NEWSPEAK: BRITISH ART TODAY

EDUCATION PACK

Secondary Schools

CONTENTS 1. Introduction Brief contextualization of works in the show 2. Themes Analysis of themes running throughout the exhibition and key artists. 3. Key Works Full page reproduction and description of selected works with information about the artists included 4. Activities and Discussion Points Individual and group activities for students visiting the exhibition and topics for discussion.

INTRODUCTION

NEWSPEAK PART 1

Newspeak is a fictional language in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the novel, it is described as being "the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year". This exhibition turns that Orwellian vision on its head, showing that the range of visual languages being exploited and invented by these artists is in fact expanding and multiplying. Unlike the YBAs of the 1990s, the artists of today cannot be viewed as a singular movement, expressing similar concerns through a shared aesthetic. At the same time, there are certain themes that connect some of the works together in new ways and that can offer a preliminary structure for visits with secondary school students. Several of the artists draw from art history, rewriting cultural narratives with a confident contemporary voice, or appropriating works by earlier ‘masters’ to forge new forms of expression. Ged Quinn creates idyllic landscapes inspired by Claude Lorrain that are layered with political references from recent history, Will Daniels recreates paintings such as Turner’s The Shipwreck from collage and then repaints them in an almost Cubist manner. Some of the artists embrace a distinctly British approach to making, offering sculptures or installations that reveal a wonderful enjoyment of materials for materials’ sake. Sigrid Holmwood grinds her own colours from scratch whilst Jonathan Baldock makes his sculptures from sour dough dried against a home radiator. At the same time, Daniel Silver uses African sculptures from a flea market in Israel for some of his sculptures and Hurvin Anderson references a Jamaican heritage in his paintings, reflecting the itinerant vocabularies at play. Others visually evoke the social ills of ‘Broken Britain’ or maladies of consumerism, such as littlewhitehead or Alastair Mackinven. The wider reach of art demands a more fluid language, proving that the ‘rubble-fication’ of the past makes the best building material for a reconstruction of the here and now.

THEMES BORROWED ART

In this exhibition, some of the artists (Ged Quinn, William Daniels and Ryan Mosley) quote from well-known art historical paintings in their works. This process enables them to explore the formal and artistic qualities in their practice in different ways. Appropriation is used as a means by which to address social and political issues as well.

WAYS OF MAKING

British artists are known for their love of materials for materials’ sake, and in this show many of the artists demonstrate this, from Sigrid Holmwood who makes her pigments and glazes entirely from scratch to Jonathan Baldock who uses sour dough for his busts or Karla Black who uses household materials such as baby oil or sugar paper. INVENTED HISTORIES

Many artists in this show create cultural mappings that are in part pure invention and in part a retracing of history (Hurvin Anderson, Pablo Bronstein). Others deliberately layer their own narratives onto existing works or create faux museum displays that mimic the ethnographic museum displays of old (Daniel Silver, Goshka Macuga, Jonathan Baldock). Such strategies serve to remind us of the power structures through which knowledge is formed.

SOCIAL DYSTOPIA

Artists in this exhibition explore current issues in diverse ways, whether by referencing common stereotypes of class, or by using visual markers to show social hypocrisies (Barry Reigate, Iain Hetherington and littlewhitehead). Such works sit on the fence between dark ideas and humorous reality, emphasizing the change in social conditions within Britain today.

NEO-POP

The Neo-Pop movement refers to the re-emergence of the themes from the Pop art movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Pop art is known for the celebration (or critique) of popular mass culture, so celebrities, branded items and other well known contemporary items are commonly depicted. The Neo-Pop movement began in the 1980s, with artists such as Jeff Koons, but as you can see from this exhibition, an on-going dialogue with this movement is still in place today (Scott King, Donald Urquhart, Alastair Mackinven, Clunie Reid).

