GCSE Art and Textiles trip to London

This year’s London trip was as action packed as ever! In search of inspiration for the GCSE set task Thornton’s Art and Textiles students descended on London for a whirlwind tour of the museums, galleries and sights of London.
On Friday they studied natural forms and artifacts at the Natural History and V+A museums before seeing the eye-opening ‘East meets West’ exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery, which was characteristically controversial and challenging. The Cirque du Soleil at the Royal Albert Hall that evening proved to be brilliant inspiration for those who had chosen the Figures in Motion topic as performers dazzled us with incredible feats of contortion and daring.
On Saturday the group’s first stop was the Tate Modern and the ‘Time, Conflict, Photography’ exhibition as well as ‘Sigmar Polke’ and the permanent exhibitions, which are always inspirational. After a boat trip and the opportunity to see many of the capital’s landmarks from the Thames the group went to the National Gallery, home to some of the most iconic works, and the National Portrait Gallery which is currently showing Grayson Perry’s ‘Who are you’ works amongst its permanent collections.
Art student Pippa Cook gave her impression of the trip: “We thoroughly enjoyed the Saatchi Gallery it was culturally enriching and the modern art changed my perception of art for the better, and opened my eyes to the many forms of art. We had the pleasure of watching Cirque du Soleil, it was one of the best performances many of us had ever watched and firmly glued us to the edge of our seats. Some of the acts were gravity defying and made our hearts stop! All round the trip was most enjoyable for all of us; we managed to get a huge amount of inspiration and ideas from the trip, although our feet were quite sore by the end.”
Rounded off with a little downtime in Covent Garden, the trip was a great springboard for the set task so watch out for the exhibition of the students’ work coming up in June!