ARTiculation

On Thursday 23rd February, the Year 12 Art students visited the MK art gallery in Milton Keynes.

The gallery's exhibition was “Trickster Figures: Sculpture and the Body”, and it portrayed ideas around figures in a way I would never have thought of.

A piece I particularly enjoyed was an interactive dance floor made out of copper, which reflected the natural light of the window and made the room (when you stood on it) feel very bright; it also came with headphones so you could dance around. The movement of all this dancing was captured brilliantly by the artist, who tried to convert the movement of the figure onto paper, rather untraditionally, but nonetheless this outside-the-box thinking left us quite inspired.

The main purpose of the trip was the ARTiculation event. Our school's competitor, Josh Tuddenham, won the internal school competition and so he was put forward to represent DCGS. The event centred around 10 students who each gave a 10 minute speech on an artwork that inspired them. They would then have to answer a question from the adjudicator, Jo Baring, who is a well-respected art historian. Each student that participated would be considered an alumni of the event and be entered into the alumni network and so this event was a privilege to participate in.

The pressure was on, especially since Josh was the first to speak with his speech on “An Athlete Wrestling With A Python”. Even though he had the weight of setting the tone, Josh delivered a speech that Baring herself called “dynamic” and “confident”.

I also thought that Josh’s speech was brilliant (although I may be biassed) as he showed the audience how revolutionary this sculpture was, leading to its own movement and subsequent works, and his mention of the “golden spiral” was really captivating to see as often the maths in art goes unseen.

The other art mentioned in the speeches of other participants ranged from 15,000 BCE to 2007, and it was truly exciting to see how important art has remained throughout history as a form of not only recording the past, but also shaping the future.

To end the day, Jo Baring proudly stated that the future of art history is in safe hands with us and I felt that, due to the amount of knowledge that I and many others gained from this amazing experience.

I would like to thank Mrs Prime and Mrs Sealey for organising the trip and thus giving us this amazing opportunity.