Trip to Tate Britain

Thirty-two Grecian and Dep (Year 13 and 12) artists enjoyed a thought-provoking trip to Tate Britain and White Cube Bermondsey on 27 September to see exhibitions that will directly influence the course of their practical projects this year. At Tate, alongside the permanent collection, they saw a retrospective of Cornelia Parker – known for blowing up sheds, flattening musical instruments and making art out of the discarded residue of life – as well as the powerful installation of Hew Locke’s; a carnivalesque procession of masked characters that filled the Duveen galleries. At White Cube, they were inspired by Michael Armitage’s lyrical paintings set in East Africa on tree bark ‘canvases’, which interwove narratives from a range of sources; history, literature, politics and folklore as well as his own memories. His paintings were interspersed with the remarkable totemic clay figures by Senyi Awa Carmara, which portrayed mystical spirits giving shape to stories, fact and feelings.