On Thursday 12th September Lower Sixth A level Art students visited an inspiring exhibition at the SKIP art gallery in North London, which repurposed large skips into a form of conceptual art.
The idea of repurposing involves the reusing of a functional object and turning it into art, so that it has an alternate meaning. Our class found that though the Skips did not conform to the traditional ideals of aestheticism, many of the skips conveyed political messages or had a comical undertone that challenged our perception of what art is. Each student was given the task of studying one SKIP creation that was presented at the installation.
My chosen piece was by the artist Gavin Turk and his work Transubstantiation. His SKIP model presented a packet of compressed Skips crisps at the bottom of the large Skip. This humorous take on the idea of transubstantiation, which, according to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, is the change of a substance or an essence, whilst maintaining its physical form. It was different to any artwork I have ever witnessed in a gallery.
Everyone in the class learnt how to develop their ideas further and how to think more conceptually during the process. We finished our project by making maquette of our final ideas in our site-specific location. We displayed our sketchbooks and maquettes at open evening to further explore the question What is Art?
Iris Jennings
Year 12
