Everyday Life Reimagined Year 8 Art Exhibition

Since September Year 8 have explored different approaches to the theme of Everyday Life Reimagined. Initially they undertook a series of workshops developing their technical skills in a range of media, before developing final pieces contextualised by the work of several artists and art movements, from Pop Art to contemporary art and conceptual practises. Within the overriding theme, each teacher and art class investigated a different concept.

Protect me from what I want (text in a Jenny Holzer artwork) was a starting point for several groups with them tackling aspects of over-consumption and the associated social, political and environmental implications. Several students used boxes to create an assemblage of symbolic objects (some found and others sculpted) and images that make a critique on contemporary consumer society with some works highlighting the trauma of conflict in the world. Other classes focused on sculptural recreations of everyday items that surround us from favourite sweets and food products to DIY items such as paint brushes and rolls of masking tape. 

Beyond Borders was another related concept that explored the possibility of imagining a new world. Inspired by traditional Asian landscape paintings, some classes worked on collaborative large-scale paintings on scrolls. Alongside this, they created abstracted glazed ceramic landscapes made from compositions combining different shapes and forms alluding to mysterious, fragments from the past or future. 

In addition, some groups experimented with digital work on the procreate app, creating animations, digital montages and drawings. Other striking works feature photographs of a plethora of everyday objects that have been edited to create intriguing repeat patterns.

It is exciting to see all the varied individual responses and the lively engagement with a diverse range of techniques, processes and concepts on display here. The importance of art is showcased here as a personal, creative response to the times we live through, whether that is looking within or outside ourselves, whether a critique or a celebration. It might be simply holding up a mirror to ourselves and the society in which we live. Whether art can or should change the world for the better, inciting positive social change is debatable but at the dawn of the era of Ai, human creativity here is celebrated, harnessing technology alongside the continued relevance and power of the handmade.