From Year Seven to GCSE
Stover Art Department firmly believe in nurturing young talent and celebrating the next generation of artists. We look for every opportunity to exhibit their artwork and forge links with local galleries, the community and initiatives to celebrate their creativity.
We have worked closely with both national and local initiatives including: The Southwest Academy of Art, The Royal Academy of Art, The Contemporary Craft Fair, Cancer Research UK, Holocaust Memorial Day, Maker South West and Bovey Paradiso. Each year we provide a creative workshop for The Contemporary Craft Fair, providing arts and crafts activities to the local community.
We enrich our pupils learning experience with gallery visits, artists workshops and extra curricula clubs. We have visited Museums and Galleries in the Southwest, including Bristol, St. Ives, Totnes, Teign Valley and Torquay. Our pupils go further afield with trips to London, Oxford and Madrid.
The Stover Art Department team are encouraged to work on their own practice and keep up to date with local opportunities at The Art Teachers Conference. CPD is used to enrich practice and feed into our curriculum.
The department contributes to the whole school community with regular wall displays and exhibitions in the library and open day. Art scholars work together to create sets for the school production and themed artwork to celebrate festivals and events such as Christmas, International Holocaust Day and Remembrance Service.
In Year 7, pupils explore the formal elements focusing on Colour. They investigate colour theory and develop their knowledge of Art theory by researching Abstract Painting and the work of Wassily Kandinsky and Hilma of Klimt. Pupils draw and paint to music, ‘freeing them up’ to paint in a more emotive way and create their own abstract paintings. In the Spring Term we investigate movement and emotion in the human form through the work of Giacometti and Elizabeth Frink. Through observation and figure drawing they will create their own figure sculpture. In the Summer Term we aim to get outside and appreciate our local environment and so look at the work of the Impressionists painting ‘enplein air’ around our beautiful grounds. We look at mixing techniques of the impressionists and observe how the light changes the landscape.
Year 8 pupils look at the natural world for inspiration. This begins by looking closely at Marine Life and how artists are inspired by the subject. We create observations of fish and investigate watercolour. Pupils then look at the issue of ‘Plastics in Our Oceans’ and develop their ideas for a ceramic tile, inspired by Satsuma Ware and Troika Pottery. Continuing with the theme of nature, pupils look at the work of the artist and architect Antoni Gaudi and inspirational artist Yayoi Kusama and develop their own designs for organic architecture or a ceramic final piece.
Year 9 Pupils begin the final KS3 year with a project entitled ‘Me, Myself & I’. Pupils work on their self-portraiture skills and subject knowledge of the proportions of the face. They explore a range of diverse artists from Rembrandt, Frida Kahlo and Shepherd Fairey and develop their ideas of portraiture into a more personal design for a print. Pupils produce a final Lino print /collage in the style of the German Expressionists. Following on from looking at themselves for inspiration we ask them to look at the world around them, investigating a thought-provoking project on ‘Conflict’. We look at the numerous war artists’ works and work that explore conflict, such as Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ painting. Pupils are encouraged to develop their ideas in a more meaningful way developing their own mixed media /collage work on a conflict of their choice.