The Everyday Reimagined

On Tuesday 28 February, pupils, their families and staff were invited to the Lower School to see the private view of the mesmerising Year 8 Art exhibition, The Everyday Reimagined.

The artwork in this exhibition celebrates the everyday, setting up playful juxtapositions and injecting the Lower School with a sense of energy and fun. Since September, all Year 8 pupils have been engaging with the theme of ‘The everyday’ and have explored this through a range of media from observational drawing to digital work and more recently, sculpture.

For their final pieces in this project, all pupils created a sculpture inspired by this theme within the wider art historical context of the Dada, Surrealist and Pop Art movements. Each teacher chose a different approach in response to the wider theme; some groups did collaborative, large-scale sculptures using found objects, others did a ceramic outcome whilst many created painted cardboard and Modroc sculptures based on large-scale versions of everyday objects.

Throughout this project pupils have developed their own ideas alongside expanding their knowledge of different sculptural skills and techniques. In the last few weeks, they have shown enormous commitment, with many working at lunchtimes and after school to realise their vision.

Art often reframes our world and aspects of our everyday life, allowing us to pause and notice what we would normally overlook. Here we are faced with a mesmerising cacophony of unedited everyday ephemera; items that, whether we like it or not have become part of our collective consciousness. Well-loved brands, food and technology, all become part of our memories and form the backdrop to our lives.

Article by Head of Art and Art History, Sally Reynolds.