Throughout Autumn Term 2015 Stanley Picker Gallery have been collaborating with King Athelstan Primary School in Kingston upon Thames to deliver a weekly Art Club for children from mixed classes across year’s 3, 4, 5 and 6.
Art Clubbers: Aleks, Alyiah, Archie, Brandon, Eloise, Imogen, James, Jamie, Kayla, Noah, Sarah, Tom and Maxim
During the programme, with workshops tailored to meet the interests and requirements of individual groups, the young artists named above have been learning about about historical and contemporary artists’ and designers’ practice, influences and creative processes, while sharing their personal interpretations, ideas and preoccupations through free-writing, drawing, collage, hand on making and animated discussion. These experiences are being recorded for individuals Discover level Arts Award, a new branch of the arts-based qualification accredited by Trinity College London.
Particular attention has been given to the practice of has been Russian figurative sculptor, artist and designer Dora Gordine (1895-1991) for whom Stanley Picker Gallery’s current exhibition Dora is named and which presents examples of her collection personally selected by a group of contemporary women artists – three Turner Prize nominees among them – to sit alongside works of their own.
Inspired by Gordine, the keen draughtsmen learnt about the proportions of the human face and body applied some of their newly acquired knowledge to the production of ‘pronto portraits’ of other members of Art Club – examples of which can be viewed above. The group also collaborate to make accurately proportioned exquisite corpse figures, and individually sculpted air-dry and wet-clay miniature human heads.
Watch this space! A slideshow and audio-visual files of Art Club in action will appear here shortly.
King Athelstan is a two-form entry community primary that teaches children to ‘take risks and ask brilliant questions’ – and very popular with use at the Gallery, have named each of their classes after artists. The artists exhibiting online and working towards their Arts Awards are all members of Art Club, which is supported by Clubs Coordinator Darren McLauglhin and TA, Miss Tietz. It is the ambition of all to continue Art Club through the academic year 2016, with current members setting the example of free-thinking and open minded exploration to new additions to the group!