“Peace in the Piazza” - A collaborative study

Premessa

This year our Guggenheim project evolved from two mini projects centered around the theme “ Collaboration” and was also connected to the Units of Inquiry taking place in the
classroom.
Phase l.
Part 1 began with a “ Reflections” unit which aimed to encompass:
Geography in the classroom - thematic maps and the six districts of Venice.
Civic Education - historical and cultural knowledge of Venice.
Art - Designing buildings for a new “ Piazza”
Ink and watercolour background Polystyrene relief prints to create individual palazzi which when completed were joined together to complete a “ Collaborative Venice”.
Our ghost print reflections provided an opportunity to look at how the print gives us a reversed image. This connected us to Magritte’s Empire of Light, the focus being on how Surrealist images can challenge what we see in an image. Learning to look, to observe, to notice. Is everything quite what it seems?
This part of our project also challenged our thoughts on our own “Reflections” which lead us to Phase 2 of our project.
Phase ll
Positive Collaborative Engagement - “Piazza”
Using Giacometti’s “Piazza” and Henry Moore’s “Three Standing Figures” as our stimulus the children created their own wire/ mod roc figures. Each individual figure had its own pose, it’s own significant colour and was placed collaboratively into the Piazza (made from Phase l pieces of work). Each figure held a significant message that each individual child felt it important to share. Our focus was to explore if and how we can protest positively. We looked at artists statements starting with Da Vinci’s - “ Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence” moving on to modern day Jeremy Deller - “ I’m not the kind of person that tweets about politics or makes grand statements on the whole I’m quite happy causing very minor mischief”.
We had lots of encouraged discussion about the positives and negatives of Protest Art.
The questions we asked were:Can art influence the way we think and act as individuals and as a society? How do artists make and create change in the world today? How can we use art to engage others in our conversation? “Let us reflect” - How can we bring peoples attention to our project?

We considered how current artists have more platforms than ever before to get their message out to the world.
We also worked with our DLC to create an interactive walk through of the work with the children voicing over their message.
The final part of our project involved inviting parents to an afternoon workshop where the children shared their skills and ideas. Each child along with their parents created a positive message using a polystyrene printing technique. Each individual image was then joined together to make a “collaborative “message board. This piece of work will be displayed in school where we hope it will encourage others to think and act positively. It also provided the children with a hands on experience of exhibiting and talking about their work in public.

Metodologia

- Children made pencil drawings in both paper and polystyrene to create a relief ink print.
- Work with analogous colours in watercolour focus on layering and colour mixing.
- Experiment with transfer techniques to produce a coloured print in polystyrene.
- Manipulation of wire, paper tape and mod-roc to create a standing figure.

Nodi tematici

Phase l - Designing the “Palazzi”
The children had various diverse visual images of the architecture found in Venice. Using their imagination and the visual images children designed first in pencil then transfered to
polystyrene their own palazzi.
The background for these images was created using water-coloured layering techniques to represent the sunset and wet and dry Brusho washes created the canals. Each tile was printed once on the sunset and a second ghost print was reflected in the canal.
The coloured tile was made using water coloured felt pens printed onto white A4 card. The children cut out their own individual buildings and then collaborated with their peers to create a new look Venice as a whole class. This was realised in both colour and black and white.
Phase ll - “Piazza”
Using the work of Giacometti (Piazza) and Henry Moore (Three Standing Figures) as a stimulus the children created a wire figure to represent themselves and their message in the Piazza. They used paper tape and mod roc to reinforce the wire and enable the figure to stand.
Colour and Mood - As a class we revisited past work on colour theory and emotions.Colours were then chosen to represent the mood and feelings of each individual figure before being painted and coated.
All the figures were then placed on a wooden base which represented the ground of the Piazza and the designs from Phase l were arranged around the sides to create a 3D exhibit.
Each month we ran a session where the children were introduced to 4 titles from the Guggenheim Collection. We discussed the job of a curator and what issues must be considered when curating an exhibition. The idea was that by the end of the year the children would have had an experience of 20/24 works of art from the Collection and it was then their job to curate their own exhibition. Their final decisions were influenced by reflecting on what they had learnt throughout the year about the artists and about making choices.