Year 12 and 13 Art students visited the Wellcome Collection and Tate Modern. At the Wellcome they were able to learn about the notions of beauty and its modifications over time in ‘The Cult of Beauty’ which comprised a rich and provoking collection of art, artefacts and installations of varied content, blurring the boundaries between art and science.

At Tate Modern students were treated to an extraordinary installation: El Anatsui’s ‘Behind the Red Moon’, a monumental sculptural installation made of thousands of metal bottle tops and fragments. Crumpling, crushing, and stitching them into different compositions, large panels are pieced together to form massive abstract fields of colour, shape and line.

The second highlight was the Phillip Guston exhibition, ‘For over 50 years’; the artist restlessly made paintings and drawings that captured the anxious and turbulent world he was witnessing. Born in Canada to a Jewish immigrant family, he grew up in the US and eventually became one of the most celebrated abstract painters. His early work included murals and paintings addressing racism in America and wars abroad. During the social and political upheavals of the late 1960s, Guston grew critical of abstraction, and began producing large-scale paintings that feature comic-like figures, some in white hoods representing evil and the everyday perpetrators of racism. These paintings and those that followed established Guston as one of the most influential painters of the late 20th century. Plenty of food for thought for students to extend their current projects!