Sixth Form Art Workshop

Writer Sally O'Reilly and Rosie Cooper (Director of the soon-to-open Gerald Moore Gallery) joined the Art Department for one of their Monday night sessions to give a special workshop about - well - nothing.  Introducing the empty Gerald Moore Gallery to the students, Sally and Rosie gave them a potted history of artists working over the last 100 years such as Marcel Duchamp, John Cage and Martin Creed who have used 'nothing', or 'nearly nothing' in their art as a way of inviting the viewer to look at the world around them in different ways.  Pupils were then asked to make up their own descriptions of art that could exist in a space that at first glance appears to be empty.  Their ideas were very imaginative: from a guided tour that creates a fictional history of the space to a darkened gallery that, through unexpected flashes of light creates an uncanny and disorientating experience of the viewer, the pupils really did make 'nothing' into 'something'.