School Prints - 2018
In the first year, 293 pupils and 103 school staff from six Wakefield schools participated in the School Prints, all receiving a set of the six School Prints to display permanently in school.
Year 5 students from five primary schools, Flanshaw Junior Infant School, Lawfield Primary School, The Mount Junior Infant School, Snapethorpe Primary School and St. Michael’s Church of England School participated in art workshops in school and at The Hepworth Wakefield with printmaker Helen Peyton.
Ten ‘art ambassadors’ from Year 9 pupils at Cathedral Academy took part in a series of creative writing workshops to produce interpretation for the contemporary prints. These students also supported the art workshops in the primary schools.
An exhibition of the 1940s prints, together with the six newly commissioned prints, was held at The Hepworth Wakefield and a special display of the contemporary prints was held at Phillips in London.
Friends and family were invited to a special event at The Hepworth Wakefield to celebrate the students’ achievements.
With funding from #iwill the gallery continued to work with the art ambassadors to launch an Art SOS campaign to raise awareness of the importance of creative education.
Simon Wallis, Director of The Hepworth Wakefield, said: ‘In September 2017, it was announced that the number of pupils taking arts subjects at GCSE had fallen to the lowest level in a decade.
Creativity is being squeezed out of increasingly pressurised school timetables and we know there are schools in our district that simply cannot afford to bring classes to experience the art on display here, even though entrance to the gallery is free for schools.
Museums and galleries have a crucial role to play in addressing this devaluing of creativity in the education of our children.’
An Introduction to School Prints
Work with Wakefield students on School Prints
Commissioned Artists
Anthea Hamilton, Daydreamer's Wavy Boot
£500, edition of 85
‘Perhaps this is a self-portrait of me as a young girl? The shiny leg of the boot, neat and wavy like the long black plaits I wore every day. The grown-up high heel made of bricks is the Victorian school building we surreptitiously carved our names into the walls of with little stones from the playground floor.’ Anthea Hamilton
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Martin Creed, Work No. 2874
£500, edition of 85
‘I like broccoli. It’s my favourite vegetable. I eat broccoli every day. I like prints made from broccoli because they look like pictures of trees, and I like trees. But I don’t know what colours I like, so I thought I could try a mixture of different colours.’ Martin Creed
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Haroon Mirza, Photons and Friends
£500, edition of 85
‘My print is a homage to that idea and particularly to the work of Garrett Lisi, who created the complex and elegant piece of geometry that aims to map all the known fundamental particles along with possible undiscovered ones. A variation of this pattern is depicted alongside a trompe l’œil image of a photovoltaic panel – a modern device capable of converting photons to energy.’ Haroon Mirza
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Jeremy Deller, The Problem with Humans
£500, edition of 85
‘I’ve always felt that contemporary art is much better suited to children than it is to adults. My print is almost like an illustration from a book. It’s meant to make little kids smile.’ Jeremy Deller
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Helen Marten, Untitled
£500, edition of 85
‘The body and its movement through the various volumes of daily space has long been a starting point for artists through history. In this lithograph, the primary lines construct a huddled group of figures, morphing through one another in a manner that could describe an embrace, but also the metaphoric dissolution of one form into many.’ Helen Marten
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Rose Wylie, King John, Frog
£500, edition of 85
‘I like frogs, there don’t seem to be a lot about any more. This image was triggered by a television programme on King John, who was not popularly considered a ‘good’ king at the time. The story has it that some monks decided to get rid of him by extracting poison from a frog, disguising it in wine and offering it to a travel-worn king.’ Rose Wylie
Read MoreResources for Schools
In collaboration with teachers and art coordinators from the five primary schools, The Hepworth Wakefield produced six short animations, one for each of the School Prints from Year 1 of the project.
The animations include information about what inspires the artists, suggested questions for group discussion as well as creative activities linking to Art, English and Maths to be delivered in the classroom.
