Year 7 Landscape

Make your own Henri Rousseau style landscape by using Jungle a brilliant interactive website. When you are finished print out and put in your art folder.

Extension work (year 7)

Artists use their imaginations to create scenes and places that are not real and that might never exist

Visit the Tate Kids webpage, and play the
 'My Imaginary City' game You will be able to create your own imaginary city. What would it be like? When you are finished print out your city and describe what it is like to live there.

C Ball

'still life' extension work (year 9)

TASK 1: Create your own traditional-style still life painting by using the NGA interactive painting webpage. Add, move, and re-size objects, change tables and fabrics, use digital paintbrushes, and much more! print out your concluding image and put in your art folder. 

TASK 2: Visit the excellent Tate Kids webpage, and play the 'Memento Mori' game. It will teach you about the symbols and meanings behind 'still life' artworks. When you've played the game, write a short description about the ideas explored in still life art. 

R Davies

'changing style' extension work (year 8)

TASK 1: visit this blog about EXPERIMENTAL ALPHABETS where you will see a huge variety of hand-drawn lettering and experimental typography. Now, using the influence of what you see there, design your own alphabet!

TASK 2: Alter a page of text from a magazine or newspaper, in the style of artist TOM PHILLIPS. Experiment with making a totally new meaning as you cover and alter the words on the page. 

TASK 3: Select one of the abstract close-up images from the animation sets from the online GALLERY (don't worry if it's not your own photograph). Print out and, cover with big lettering from your poem (you could use your own alphabet from Task 1).  

R Davies

Identity in location (yr 12 photography)

"Photography is a tool for dealing with things everybody knows about but isn't attending to. My photographs are intended to represent something you don't see." Emmet Gowin

Photographers often construct realities, or dream-like spaces for their figurative subjects to inhabit. Such contemporary photographers are responding to the notion that photography is always a fiction, and not the documentary truth it was once considered to be. Your task is to construct your dreams, memories or histories, thereby expressing something of your identity. The following photographers will help you to generate ideas and techniques - 

Mari Mahr constructs half-remembered and half-invented narrative images of her memories and cultural past. Her work combines objects and photographs, public and private, past and present. 

Architect CJ Lim is inspired by authors such as Jules Verne, Lewis Carroll, and Illustrator Heath Robinson. He creates intricate architectural "drawings" out of photographic fragments.

David Levinthal's photography is at once nostalgic, voyeuristic and poignant. He uses childhood toys to stage events of historical and cultural importance, travelling precariously between imagination and reality. 

Duane Michals tried to blur the boundaries between philosophy and photography through his art. He delved into the unconscious mind and asked, what is real and what is imagined? He often grouped his photographs into a narrative structure, the logical nature of which belied his surreal and dreamlike subject matter. 

Slinkachu places "little people" around the streets of London, and photographs the glaring scale differential. Although initially comical, his work evokes feelings of alienation, suffering and survival. The figures, so distorted by scale, are inevitably childlike in both their otherworldly and playful qualities. 

Happy Researching, Photog Squad! 

R Davies

exhibition success - WOO HOO!

Nailsea students achieved many successes at this year's North Somerset Art Exhibition, featuring the best art work from all North Somerset schools. Both the Art staff and exhibiting students attended a private view on Friday 28th November, during which we collected two awards, out of a possible three, for the best work on show. 

Amy Terrell won the 2D Art cup for her powerful panorama of a London scene. Her experimental use of inks together with expressive communication of the manic nature of a metropolis impressed the judges. 

Harriet Farren won the 3D Art cup for her wonderful rendering of a musical instrument. The sculpture comments on the changing face of musical expression, from traditional wooden forms to contemporary digital and electric devises. 

Congratulations to all the exhibiting students, and a special "woo hoo!" to Amy and Harriet for their prize-winning. 

The exhibition is on at the North Somerset Museum until the 10th of January, and is well worth a visit. 

R Davies

Still Life Genre (yr13)

The genre of Still Life is rich with metaphors, symbolism and vitality. From the Dutch Vanitas painters of the 16th century to contemporary interior installations - it is a deceptively quiet subject matter. 

USEFUL GENRE LINKS: 

The Tate website has a useful definition of the Still Life genre together with suggested links, with the memento mori explanation of particular importance. 

The National Gallery of Art in Washington DC has published a great book on Still Life painting, with a helpful section on ars longa, vita brevis (art is long, life is short). 

'Objects of Desire' was an exhibition of modern Still Life works held at MOMA, New York in 1997. This review, by John Harber, discusses the impact of the works, together with a co

mprehensive context. 

USEFUL ARTIST LINKS: 

1600 - 1800

Jacques de Gheyn the Elder; Pieter Claesz ; Johannes Vermeer ; Margareta Haverman ; Paulus Theodorus van Brussel ; Jan van Huysum .

There is an engaging interactive Still Life painting programme at the NGA website. Create complex compositions, contemplate those simple spatial concepts, experiment with composition, scale and perspective. Play and Print. 

1800 - 1900 

                   

The great changes of this century still pack a great visual punch today. Artists such as Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin (the Post-Impressionists); Bonnard and Vuillard all began to use new approaches to paint and subject matter. The latter of these painters grouped together and were labeled Les Nabis. 

1900 - 1950

A lot can happen in half a century! Evidence can be found in the work of Henri Matisse and The Fauves ; Picasso and his relief constructions of everyday objects and scenes; the Cubist investigations of Juan Gris; metaphysical Surrealist Giorgio deChirico; the delicate collages of Kurt Schwitters; Georgia O'Keefe; the delicate formal studies of Giorgio Morandi; and the weird and wonderful Marcel Duchamp, the Dada and Surrealist artist who pioneered the use of 'ready-mades' as art. 

1950 - 2000

It is doubtful if any of the following would classify themselves as 'still life' artists, however there are definite links to be made. Contemporary artists are pre-occupied with 'ready-mades', metaphors for mortality, and the accouterments of modern life - not dissimilar to those many centuries before. Search out the work of the following artists - Daniel Spoerri, James Rosenquist, Wayne Thiebaud, Claus Oldenburg, Patrick Caulfield, Michael Craig-Martin, Cornelia Parker, Bill Woodrow, Damien Hirst, Marc Quinn. 

2000 - 2008

Sam Taylor-Wood, Thomas Demand, Katharina Fritsch, Grayson Perry, Doris Salcedo, Rachel Whiteread. 

R Davies