BRGS Art Students Exhibit at Falmouth Art Gallery

BRGS A Level art students were invited to exhibit their artworks inspired by Patrick Woodroffe and Surrealism at Falmouth Art Gallery over February half term.  

Head of Art, Diane Bamford said that the exhibition was as a result of "visiting Falmouth art gallery last summer, where I saw the excellent exhibition entitled 'Stuff and Nonsense'.  I loved the sense of fun this exhibition had but was particularly struck with the surreal and playful nature of Patrick Woodroffe's work.  Following a mutually enthusiastic chat with art staff about Woodroffe, I was delighted to be shown to the vaults to see more."  This resulted in a Year 12 scheme of work inspired by Woodroffe with the Gallery Director, Henrietta Boex kindly offering BRGS students the exciting honour of exhibiting their work in the public gallery alongside Woodroffe's. 

Students reproduced an acrylic transcription of a Woodroffe painting and were also influenced by Ernst's hybrid human/animal collages and prints.  They used Victorian etching imagery to create their own characters as well as producing character sheets inspired by the work seen in Woodroffe's extensive book 'Benign Icons'.   Pupils drew and enlivened their characters then used them as foci in their surreal Adobe Photoshop computer compositions.  They also played with screen printing for background effects.  Finally, they chose a Photoshop piece to be recreated in oil or acrylic.  Diane Bamford commented that the "students were greatly inspired by Woodroffe's sense of play and the surreal and they not only learned much but had great fun producing their first A' level set of work."  

BRGS is very grateful to Falmouth Art Gallery for their enthusiasm, encouragement and support from start to finish.

Animator and artist Vinnie James also worked alongside the students once a week for six weeks to create a surrealist animation which can be viewed here.

BRGS Art Students exhibit work at Falmouth Art Gallery