Article Date: 09 December 2020
Article Date: 09 December 2020
The students could ask questions and a selection of these were posed to the artists. They could also interact with online polls asking, for example, how many photos they take a day (mostly between 1-10); whether they were planning on continuing with Art after A Levels (more at the end of the day than the beginning); and how lockdown affected their creativity.
The four artists covered a wide range of topics including digital art on mobiles and tablets, slapstick violence and absurd comedy and anthropological photography. All the while talking about art as a profession and the creative process involved in making their work.
One of the artists, Roz Hall, who has made work for Apple and Microsoft to show off their sketching apps, created a digital portrait of the presenter whilst answering questions from the viewers. He had some great tips on free, or cheap, digital art apps.
The artist-photographer, Simon Roberts, talked about his photographs and the representation of the British landscape. He toured around the UK in a camper van, taking photographs from the top of his van with an old Victorian style camera. He included some political photos, including capturing the moment Gordon Brown called a woman, ‘bigoted’, off camera, while his microphone was still on. He also included a member of the public’s photo of the moment Gordon Brown had to go to the woman’s house to apologise. The last photo he showed was of people very close to the edge of a metaphorical Brexit cliff edge.
Grayson Perry talked about a wide range of issues from how to be an artist; the popularity of Channel 4’s ‘Grayson’s Art Club’; how coolness is the death of creativity; how both sides of the Brexit debate are as bad as each other; and his Teddy Bear Alan Measles - an appropriate presence in these times as Alan is a much needed comforting, cuddly toy named after a disease.
The students and staff really enjoyed the talks. One student created some digital artwork on their iPad whilst listening to the artist talk about creating digital art on an iPad.
Main image from Wikipedia
