Art Lab Art Stars!

We had a great time piloting our new programme for 9-13 year olds, Art Lab, during the summer holidays. In this new format children come along for an extended art-making workshop over four and a half hours, allowing them the time and creative freedom to really explore and experiment with art ideas and techniques. Children, parents and educators unanimously declared it a great success!

In Art Lab: Merchandise we began by exploring the Who Shot Rock & Roll exhibition and gift shop, which inspired the children in the creation of their own Art Star/Rock Star brand. After thinking about brand development and design ideas, we spent the rest of the day experimenting with etching and collograph printing, silkscreen printing and badge making. The children created an incredible collection of merchandise to promote and publicise their Star identity.

The children worked excitedly all day experimenting with materials and processes to create multiple posters, postcards and badges that had a real authenticity to them. The Gallery staff were so impressed, feeling convinced that these fictional bands would be amazing. Sold out shows all round! The focus on repetition and the multiple meant that the children were all swapping badges with each other at the end of the day, leaving happy and covered in merchandise.

The new format of Art Lab was hugely popular with parents and children alike. It meant that the children could benefit from the extra time for idea-generation and had more opportunity for exploration and experimentation in the studio. We will be continuing with this new format, and will have two Art Labs running during term time as well.

Bookings are now open for our next Art Lab: Project Print which will run on Sunday 10 March. In this one day Art Lab we will take inspiration from artists John Reynolds, Shane Cotton and Richard Killeen as we experiment with everything from silkscreen printing to etching and monoprinting. Find out more and make your booking here.

Food and Feasts, Heroes and Heroines! Tales from the Studio

We have just completed a great four weeks in the studio, with the 6-8 year olds exploring food and feasting in art, and the 9-12 year olds looking at the way artists portray heroes and heroines.

After a mouth-watering brainstorm about feasts and the types of food the children like at parties, we experimented with sculptural techniques including object design, cardboard construction and papier mache. We had conversations about the many ways artists have explored food in art – from religious and historic feasts, still life paintings, artworks about food production, as well as artists that use food as a raw material (like Richard Maloy’s butter painting in Toi Aotearoa).

Gallery educator Selina offering some different portrayals of food in art

We also managed a visit to the Auckland Art Gallery café to discuss the art of cake decoration! Using paint and mixed media the children decorated their party food objects, and invited their families to our party on the last day.

The 9-12 year olds looked at a number of works of heroes in the Gallery (including William Theed’s busts of Roman gods and goddesses and Juan de Juanes’ painting of Saint Catherine of Alexandria) to explore posture, body language and expression, and the way artists use symbols to provide clues about the work.

After brainstorming our ideas of what makes somebody a hero, the children used sculptural techniques to construct a hero personal to them, using wire, foil, plaster and paint. Heroes ranged from skateboarders, Mark Todd, grandfathers, superheroes and priests. Their pieces were photographed against a watercolour background to provide a setting for the character. The results were outstanding, and all parents (and gallery staff) were impressed with the works! Great work everyone!

Bookings are open for our next four-week studio classes which begin on Sunday 2 September. The 6-8 year olds are exploring artists’ interpretations of landscapes, and the 9-12 year olds will be looking at the way animals are used as symbols for characters and emotions.

Super Sonic Sour Suck! Pop Art sculpture holiday workshop

We had a great time in the studio during our pop art sculpture workshops! We were exploring the way artists Siliga David Setoga and Claes Oldenburg play with the scale of everyday objects like food.

Claes Oldenburg, Dropped Cone, Installed March 2001, Commissioned by Neumarkt Galerie, Cologne, Germany

Siliga David Setoga, Lolly Lei

Setoga’s giant lolly lei was the starting point for this workshop as the children learned construction techniques to build a giant lolly of their very own. The younger children had a great time inventing new names and flavours for their lolly. The older children enjoyed subverting the common names of lollies and other food items to surprise the viewer, like Leo’s Crunchie bar logo becoming 'Crunchme'.

Here are some images of their fantastic work!

Totally Terrific Tees! Screen printing holiday workshop

A group of creative children, guided through an exploration of works by artists that explore pattern, transformed a collection of plain children’s t-shirts into some amazing graphic designs. Parents and educators alike (as well as the rest of the gallery team who were lucky enough to see the tees!) were blown away by the imaginative way the children approached design ideas like repetition and symmetry in their t-shirt designs. Here are some of the results!

Buttons, Beads, Ping Pong balls and Straws! Wearable art from the July School Holiday Workshops

The Gallery educators and I had a great time over the last two weeks working with some very creative children during the July school holiday workshops. Each workshop began with images and discussions around a couple of key concepts that would be the focus of the session’s exploration. We looked at artists from the Gallery's collection who have made works that have investigated similar ideas.

The wearable art workshops focused on the way artists have re-contextualised materials by using something recycled or everyday and presenting it in a new way. The children were immediately interested in this idea and were excited by the freedom it gave them in their making.

Niki Hastings McFall, Too much sushi lei, 2000, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

The works of artists Niki Hastings-McFall and Judy Darragh inspired the children in their use of unusual materials in new and interesting ways. They made thoughtful decisions concerning pattern and symmetry as they explored and experimented with ways of using the wide array of materials available.

Here are some of the results from the 6-8 year olds' workshops!

Here are some of the creations from the 9-12 year olds:

We were all very impressed with their achievements! It was a great sight as the proud children left wearing an array of creative and unusual creations pinned to or hanging from them.

A big thanks to Judy Darragh who gifted us the amazing fluoro ping pong balls from her work along the banks of the Waikato River in Hamilton.

Check out our next holiday workshop blog to see the fantastic work from the silkscreen printed t-shirt workshops!

 

Pop Art Pets!

Andy Warhol’s portrait of a Daschund was the inspiration for our final studio session for Animals in Art. The idea that a pet dog could be the inspiration for an artwork really appealed to the children, and they loved looking at photos we had found of Warhol with his own pet Daschund Archie.

Working from photographs of their own pets, or favourite animals, the children combined collage, printing and ink drawing as they experimented with colour and multiples, with some great results!