KEY WORKS

Ged Quinn True Peace Will Prevail Under The Rule, 2004

Ged Quinn’s paintings evoke rural scenes from the tradition of European landscape, appropriating these visually recognizable ‘master’ works. He disrupts our reading of them by adding references to more recent history in the works. Drawn from his memories and experiences and from a variety of visual sources including television, books, newspapers and photographs, Quinn is constantly playing a subversive visual game which tricks the eye and the mind. From our embedded associations with particular images of landscape to the failure of political systems, his subtle interventions invite wider debate.

True Peace Will Prevail under the Rule is a contemporary reworking of Claude Lorrain's 1666 Old Testament depiction of Jacob, Rachel and Leah at the Well (shown below on the left). In the well, bathed in heavenly morning sun, Quinn has placed a serene image of Mount Carmel,

home to a dissident religious community assaulted and eventually destroyed by the FBI in the Texan town of Waco in 1993. He plays with the idea of adopted identity, replacing Jacob, renamed Israel by God in The Book of Genesis, with David Koresh, the community's leader formerly known as Vernon Howells, who took his constructed identity from the names of a Persian king and the Lamb of God. Suspended above the town hangs the image of a pre-Copernican universe, thought to have been centred around the earth, a motionless centre of concentric rotating spheres.

In Ged Quinn’s The Fall, 2006 (left) the poet and dramatist Antonin Arnaud hurtles from the sky in a reprise of the proud angel Lucifer's fall from grace in Milton's Paradise Lost. He tumbles into a scene Quinn has borrowed from Lorrain's The Expulsion of Hagar, and towards the burnt-out shell of a ramshackle building. It is Thomas Edison's Black Maria, the world's first purpose-built movie production studio, littered with the drawings and spells created by Arnaud in the last, anguished years of his life. Any true sense of time or place is discarded as one iconic image crashes into another.

This image on the left shows Claude Lorrain’s The Expulsion of Hagar, 1966 for cross comparison with Quinn’s The Fall. Not until the mid-17th century were landscapes deemed fit for serious painting. Even then, the stated themes of the paintings were mythic or religious. Claude Lorrain (1600-1682) painted a pastoral world of fields and valleys but set his scenes with heroes and saints, even though his abundant drawings and sketchbooks prove that he was more interested in scenography itself.

William Daniels William Blake II, 2006

William Daniels’s paintings, at first glance, appear to be contemporary explorations of cubism. They are, however, immaculately drafted still-lifes. Daniels begins each piece by making immensely detailed collages: reconstructing well known art historical paintings from bits of found paper, fag packs and household products. Using these as maquettes, he then translates each fold, frayed edge and bevelled texture into highly realistic paintings. Based on Thomas Phillip’s

1807 portrait of William Blake (left), Daniel’s William Blake II is uncanny in its decrepit, post-apocalyptic semblance. Exchanging the rich warm hues of Georgian parlour painting for the ashen greys of his recycled study, Daniels revives his art historical subject as a zombie-like effigy. Through Daniel’s attenuate process of working from life models, William Blake II resounds with a heightened sense of the presence of the subject before the artist, bringing to light issues of originality, authenticity, and the malleability of documentation.

The maquette made for The Shipwreck by William Daniels attempts what should be technically impossible: recreating the impressionist brush marks and ethereal light of a Turner painting in a monochrome cardboard structure. Daniel’s small canvas interprets the qualities of the model rather than the original, evolving the scene as a kind of anti-drama, eerily deadened and stilled.

Daniels’ paintings from tin foil allude to notions of cultural worth and virtuality: their metallic sheen is reminiscent of religious paintings’ aureate devotion, and their flawless rendering draws from a tradition of hyper-realism set forth in ultra-modern scenes by artists such as Estes. In Still Life With Flowers And Curtains, (left) Daniels reconstructs a 1658 painting by Adriean van der Spelt and Frans van

Mieris (right). Drawing from the traditions of Dutch still life painting where scenes were often developed as composites and given unnaturally dramatic lighting effects, Daniels’ composition originates as an aluminium foil collage. Painting from this model directly, Daniels captures every shimmering wrinkle and dint, rendering their silvery reflections in unwavering detail. “It’s like painting pure light,” says Daniels. “The foil creates expressive ‘brush marks’ and enables me to paint in a certain way that’s removed from being expressive myself.”

