It was fascinating to think about how people interact with sculpture and the buildings we live in.

A big thank you to FOSS for paying for the whole trip!

As part of our exploration of sculpture, we looked at the work of a local sculptor called Matthew Frére-Smith who is none other than Mrs. Ryan’s father! Some of his sculptures are kept at the Sainsbury Centre and can be viewed virtually here: https://www.sainsburycentre.ac.uk/art_object_artist_maker/matthew-frere-smith/

Mrs. Ryan brought in some of her father’s smaller-scale metal sculptures in to show us in class and get the students ready for our upcoming visit to the Sainsbury Centre.

This half-term, artists in Grebes have been exploring the world of sculpture. They have looked at work by Anthony Caro (a British artist who made abstract sculptures out of scrap metal and found objects) and Ruth Asawa (an American sculptor who made wire sculptures. Children have learned about the spectrum of abstract and figurative art, ranging from completely abstract works which do not represent anything from the real world, to semi-abstract works which resemble or suggest real-world subjects, to figurative works depicting real-world subjects. Unsurprisingly, clay has been a favourite medium for our artists! They have sculpted a figurative human head, an abstract human head, a Green Man (after hearing the story in Forest School) and a self-portrait which could be as figurative or abstract as the artist chose. Grebes set up an art gallery in the classroom and invited children from other classes and their parents to view their clay sculptures. 

Since the Strangers’ Hall trip, Grebes have developed an obsession for weaving! It was only fitting, when they heard that Mrs Gay – school governor and friend to our school for well over a decade – was weaving us, to get out the looms once more. Here is the card the children made.