Who Cares? Whitworth Art

This is another room worked jointly on by myself and Lucy Burscough. We needed to do something quick which was associated with the museum and would remind the children of their handling session. The images we used were taken at the session and have been edited on photoshop to make them wild and playful.

Room before:

Room after:

I was very happy with the end results at Galaxy, the Young people did really well to finish in time and some of the pieces were very exciting!The idea of planning and experimenting before choosing a final piece was hard for some which was why I was so impressed with some of the finished sketch books (see below) and proud of what had been achieved.

And the finished piece:

The idea of making mini theatre/shadow sets caught on with many:

(waves move when you pull the stick!)

The idea of fairytales was introduced in the first lesson which is why I think this story came into the YPs head! She said it wasn’t intended to be Noah’s Ark but just a colourful scene and a chance to depict animals. For year 7, I was particuarly impressed by this pieces as well as the ‘Theatre of Shadows’ below.

The sketchbook for this piece was very well done.

Both of these young people took into consideration everything I showed them: the idea of narrative, puppetry and silhouettes. They learnt a lot and were a pleasure to teach. This has been reflected in the level of their work: they were both marked at a Level 6 (which is of a great standard for year 7).

(manual movement: scene of a family walking in the woods to be surprised by a passing deer)

Using the story of Hansel and Gretal:

Other pieces that were produced were not quite finished mostly due to missed lessons. However, I am still very happy with the results. They have different interpretations of the themes which is great.

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So these are the pictures of the progressing work in Galaxy’s observation room. Inspired by a handling session that the YP took part in with the Manchester Museum’s reptiles, the scene depicts a chameleon hiding amongst tropical leaves. The paper used to collage the leaves and the reptile was marbled by residents of Galaxy House in two 1 hour workshops, and then enlarged for use on the wall.

I want to first post some pictures of the children’s sketch books and current work on the ‘Dark Matters’ module. The assignment is going well as its’ versatility means each child can be individual (re: their levels and their ideas). Some children are responding particularly well and they all have developed different responses to the subject of narrative & shadow in art.

CityScapes

Abstract shapes and animals

Cityscape/landmark/Twin Towers

The continued work is beggining to look really exciting!

For the Tropical Room project, I ran another marbling workshop. Knowing what to expect from the children available and their attitudes to Friday afternoon activities, I was able to approach it more effectively and involved a couple different children. Instead of offering a range of experiments, I kept the activity focussed and made it clear that the marbling was for a purpose and this purpose required only certain colours (greens-no reds or large amounts of gold- for leaves on a wall). Session worked well and I managed to get some good pieces from the children which I hope to enlarge to use for the final collage.

The children have commented a few times how they may not all see the work in the meeting rooms so I would like to use a future Friday afternoon to invite children to help me paint the wall in sections. Having in the past helped to paint the signs at Platt Fields Park, I wanted to use similar paints and style as the signs below as I think this is a good style for people to help with.

Writing this now, having started, I think the style is going to differ from these as we have chosen to use more textured filling. This is partly due to the effect of the acrylic paint we have and it is also hard to paint a solid colour when the wall surface has not been prepared.  However, so far it is looking good and  it seems appropriate to have texture in a rainforest scene. I will still keep the black outline to give a similar graffic effect and hopefully it will still be possible for some children to come and help even though some elements of my design are more intricate.

Next time I will post images of the wall in progress!

Last week, I arranged for the children from the residential hospital ward to come and see the exhibition. The visit was preliminary to their study of Shadow Play in school (focus being on narrative and time) while it also provided an outing for them during their half term holiday. I made worksheets which aimed to help them focus on the idea of past, present, future and how certain work’s in the Dark Matter’s exhibition represent different aspects of time. Most of the children seemed to grasp this idea well including an obvious 3 who were highly engaged.  However, there were a few who were either easily distracted or unwell which were quite difficult to work with. Obviously, this is natural even when working with kids who are mentally well but I found it difficult to know how to divide my attention: I didn’t want to ignore the children who weren’t interacting but I also wanted to make sure that the children who were engaged could get good feedback with the task.  I think I managed this OK though and everyone, minus one, managed to complete the task ready for their first school lesson.

