On Thursday 4th April, a group of 5 students and 3 staff members travelled via the underground to Southwark to visit one of London’s most famous Art Galleries, The Tate Modern, as part of their Bronze Arts Award. An Arts award is a great qualification that encourages young people to get involved in the Arts as well as helping them to experience the Arts as an audience member.

The Tate Modern is currently host to a number special exhibitions and the group was lucky enough to visit 3 of them, one focusing on the Surrealist Artist- Dorothea Tanning, another featuring the works of Jenny Holzer and the last displaying the works of Sculptor- Franz west.

All staff and students had a great day exploring the exhibitions and completing a range of challenges and activities. The students had lots to say about their enjoyment of the experience and their thoughts about the art work:

“The exhibition I enjoyed the most was the Dorothea Tanning exhibition. Each group was given a booklet full of pictures. Each picture was a small part of a big painting and we would have to look for it in the exhibition. After we found it we needed to write down the name of the picture and the year it was made. I enjoyed looking at all the different paintings. The paintings were quite surreal which made it weird and interesting. We also went to Franz West’s sculpture exhibition. We got to sit on some of sculptures and pick them up. It was really interesting to pick up a object or sit on it because in a normal museum we can only look at the art work which is a bit boring. Because of this the Franz West exhibition was really fun.” – Parag Yr11“I really enjoyed the artwork and Tate Modern because there were a lot of colorful artworks there and I liked all the exhibitions we went to. I really liked the Dorothea Tanning exhibition where we had to find the stuff hidden in the painting which i found fun because i like finding things and it taught me the names of lots of different art works by her. I liked the Franz West exhibition because we got to sit on them and climb on the sculptures which i liked. I LOVED the Jenny Holzer exhibit where there were cool LED Colorful lights and we could listen to music which was very relaxing.‘- Ben Yr 9 “I enjoyed the sculptures where we got to sit on them because it was different from the other artwork I have seen before which are quite boring. I don’t usually like art but I liked the sculptures by Franz west because they are interactive and you get to climb on them and touch them. We also went to look at some artwork by an artist called Jenny Holzer. She made these colourful, electronic lights and I thought they were unusual. I rate the trip 84/100.” – Zakir Yr9“I enjoyed the trip to the Tate Modern. This is because I really liked the artwork and there were some really good designs there. My best part of the day was looking at some painting by Dorothea Tanning on the clipboard and finding where they were. The artwork was a bit dream like and surreal. My favourite piece of her work was called Musical chairs. What I like about that painting was that there was so much detail and so much colour. A lot of her paintings were very exact and smooth. I very much liked her use of lines in that wonderful picture.” – Jake Yr10 Special thanks go to Mrs Ellicott, Mr Hammond and Ms Smart for helping out on the day. The trip was a great success and a fun day out for the whole group.