We started at the London Art Fair, which was hosted in the Business Design Centre; a temporary home to a great number of galleries each displaying contemporary, modern artwork, amongst which we were privileged to see Mr Barratt’s sculptures. The variety of artwork displayed here helped us to research and investigate further our ideas for the upcoming months of independent work. Artists such as Melanie Comber and Denis Bowen interested me in particular.
Following on from this, a visit to Cork Street and The Marlborough Galleries gave us another source of work to explore, whilst also incorporating a brief lunch stop. After touring the galleries, we then visited the Royal Academy of Art – here we sketched James Ensor. To complete the Academy visit, we displayed and critiqued our work beneath an exceptionally prestigious piece of Michelangelo’s work!
We then dashed over to the Picasso exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery. Here we converged with the Spanish cohort from school, and we toured over eighty pieces of work from every individual stage of his life together as a group. Each of these stages were influenced by one of his colourful and numerous partners.
In retrospect, without the trip I personally would have been unable to carve such a definitive path into the preliminary stages of the IB’s independent work. I am sure my peers would also concur that this excursion was a valuable and inspirational day out.Matt Caiger, L6