Sigrid Holmwood The Last Peasant-Painters Peeling Potatoes (Old Woman Mill), 2007

Sigrid Holmwood strives to get to the absolute heart of painting: not just as an activity, but as a material substance, entrenched with history, inherited knowledge and innate meaning. Holmwood’s Technicolor canvases seem oddly contemporary, especially considering how they’re made. With anorak enthusiasm, Holmwood trawls centuries-old archives and internet forums and consults conservationists, chemists, and herbalists to revive the lost recipes of paint-making. Her pigments and glazes are concocted entirely from scratch and include all manner of ingredients both common and exotic, from precious stones to ground up bugs. “I use these traditions playfully, and expand upon them,” Holmwood explains, “I’m less interested in actual recreations than their modern possibilities. “I use things made by hand by other people,” Holmwood adds, “such as paint brushes, reproduction period pottery, wooden bowls, hand blown glass, all mixed in with modern things. I like the idea that I’m partaking in other peoples’ crafts and skills.” Holmwood’s historical investigation is carried through in her chosen subjects and aesthetics. Half Swedish, Holmwood is inspired by the 19th century peasant painters of the Darlarna province, whose folk art is a national symbol of Sweden. Based on an archive photo of the actual last peasant painter, the figures in The Last Peasant Painters Peeling Potatoes (Old Woman Mill) are sat in front of a typical Dalecarlian composition. The image seen on the wall is based on a folk legend of old women who are ground up in a mill and emerge rejuvenated. “I painted the woodwork using a technique which these artists used to represent mahogany,” Holmwood reveals. “It’s paint glazed with a sour milk and pigment mixture and sealed with oil. It gives a psychedelic effect.” In England, Holmwood is a member of a Tudor re-enactment group; at their meetings, held at historical preservation sites around the country, they live an authentic 16th century lifestyle and

re-learn the life-skills of the past. “We don’t pretend to be in the olden days,” Holmwood makes clear, “we are modern people discovering how things work through doing it.” The group collaborates in historical research and shares their knowledge. In the club, which includes ironmongers, leatherworkers, clothes weavers etc., Holmwood is, of course, an Early Modern artist. Holmwood explains: “The 16th century is technically Early Modern rather than Medieval. It’s the beginnings of contemporary art. The art market and the first stock market emerged in Antwerp, and genre painting such as peasants and landscapes started to develop. The development of artists painting peasants through art history is

a reflection of increasing urbanism.” Frying Fish (left) was completed during an excursion to Avoncroft in Bromsgrove, and pictures a friend cooking kippers. Reminiscent of Gauguin’s rustic exotica, the ceramic-like painting technique replicates the actual glaze effect of the jar seen on the counter

Jonathan Baldock Adriana 2007

Adriana takes its name from one of the characters in Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, a lovelorn wife whose husband has strayed The salt dough sculpture is adorned with a ribbon, a heart on her brow and a clown nose which seems to reference her cuckolded status. There is a tear spilling from her dolly eyes and a ribbon which keeps her rouged mouth tied shut. Her somewhat harsh features are softened by a wig, decorative eyelashes and other feminine embellishments. However, as with all his portraits, the bust is modelled on white male features and when ornamented, becomes strangely androgynous. Baldock utilizes traditional home-craft to produce his work and draws on a combination of different techniques such as crochet, knitting and weaving which create a tension between the choice of materials employed and the subject matter.

The artist states ‘My practice is led by a continuing interest in the grotesque and the carnivalesque manifested through the homemade and handcrafted object….I am inspired by the idea of the classical human form in art history but also in contemporary culture, and in this manner the idea of the “body perfect”. This has been re-enforced through research of Mikhail Bakhtin's critique of Francois Rabelais where he focuses on the coarseness and extravagance of human nature in the medieval carnival and the corruption of the classical body; a representation of order and establishment...My work ruminates on the history of modern art, the commedia dell’art, the grotesque, theatre, and popular culture.’