Following this, another visit was arranged – for them to come to the shadow lab and work interactively with the resources at the gallery. With other groups, it probably would’ve been possible to do both visits in one but, with this group time is limited due to concentration and individual appointments. I however, thought this worked quite well, as they were able to see the gallery in two different contexts and also with two different groups of staff: during half term, the nursing staff and during school time, the teachers. The second visit yesterday, I felt went well as the teachers were able to help keep each child more effectively engaged. Perhaps it was also the type of task and also the fact that many children just find going round gallery’s boring. Surprisingly, the two girls who found it most hard to engage the first time round, interacted the most with the facilities in the lab (another positive for going on two different occasions). Going back to class with them, I introduced a lesson of experimentation with different collaging materials to create an image/shadow reflection (based on a book by Suzy Lee which was provided in the shadow lab). This went really well – surprisingly more so with the younger kids (which is something I will have to think about for next time).

Shadow by Suzy Lee

I thought this book would be a good starting point for the kids to experiement with scenes and each object’s shadow. It is also a good example of a book which tells a simple story without words: the little girl starts off playing in a room of objects and gradually her imagination grows and the shadows start to develop a life of their own.

The RSPH held its annual Awards Ceremony on the 21st September to recognise the achievements in Arts and Health. The Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) is an independent, multi-disciplinary organisation, dedicated to the promotion and protection of collective human health and wellbeing.

The Renaissance North West Who Cares? Project, run by the Whitworth Art Gallery at the Manchester School’s Hospital Service and its evaluation by the University of Central Lancashire, received an award. Wendy Gallagher, Arts for Health Programme Manager at the Whitworth and Artist in Residence, Lucy Burscough were at the ceremony to receive the award.

Dr Hodge said “The Awards Ceremony once again proved to be a fantastic opportunity in which to recognise a wide range of achievements and acknowledge the dedication given to public health. I would like to offer my congratulations once again to the Award winners.

The Who Cares? Project has been working with Diversions, a family support group for children with bowel and bladder dysfunctions in order to run a series of craft activities at the gallery. The aim of the sessions were to allow the whole family to take a break from the stresses and strain of managing their child’s condition, while encouraging the young people to build their confidence and to have a more positive outlook on life. Led by artist Lucy Burscough activities have included casting the young people’s stomach’s as well making attractive covers for their stoma and cathater bags. At the final session on Saturday over 65 people attended. Happy, confident, optimistic, accepted are just some of the words the children used to describe how they felt after the day. While one of the Fathers felt the atmosphere was relaxed and informal. ‘I could see everybody bonding which made me realize that there are so many other families and children in similar situations and that we are not alone’.

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‘Beth, Hidden’. Work in progress on the Galaxy Ward, 2011.

Four paintings came out of the project. The theme that linked the four, and that became the strap line for the Whitworth show was “If you only see the illness, you miss the person”. I hoped to address and question our tendency to rely on our preconceptions when thinking about mental illness and those who suffer from it.

Clarissa/Clarissa Inverse (Diptych) 2011

‘Clarissa/Clarissa Inverse’ is a diptych that consists of two paintings, one with the more interesting pieces of the face blocked out and the other featuring those missing blocks with the remainder of the face missing. These paintings brought up a number of questions for me as I was painting them: Why do we refer to someone suffering from mental illness as falling apart or cracking up? If we treat a mental illness with drugs that dull the symptoms of the illness do we risk dulling down the essential aspects of the personality as a whole? If we stigmatise the mentally ill we may think we are seeing the whole picture but it is only when we try to see through the eyes of those who are suffering that we get close to doing so.

Shauna’s Fringe 2011

 As you can see,‘ Shauna’s Fringe’ is a piece with stylistic links to ‘Clarissa/Clarissa Inverse’. This was because the subjects were twins and so I wanted the pieces to stand alone and still refer to one another in some way. I chose this composition to pay tribute to Shauna and Clarissa’s interesting and creative styles of dress and hair. The red arrow referring to the sometimes painful movement from youth to adulthood.

Beth, Hidden 2011

‘Beth, Hidden’ is a piece that depicts one of the young people who was on the ward for nearly the whole of my residency. I was lucky enough to spend a bit of time with her and get to know her a little bit and to witness her struggle and success in getting well enough to be discharged. Despite her own problems she was often good fun, thoughtful and kind and keen to try and cheer up the other young people when they were down. I painted Beth in this pose in order to try and express my own thoughts about her illness, as though the ‘well Beth’ was close at hand, just waiting for her illness, represented by the hands, to be lifted and reveal the happier girl beneath.

The experience of working with the young people at Galaxy House, the staff there who made me so welcome, Wendy Gallagher and all at the Whitworth, was a  really interesting and thought-provoking experience and a great privilege. Many thanks to them all.