5-day Portfolio Preparation: Thinking Through Making

Designed for students 16-18 years of age.

Using the figure as a starting point, the Summer School is designed to help school students (Year 11 -12) develop a personal portfolio. It encompasses Observational Drawing and Fine and Applied Art processes. Attendees will produce a portfolio that demonstrates skill and potential beyond the school experience and guided by experienced tutors /artists.

Designed to stimulate personal idea development, the week-long course will focus on “thinking through making”. Students will be guided through traditional and experimental processes using various media, in order to find their own artistic voice within a nurturing and structured art school environment. Those attending the course will be offered direct entry on to the Prince’s Foundation Diploma Year, which is a one-year, accredited level 4 Diploma.

Day 1 – Metamorphosis in the Life Room

The first day of the Summer School will focus on locating the figure in space and the various ways this can be explored and communicated through drawing and collage. By working directly from a model, we will consider the physical space between our body and that of our subject, subverting the way we have previously drawn - as though we are touching with our eyes and seeing with our hands. In the afternoon we will then start to think in further physical terms. We will use collage to build an image in relation to the model and the space. The works will be metamorphic sitting between two-dimensional drawing and sculpture.

Day 2 – Sculpture: Testing physical limits

Day two will start with a presentation showing how sculptors since the 1950s have engaged with everyday or inexpensive materials to construct soft sculptures. We will look at how this can be playful and subversive and how there is an exchange between artist and material. Selecting materials they are intuitively drawn to, students are encouraged to work on a large scale and test the limits of the materials they have selected. Making will be through various fine and applied art processes.

Day 3 – Staging the subversive: Drawing after sculpture

The morning will be spent drawing from the scene using oil pastels and oil sticks on white cartridge and coloured paper. We will be exploring how the surfaces of our sculptures and the space between them can be translated through the building up of a surface through mark making. Paula Rego describes working with pastels as “like painting with your fingers.”

Day 4 – Accompanied Gallery Visit

The group will visit Tate Modern in the morning, visiting galleries – including Phyllida Barlow’s Artist Room and Fischli-and-Weiss in the Tanks. In the afternoon, using Richard Wentworth’s photographic series of accidental sculptures as a reference point, students will search the surrounding areas to find sculptural occurrences which they will then draw from.

Day 5 – Portfolio Preparation, Exhibition and discussion with the Director of Education

The final day of the Summer School will be structured around portfolio presentation and curation. Students will be shown how to document work for digital portfolios, and select and present their work. They will receive one-to-one tutorials during which the work that they have made over the week will be discussed individually with the tutor. During the afternoon, students will curate a show in the Clore Drawing Studio and will have a group crit together, discussing the experience and each other's work. The Director of Education will meet Summer School students who wish to discuss entry to the Diploma Year programme. Parents and guardians will be invited to attend the exhibition of students’ work in the afternoon.