Baldock uses a technique learned in Sunday School to create these busts; each of them are made from a play-dough mixture of flour, salt and water. He begins each piece by sculpting the head, and then lets it dry in front of his radiator. Sometimes he uses food colouring which he

mixes into the dough at the kneading stage. The second stage of the process is the addition of the details in successive layers. He decorates his figures with florets, bijoux, glass eyes, elaborate wigs, false eyelashes and masks. Baldock does not begin each work with a preconceived idea about its final form. His sculptures are progressively developed through their material manipulation and ornamentation. Lost For Words (left) appears as a true English rose, with aristocrat nose and virginal complexion, literally made from powder. The figure is crowned with actual hair extensions, and the eyes are glass replicas taken from a life-sized doll. Baldock often combines ‘real’ elements with his floury base to give his characters a sense of uncanny veritas. He places the sculpture on a chipboard plinth; this both accentuates his humble making processes and gives the suggestion of sawdust or straw,

setting his haunting characters in the realm of rural folklore and its anxious idyll of well-kept secrets.

Hurvin Anderson Peter's Sitters 3, 2009

Hurvin Anderson’s paintings oscillate between abstraction and figuration, their tranquil scenes merging unstable ideas of memory and diverse cultural histories. Peter’s Sitter’s 3 imagines a home barbershop, a cottage industry taken up by many newly arrived Caribbean immigrants in 1950s Britain, who were too poor to rent commercial property. Whilst Anderson was born to Jamaican parents in Birmingham, England, he does not base his scenes on first-hand recollection of such settings though. Instead he follows what Paul Gilroy once called 'routes' (rather than 'roots') culture - a mapping of the paths that weave identity. Rendered in a reduced palette of blue, white and red, the scene conveys the experience of freshly acquired British identity, its aspirations and hard realities. The brilliant tones and translucent veneers of the floor and ceiling hark to the open expanse of tropical seaside, while the opaque geometric walls and modest furnishings create a rigidly grounded environment, conveying a sense of disorientation and displacement.

Anderson works by taking photographs of places that interest him. He then makes drawings of key sections from these images and re-assembles the parts to produce large, slightly illusory, colour-drenched paintings. The artist graduated with an MA from the Royal College of Art in 1998. One of his tutors at the RCA, the artist Peter Doig, recommended him for a sponsored six-month arts residency programme in Trinidad. Indeed Doig’s painterly influence can also be seen in some of Anderson’s earlier works and in his practice of using photographs of places as

a starting point. For years Doig resisted painting what was right in front of him, relying instead on photographs, magazine clippings, album covers and film stills as aide-mémoire. While living in London, Doig painted landscapes drawn from his Canadian youth (on the left is an image of Canoe-Lake by Doig) and visits to Trinidad: dreamlike, haunting scenes of snow, lakes, cabins and sea, often including lone characters. His paintings were fictionalized images and ruminations “on the idea of memory,” as he puts it. Anderson continues this practice by exploring the

idea of memory as a space into which narratives can unfold.

In Untitled (Welcome Series) shown below, Anderson transforms the familiar contours of a street front store into a deceptively illusory space. Drafted from a rustic palette of warm earthy

hues and cool whites and greys, the walls, ceiling and cabinets advance and recede in a disorientating labyrinth; their shifting planes expressionistically rendered as fields of layered texture, become insolvent grounds for graffiti-like sketches and texts, loosely suggesting posters and furnishings. The foreground, cut through with the bright orange star patterns of a security grill, affirms the flatness of the picture plane while situating the viewer firmly on the outside of this scene, a self-conscious voyeur or intruder.

