Students enjoy Art trip to St Ives

News - Nov 20

Our recent trip to St Ives did not disappoint with 43 Year 9 Art students travelling straight from Colyton to Tremenheere Sculpture gardens which overlook St Michael’s Mount in Marazion, Cornwall. The enormous gardens are strewn with exotic and sub-tropical plants, which provide a spectacular backdrop to a wealth of sculptures created by internationally renowned artists. Despite a dubious weather report and donned with wellies, the rain stayed off, allowing the students time to draw the site-specific works in absolute peace – the gardens had opened just for our group. It was a sheer tonic.  

The students stayed in St Ives and spent the morning at the Tate. Having wandered through the permanent collection, the students settled in small groups to make drawn responses from the visiting exhibition ‘Casablanca’. Forged by the experimental teaching methods for the Casablanca Art School in the 1960s/1970s (following Morocco’s independence), an intense period of artistic rebirth flourished. The show included vibrant abstract paintings, urban murals, applied arts, typography, graphics, and interior design.  

The group then travelled to St Just-In-Penwith to the Kurt Jackson Foundation Gallery. Kurt Jackson is an artist we have studied as part of the Year 9 Land and Sea unit for years, so it was exciting to see his works up close. He is a contemporary painter who was in Blandford, Dorset, and studied Zoology at Oxford but who now lives and works in Cornwall. He is known for his large en-plein-air canvases, whose visceral quality reflect his dedication to this environment. The show comprised works which tracked the iconic Cornish River Fowey in its route from its source (on Bodmin Moor) through to the deep-water estuary in Fowey town.  

It was genuinely a pleasure to be with the Art students in Cornwall again. It felt like a lovely extension to our half term and has provided all the stimulus we need for the Land and Sea coursework ahead. They were exemplary in both their behaviour and approach to the inspiring work set before them.