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Study event review: OCA London fine art - The Open College of the Arts

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Study event review: OCA London fine art

London Group Fine Arts Workshop, The Tabernacle, 28 September 2019 

The workshop was run by Hayley Lock who was kindly able to step in for Caroline Wright at short notice.

The Tabernacle is an interesting space, and on the day, I had 13 keen and very open minded students from various levels and subjects ranging from Foundations Textiles to Level 2 Illustration, Level 2 Drawing to Creative Arts Level 3 Body of Work.  We kickstarted the day with me talking about my practice explaining my interest in the unknown, of exploring drawing through hypnosis to investigate the conscious and unconscious self. I touched upon various projects that I have been involved in and we talked at length about what research can be, as well as interrogating risk. 

We then started to work through a range of warming up exercises, exploring the object, the image and the possibilities of drawing in a sketchbook creating numerous quick-fire investigations. Students had been asked to bring an object and an image to the space to work with and we worked with scrumpled up paper, gridded paper, we traced, layered, swapped and interfered with each other’s drawings. Objects were taken outside to consider further juxtapositions, contexts and viewpoints. The range of drawings interrogated objects and space as well as allowed students to find easy ways to move an idea or a drawing on. Many drawings were made across the day as we cut existing drawings up, reworked and introduced colour. I think the students particularly enjoyed working on each other’s drawing, using trace elements, partnering and sharing as well as breaking off to discuss and look at each other’s drawings across the day. 

There were lots of photographs taken too as a means to document the work as well as devise new methods of gathering visual material. We ended the day with OCA related questions and shared our favourite drawing of the day. 

Student comments from the day:

‘We learnt many fantastic ways to develop our sketchbooks and unleash our creativity, for example, by incorporating drawings of objects, drawings of scrunched up drawings, tracing over our previous work or photos, using other people’s drawings in our work & cutting up drawings to rearrange and draw from. It was also very useful to discuss our work & ideas with the tutor Hayley and with other students as the collaboration sparked many new ideas. I would find it very useful to have more of these sessions and discussions.’

‘I got great value from hearing about the practice of a tutor, new to me, working in image and performance. She redefined for me how broad artistic practice could be, since she uses hypnosis. The students varied from Foundation to L3 and across disciplines, though mostly drawing orientated. We all got something out of the making exercises suggested by Hayley.‘

‘As a Foundation Drawing student this day was very important. There were people from all stages of learning gathered together and we shared our learning. I saw that art can be immense, that sharing is enlightening and that being physically close to tutors and peers gave my learning more ‘bite’.’

‘I found it very interesting and enriching. The experiments we did were very good to stretch out skills and the best part of it was meeting others, sharing and seeing their work and learning from each other.’

‘It was great to be given a different set of challenges live and to work collaboratively with other students. I really liked that we were all at different levels and had different interests which gave the group a good dynamic. It lovely to get the chance to compare ideas and experiences face to face whilst making our own art rather than looking at other successful practitioners. It was also nice to discuss ideas and experiences. (plus The Tabernacle is a great venue and I want to go back and draw it sometime.)‘

All photos reproduced with permission.

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Posted by author: Hayley Lock

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