Pablo Bronstein Relocation Of Temple Bar, 2009

Though Pablo Bronstein’s Relocation Of Temple Bar looks like an aged document, it depicts an overlap between historical and current events. Temple Bar was one of London’s seven medieval gates and was located at the juncture of Fleet Street and The Strand. The building depicted is Christopher Wren’s design, which replaced the original after The Great Fire. To accommodate increasing traffic, in 1878 the monument was dismantled for preservation. Its 2700 stones were purchased by Sir Henry Meux in 1880 and the gate was duly reconstructed at his Theobald Park house. In 2003, the building was reacquired by the City of London, and now stands at Paternoster Square. Bronstein imbues the Relocation of Temple Bar with the epic heroicism of legend.

Bronstein uses architecture as a means to engage with power: of history, monuments, and the built environment. Using pen and ink on paper, his acutely drafted drawings capture an archival romance of a grand age, a nostalgic longing for the imposing and imperial. Adopting the styles of various architects and movements, his elaborate designs become plausible inventions, both paying homage to and critiquing the emblems of civil engineering. In Elevation and Interior of Historic Building (left) Bronstein’s plan borders on abstraction. Depicting the history of architecture from a simple hole in the ground, to a hut, Byzantine temple, Baroque

cathedral, enshrined in the cold industrial shell of a modernist shed, Bronstein dissects the lineage of ideas and ideologies, all pastiched together with a dandyish pomo flair.

Bronstein’s architectural drawings explore both the functionality of civic space, as well as the inherent values associated with the styles of different times. His work often combines reference to a multiplicity of design aesthetics, ranging from the imposing authority of neo-classicism, the ornate dynamism of baroque, and the decadent pastiche of postmodernism. Through these ‘moshed up’ embellishments, Bronstein highlights the way building facades convey ideas of wealth, power or grandeur. Though architectural fashion mirrors social values, it also represents the will or vision of the architects and commissioners who impose their ideas on the public – with the intent that their work will last for generations. Bronstein’s drawings critically examine this subjectivity.

Barry Reigate Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory, 2008

Reigate’s fluorescent light sculptures were conceived as art and design originals, functional furniture for extravagant collectors. The figures are made in jesmonite, which is usually used in film sets and models. The artist dissolves ideas about classical plaster sculpture through the introduction of such pop-culture materials. The extension cord which lights the works points to our own dependency on electricity, forming a life line or umbilical cord for each of these dark monuments to consumerism. Blending reference to modern art with cartoons, he explores the simultaneous growth of modernism in art and wider pop-culture creativity such as that developed by Disney World. His work conveys a certain humor towards today’s attitudes of commodity, fetish and cultural taboo. Sculptures such as I’m a Leader Not a Follower, a tar black rabbit pierced with a neon tube, seem to mock the pristine stainless steel sculpture of Rabbit by Jeff Koons or the ubiquity of Barry Flanagan’s hares, whilst bringing in the inventive chaos of Toon Town. Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory also borrows from the visual language of Disney World, intertwining child like cartoon humor with adult desires. The club-footed creature seamlessly mixes a Giacometti sculpture with Mickey Mouse, while at the same time being speared though the head with a fluorescent ‘Dan Flavin’ light.

Reigate was born in London in 1971. He took an interest in drawing cartoons from an early age when visiting his father in Wandsworth Prison. He explains “My father would try to entertain

me through drawing popular imagery such as King Kong, or Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.” It was a way for his father to express his feelings, something that was usually done through anger and violence. Therefore drawing for Reigate is both associated with punishment and also freedom. His interest in Cartoons continued throughout his artistic development at Camberwell College of Art and then Goldsmiths University. He likes to use art and specifically cartoon art as a way of escaping reality. The artist states “Cartoon’s main audience is children. Art, a luxury

commodity, could be seen as some kind of adult toy. Something to depart from the ‘real’ world, into one of escape and play where meaning and reason slips into a different social context”

