5 local school collaborate to create a beastly exhibition at NAC

Newhampton Arts Centre have been working with 5 schools from the local area to create Mythical Beasties of Whitmore Reans

St Andrews

Dunstall Hill

West Park

St Michael’s

St Peter & Paul

Artist Amanda Yates has provided the school children with the chance to explore various sculptures and sculptural techniques, including wire sculpting, tinfoil, clay, stone, soap and card.

They have taken inspiration from sculptors such as Antony Gormley, Andy Goldsworthy, Giacometti, Barbra Hepworth, Alexander Calder, Jean de Buffet, Yayoi Kusama, Yinka Shonibare and Aaron Curry.

During their sculpture play sessions, the children warm up by playing the Surrealist game ‘Exquisite Corpse’, whilst using mythical beasts (explored in Key Stage 2 as part of the curriculum) mixed with creatures found in the ample green spaces around Whitmore Reans, for inspirations for their drawings.

“The Children found these hilarious and this developed into the idea of creating giant mythical beasties” says Amanda.

“We loved the Nigerian fabric patterns used by the artist Yinka Shonibare to decorate his Wind Sculptures and this led to a discussion about type patterns we could use on the surface of our sculptures and used cardboard to replicate the sculptures of Aaron Curry and Alexander Calder”.

The next stage of the collaborative sculpture involved the children decorating scaled up versions of their drawings. They used patterns and designs from West Africa, Mehndi patterns, rangoli and Islamic art. They also were able to explore patterns found in nature and investigated patterns of plants and insects found in the school grounds.

The Giant Whitmore Reans Beasties will be made up from flat illustrations decorated onto wood created and decorated by all the children, these will be slotted together to make 3 dimensional sculptures.  Come and see them if you dare!

During the first week of June, the children will be helping to curate the exhibition in preparation for the grand opening on the 17^th of June. Event information coming soon. Manda is also providing some workshop session with a  little sculpture exploration at the Newhampton Arts Centre.  

Exhibtion open 11am-4pm

Workshop sessions are on Saturday June the 11^th and 18^th.

10 places per session and booking is essential. 

• 11.30-12.00
• 12.30-13.00 
• 13.30-14.00
  

• Come and make a soap carving sculpture in the style of Barbra Hepworth or in your own unique style. 
• Sculpt a mini-Giacometti sculpture.  
• Make a miniature Calder Sculpture to take home.  

These will be sculpture exploration/play sessions for children from 5 to 12 must be accompanied by parents.