Artists as Explorers

Part of the role of the Education team at Leeds Art Gallery is creating activities that align with schools curricula. We accept these challenges and try to work topics into exciting learning experiences outside the classroom.

‘All around the World’ was the latest topic a primary school asked us to work with. It would have been too easy to do a whistle-stop tour of artists who come from different countries or cover a stereotyped example of a specific culture. Instead, we understood it as explorers in their own right; with their investigatory processes of making artworks and wanted to address the journeys that lead viewers on when engaging with an artwork.

Inspiration: Chris Drury

Flicking through the gallery’s catalogue of artworks in the collection, I found 'Medicine Wheel' by Chris Drury (1982-1983) (View it on the artist's website). The large wheel shape contains one natural object for each day of the year, all collected by the artist on walks he took. It also contains twelve segments of paper, one for each month, made from the pulp of particular plants most evident during that month and a mushroom spore print at the very centre of the wheel.

Chris Drury is an environmental artist who makes site-specific nature based sculpture. His work makes connections between different phenomena in the world, specifically between nature and culture. He focuses on the environments in which we live, often using mapping to draw attention to how we use or abuse the landscape. Drury frequently collaborates with scientists, doctors and technicians to explore the sites he creates artworks about.

Journeys as artistic inspiration

Inspired by the artwork, we proposed a creative play space in which to explore the theme ‘Journeys’. We asked pupils to bring a photo or object from ‘all around the world’ to the activity, which would help showcase or add to the work that they had been undertaking in class. Young people used their imaginations and independent creative ideas to go on a journey with their object and to investigate what their object said about living in a particular place.

The play space was constructed as a large wheel installation on the floor with four sections of different activities. Pupils made new artworks that imagined the surroundings of the objects they brought through sound, 3D modelling, creative sorting and drawing. As an example, one pupil brought a picture of a landscape in Zimbabwe to the 3D modelling station; the pupil considered what else an explorer may see in the environment of the picture and made a model of an elephant.

At the end of the experience pupils shared their new creations, displaying the artworks in the wheel to make a collective artwork of imaginary journeys.

Taking an artist process and ‘reinventing the wheel,’ we created a learning experience that allowed children to go on their own imaginative journeys and making an artwork as a response. An artist and their working process provided inspiration for creative learning experiences. This also showcased the role an artist can play in communicating about the world, and how they question our surroundings.

By Lucy Courtney-Clegg

Exploring Weather: Artspace, Leeds Art Gallery

WHAT IS ART? 
This question came into my mind whilst volunteering at Leeds Art Gallery’s most recent Artspace. Artspace is an open access area with playful and creative activities inspired by artworks within the Gallery’s collection or temporary exhibition. 

For one week of the Easter school holiday we transformed the Gallery’s White Room into a space for exploring the weather and emotion, in particular how you can use weather as a way of meeting with and thinking about how you feel. We’d been inspired by the David Shearing’s Weather Café installation, which had been across the street from the 1 - 20 March (theweathercafe.co.uk). 

We selected three paintings from the collection to display: 'Blackpool Siesta' by John L. Cooper (1894-1943); 'Leeds Canal' (1914) by Charles Ginner; and 'The Café Suisse' (Café des Arcades, Dieppe) (1914) by Richard Walter Sickert. All offered insight into aspects of our project. They were hung at the very front of the White room and acted as a lure into the rest of the space which we designed to be as visually stimulating as possible.  

Artspace: Weather Moods invited people of all ages but especially children and their carers to use watercolour to paint weather images over weather stories they had written. There was also an immersive mood room with a series of projected images and sounds of different weathers and comfortable seating to encourage reflection on weather experiences.  

Other activities invited thinking about feelings as weather related phrases e.g. a face like a thundercloud.  These were displayed as if raindrops falling from an umbrella. 

Inflating Balloons we hoped would support playing with air and promote reflection on aspects of wind.

Whilst a paddling pool with books for reading about weather stories aimed to inspire children to imagine the weather when they can use such pools 

As Artspace filled with participant artworks and ideas, I couldn’t help thinking about how we were making our very own artwork as-installation-in-a-gallery, and from that I began to reflect on the question ‘what is Art?’.  Or perhaps more precisely, how do we value art? 

Artspace: Weather Moods was installed within the same room as exhibitions generally accepted and understood as Art by formal art institutions and audiences. I wondered, is the space we had created through the interaction between ideas, materials, participants and staff any less Art than what had been displayed in the room before? 

Our mood room, a sound and video combination, was shown in the same space that had previously housed a film for British Art Show 8. Did occupying this space make this installation Art? In a previous blog post I wrote about socially engaged artists such as Martino Gamper and Ciara Phillips who involve the public in their artistic processes, could our holiday Artspace be another example of socially engaged Art?

The more I began to think about the question what is Art and how we value it, the more I recognised that there is no one fixed answer. Reflecting on my thinking I have come to the conclusion that formal art institutions place value on Art for the rigor of the ideas, intention, and imaginative labour that went into its creation. (They may also value its historical significance, or because it is brand new and never seen before). In the education office we value our installation because it evidently inspired creativity, reflection and play. We value what is made by participants because it expresses their exploration, imagination and learning. I am now wondering whether comparing and contrasting these two frames may help unpack what is seen as ‘Art’.

As an Art History student I’m constantly thinking about questions like these, frequently I have more questions than answers. After my day in Artspace I came away with a renewed belief that there are many ways to value Art, and it is the multitude of possibilities that makes it so incredible. 

By Corinne Fosky, Placement Student

Artspace on the Move

Have you ever wondered what happens when an exhibition closes? Beyond the physical packing up and sending objects on for new exhibitions or into storage, what about the impression the exhibition leaves behind? Is it a clean break, or does it linger like perfume spray?

As the opening venue for British Art Show 8 there was an energy and excitement surrounding Leeds Art Gallery and the city itself, something we are hoping to continue even after the exhibition had moved on. We have been inspired by the artists Martino Gamper and Ciara Phillips who were interested in collaborating with members of the public.

Gamper, a self-described designer, not artist, worked with local artisans and skilled craftspeople to showcase the repairing of damaged and forgotten items. This included shoe-cobblers repairing soles of shoes, book binders re-binding books, and chair caners fixing chairs. Each artisan also added a design developed by Gamper, co-producing a ‘unique piece of design’ (as it says in the exhibition catalogue).This practise strengthened a conversation within our wider community about the value of objects in our culture. It also considered the way in which we as a society have a tendency to throw things out rather than expending energy to revive them.

During the recent half-term holiday, we took pop-up activities inspired by the collaborative and transformative qualities of Gamper’s work to Leeds Trinity Kitchen. We invited families and young people to repair or bring a new life to damaged or unwanted objects. Our team were on site to encourage imagination and help realise their designs and ideas (and operate the hot glue gun!).

These pictures show their artworks ranging from books to trophies, animals to new tools. 



Basket turned in to a squid



Toy car transformed in to a butterfly and clock made in to wall-art



Toy giraffe transformed in to doll and a cardboard tube turned in to cannon

Cardboard tube and wooden letters transformed into a trophy



By Corinne Foskey, Learning Officer Intern