Real Special Very Painting (R.S.V.P.) was made when the artist was invited to do a commission for the Saatchi Gallery. Reigate notes “Because of information and imagery, we all have loads of input about stuff we don’t ever experience, like zombiefied conduits of

information. All this info goes into the paintings. Layer after layer of collage, drawing, crayon, airbrush etc… Just stuff on stuff, then sealed and more stuff put on top of other stuff. Making work is a kind of expenditure for this ‘stuff’. When I make a painting it may refer to moments in art’s history, but I did not do that consciously. It’s the energy of apathy kicking in. I’ve seen Guston’s books, read about Basquiat in journals, Googled Condo, seen Jeff Koons on TV, paid to see Paul McCarthy online, looked at Magritte’s ‘vache’ period in libraries etc;

somehow this info is going to come out, through me. My body cannot store it, there’s not enough ram, so it gets performed, transferred onto a piece of material through brush, paint, collage and whatever’s to hand.”

Iain Hetherington

Composite Picture 1(Diversified Cultural Worker), 2008

Iain Hetherington conceives his paintings as a mode of addressing cultural hierarchies. The Diversified Cultural Worker series are elusive portraits depicting not people, but rather the signifiers by which they are labeled by others. Baseball caps and gold chains are not a usual subject matter in art historical painting, today they are generally considered street gang ephemera, and here they stand in for the perceived exclusion of society’s ‘disenfranchised’ groups from the gallery space. These markers are set against contrasting backgrounds that recall painterly styles such as Impressionism and Abstract Expressionism. In mixing up ‘high art’ associations with seemingly low-culture ones, Hetherington draws a parallel between the labeling of aesthetics and the labeling of types of people. Realistically these clothing items could be worn by anyone; they are empty costumes ascribed meaning by the viewer. Hetherington states “Anti-elitist views can be the most elitist of all. ‘Social Inclusion’ often means telling people what they are capable or not capable of understanding”. It is important for the paintings to be viewed in the context of each other, as it is the recognition of the differences between them that is significant in the visual language that the works build up. The artist uses thick impastos and haphazard gestures that replicate an artist’s palette, in removing categorization and biased value systems all that is left is painting itself and its own integrity.

Scott King Pink Cher, 2008, 300 x 200 cm

In Pink Cher, King combines the images of two iconic figures; the famous Cuban Marxist revolutionary, Che Guevara and Cher, the famous America singer, songwriter and actress. He

appropriates the most widely distributed photograph of Che Guevara, which was taken by the photographer Alberto Korda and entitled Guerrillero Heroico (left). This portrait is so iconic that it is on the 3 Cuban Peso note. King’s work replaces the face of Guevara with the face of Cher, in neon pink, linking the polar opposite figures; Guevara, a counter-culture revolutionary and Cher, a mass culture mainstay. Pink Cher is reminiscent of the silkscreen prints of celebrities that were made by the Pop artist Andy Warhol and of the work God

Save Che Guevara by the artist Gavin Turk. Silkscreening is a technique that is frequently used to make massed produced goods such as t-shirts. Since the Cuban revolution in 1959, the United States has, of course, maintained a strict embargo policy with Cuba, whilst the revolutionary ideals of the time seem to have fallen by the wayside since. Whilst much of King's art draws on political imagery and language he states. "Most of the stuff I've done that is deemed political is actually about the failure of a certain kind of political ideology. It's about the failure of the left, mainly….about the commodification of once meaningful imagery and gestures." King began as art director on the magazines i-D and Sleazenation, and has designed record sleeves for the Pet Shop Boys, Morrissey and Suicide amongst others.

Donald Urquhart Donald Urquhart Donald Urquhart Dors, 2000, 46 x 34 cm Dusty, 2000, 46 x 34 cm Jayne, 2000, 46 x 34 cm

Born in Dumfries, Scotland in 1963, Donald Urquhart applied to the Glasgow School of Art but didn’t get in. Urquhart has since had many careers, including model, postman, radio editor, playwright and journalist. It was only seven years ago that Urquhart (now 47) was discovered, when photocopies of his brush and ink drawings of legendary stars such as Diana Dors and Betty Davis were spotted hanging on the walls of a nightclub

