On Thursday we took our Fourth Year GCSE Art & design pupils to their first major Art Exhibition. We visited the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew to see the Dale Chihuly exhibition and to do additional first hand research around the different areas of the gardens.

Pupils visited a range of glass houses to do first hand drawing and to take inspirational photographs to develop once back in the studio’s at school. Students were interested in recording form, shape, colour and texture by looking at the plants, flowers and trees in the collection. Dale Chihuly’s work was sited in different locations throughout the grounds including within the gardens, inside the various plant houses and within the art galleries on site.

The girls were wowed with the size shapes of the pieces as well as the dazzling colours. The added advantage of seeing some of his preparatory drawings and sketches put what we are them to do into context.

Nick Eggleton, Head of Art