Dedicated followers of Fashion...

When the going get's tough, the GCSE students get going. The girls worked hard today on their mock preparation, regardless of it being a Saturday. Bravo girls!

Coming up...

November
A Level Art trip to Tate Modern to see Modigianli and Kabakov.

February
A Level Fashion & Textiles study trip to The Balenciaga exhibition at V & A.

March
GCSE  Fashion & Textiles workshop at Warner Studios.
A Level Fashion & Textiles Japanese pattern cutting workshop.
IB Exhibition

6th Form at The Photographers Gallery, London.

U6 and L6 photographers visited The Photographer’s Gallery in London for the long-awaited exhibition by acclaimed American photographer, Gregory Crewdson.

‘Cathedral of Pines’ explores human relations within natural environments. Ambiguous narratives probe tensions between human connection and separation, intimacy and isolation, all set in a dystopian landscape depicting the anxious American imagination.

5th Year at Tate Britain to see Rachel Whiteread

5th Year Artists visited Tate Britain to see one of Britain’s leading contemporary artists, Rachel Whiteread, who uses industrial materials such as plaster, concrete, resin, rubber and metal to cast everyday objects and architectural space. Her evocative sculptures range from the intimate to the monumental.

Born in London in 1963, Whiteread was the first woman to win the Turner Prize in 1993. The same year she made House 1993–1994, a life-sized cast of the interior of a condemned terraced house in London’s East End, which existed for a few months before it was controversially demolished.

U4 Art Textiles students at The Museum of Natural History, London.

Students spent a research day in The Natural History Museum taking inspiration from the collections there to inform this years theme 'Inside Out'. The aim of the project is to focus on the human body from the inside and students were given the opportunity to do so while examining The Spirit Collection, where numerous organic forms have been preserved in liquid and kept in glass jars. Some of the specimens date back to 1800’s and were collected by Darwin himself. 

Students also learned how hormones affect the body, how senses influence perception, how the memory functions and how the brain and other organs work together. Studies the students made in their sketchbook are the basis for their research, which will be developed over the course of the year into a wearable garment. Watch this space!

A Level Fashion Photoshoot

A Level Fashion students had fun at the end of term photographing their final designs in the photography studio. The students modeled and styled the shoot themselves and enjoyed experimenting with shutter speeds and long exposures to create some edgy effects with the camera.

Images below include the work of Olivia Howe, Abi Broniman and Holly Dunmore.

Summer Exhibition Invitation

Architecture Against the Grain U6 Workshop

Eight prospective U6 architects took part in a day long workshop run by Juliet Haysom who is a teacher at the prestigious Architectural Association School. 

The day centered around a series of Advertisements for Architecture by the influential international architect Bernard Tschumi  one of which read: 'To really appreciate architecture, you may even need to commit a murder'. 

Taking this provocation as a starting point, this workshop invited the U6 architecture students to reconsider the familiar surroundings of the school in as a site for such an extreme action, and to produce measured sketches and notation diagrams that described their devised event. 

By inviting students to read the buildings and grounds 'against the grain', the intention was to reveal the hidden aspects of the site's design and shed light on the close relationship between buildings and the ways in which they are inhabited."

The Art department took all the Upper and Lower 6th form Photography students to the Tate Modern and the Photographer’s Gallery to see the ‘Modernist Eye’; an exhibition of seminal photographic works from the 1920’s to the 1950’s which now form part of Elton John’s personal collection. We also encouraged the girls to study other photographic works in the Tate, which currently includes a number of rooms exploring ‘Art and Society’ This has works by the Bechers and Thomas Struth, all of which will further their research and development of their A level Coursework Portfolios.

At the same time in the Photographer’s Gallery we saw an exhibition of Feminist Avant–Garde of the 1970s, an expansive exhibition comprising forty-eight international female artists and over 150 major works from the VERBUND COLLECTION in Vienna. Focusing on photographs, collage works, performances, films and videos produced throughout the 1970s, the exhibition reflected a moment during which practices of emancipation, gender equality and civil rights protest movements became part of public discourse.

David Hockney at The Tate

L5 GCSE artists visited the sell out David Hockey exhibition at The Tate Britain and enjoyed seeing the lifetime achievements of one of Britain's most important living artists. From photomontage to iPad painting, they wondered at Hockney's range.

Royal Academy Life Drawing Day

Sixth Form Art students participated in a Royal Academy life Drawing day with illustrator Charlotte Steele and her model Magda. Overall it was a brilliant day off timetable and a taste of what it is like to study at art school.

Expanding Space. A workshop with Contemporary 3D Designers Charlotte Kingsnorth and Will Yates-Johnson

Charlotte and Will, practicing designers based in London, set a challenge to lower sixth art students: to construct the biggest space from the smallest package. Using very thin mirrored plastic sheeting called ‘space blankets’, employed by NASA and marathon runners for heat retention, the students explored what space might mean, as well as how to create so much from so little. The day began with a simple exercise in pairs to create a large cube with a hole in one side. Taken outdoors, wind filled the cubes until full, when the pair crawled in and closed the hole. Hey presto! A space is formed. In the afternoon, the students dived headlong into the challenge, finding locations to inhabit in and around the art department. The workshop ended with each pair performing a magic trick: transforming their small, lifeless package into a large and exciting space.

Emma Cousin Art Scholars Master Class

On Friday 10^th February we invited artist Emma Cousin to run a masterclass for our art scholars. Emma Cousin is a practising, artist helps run and curate independent art gallereies in London and has recentkly completed a residency at Wimbledon School of Art. 

23 art scholars from the U3 to the U6 participated on the day including an ex-student and art scholar from 2012 Isobel Ramos who has recently graduated with a 1^st Class Fine Art Honours degree from Falmouth University. The day was a fantastic melting pot of ages and talent. 

The masterclass focused on creativity and invent

ion. The scholars were invited by Emma to look at signs and symbols and how they might be used in pictorial, narrative, figurative, abstract art and cartooning. Sophie Ives (L5) tooth brush sketches came alive on the paper as if animated by Disney.

There was plenty of drawing and painting, particularly using mark making techniques and composition. Motifs were considered and how they interact imaginatively with different art forms and contexts. But creative fun was the essential ingredient of the day where activities included a banana workshop, and a walking exercise, the scholars had to pass invisible objects each other before visualising and painting them.

 At the end of the day the scholars had developed a personal vocabulary and produced inventive and imaginative imagery of their own, this included a marmite dragon by Millie Rodger and  a watering can/ basket ball piece by Natalia Dale.

Fashion & Textiles Museum Workshop

In February, GCSE and A-Level visited the Fashion and Textile Museum during London Fashion Week. Amongst the many design professionals in the capital, they viewed the first UK exhibition of  designer  JOSEF FRANK, a world renowned instigator of the Swedish Modernist movement. Students also took part in a practical fashion design workshop led by the museum's tutors.