Dors, Dusty and Jayne are part of a series titled Peroxides on Parole that the artist created to use as flyers, posters and decorations for a nightclub which he co-founded in Kings Cross, London. All of the images are film stills from movies which the women appeared in. Urquhart would then pause the film and draw the images onto his A3 sketchbook. Any distortions in the figures can be attributed to the choppiness of the film when put on pause, or the fact that Urquhart often sat very close to the TV while drawing. As the series title suggests, these three women were surrounded by controversy and tragedy. Dors is a portrait of Diana Dors, a 1950s sex symbol, who is considered to be the British equivalent to Marilyn Monroe. Dors tragically died of cancer only a few years after making a statement that blonde sex symbols die young, and that she had no intention of doing so. Dusty is a portrait of Dusty Springfield, a 1960s Pop songstress, who was also known for her bouts with depression, substance abuse and self-harm. Jayne is a portrait of the 1950s movie star and pin-up model, Jayne Mansfield. Mansfield’s life was marred by tragedy and sensationalism as her personal struggle with alcoholism and extra-marital affairs culminated in an untimely death at the age of 34 in a car accident.

Like Urquhart, Warhol depicted events that linked tragedy and Pop culture. Warhol famously had a Death and Disaster series which he made from 1964 – 1965 that showed silkscreened images of car accidents and electric chairs. Warhol also depicted Marilyn Monroe because of his interest in her early, tragic death and Jackie Kennedy, because of the assassination of her husband, the American President John F. Kennedy.

ACTIVITIES FOR YOUR VISIT

Borrowed Art

Provide students with print-outs of the appropriated paintings by Claude Lorrain, Thomas Phillip and Turner. Ask them to identify works in the show that have used these images and consider the differences between them. What do they think these artists intended by appropriating earlier art works? Ask them, if they have sketchbooks, to recreate a work in the gallery and add their own layering of meaning to the sketch.

Ways of Making

Ask students to select a few key works that they would like to discuss in material terms. How do they think the works were made? How does this impact the way the work is interpreted? Ask them to make a list of materials used and plan a work that they will later make using similar materials.

Invented Histories

Ask students to select works that have an interesting narrative (story or event represented visually) that relates to social or political histories that they recognize. Ask them to explain what they think the narrative is, how authoritatively they think it is presented in the work, and whether they think it is a personal/autobiographical or shared cultural narrative. When they get to the classroom they can further investigate this to complete their study.

Social Dystopia

Ask students to identify works that they think deal with social dystopia in Britain today (an unhappy social landscape in which there is poverty, lack of individual freedoms and equalities, violence and/or repressive social control systems) and to explain how they think these issues are raised in the works

Neo-Pop

Students can be asked which works they think engage with the ideas raised by the Pop Art movement and how these works differ.

DISCUSSION POINTS

Below are general questions to discuss when visiting the exhibition

1. What is the title of the artwork and how is this relevant? Sometimes the title will tell you more about the work. Or give you a key word to interpret it effectively.

2. What is the art made from? In this show artists have used a range of materials from sour dough to recycled sculpture – how do these materials impact the meaning of the work? The choices made by the artist reflect on the kind of ideas they want to portray.

3. How does size play a part in your experience of the piece? A very small painting or sculpture might come across as delicate, fragile or unimposing. A large sculpture or painting might come across as overwhelming.

4. What effect does the choice of colour have on your thoughts about the work? Whether the black and white portraits of celebrities by Urquhart or the fluorescent colours of Holmwood’s work, colour is used by artists in diverse ways throughout the exhibition

5. What is the artwork about? Is the art political? Is the work instigating a political argument? Some art is intended to provoke a response or highlight certain issues. A lot of art has a central theme or story behind it.

6. Is there a clear message it is trying to get across? Political? Religious? Propaganda? Story-telling?

7. Do any of these works seem to look at particularly British issues? If so how and why?

8. What do you think might link one artist in a gallery room with another? Might they address similar issues? Or share artistic techniques? Or look good formally when hung near each other (i.e. on a purely visual level) ?