In December 2010, year nine GCSE art students at Maiden Erlegh School held an art exhibition in the Peacock gallery. The gallery consisted of one piece of work from every student on the course, which the students made in the previous few weeks leading up to the exhibition. The theme of the whole term and the exhibition was recycling, and the pieces made had to link to recycling and they had to be made out of recycled materials.
There were lots and lots of different materials used in the exhibition pieces. They ranged from cardboard, paper and books; to sweet wrappers, bottle caps and crisp packets; and even to old toys, tea bags, tape cassette film and old money. All of the different pieces were completely unique and showed how things can be reused to create a piece of art.
Pupils would have learnt valuable skills over the topic. They studied the work and techniques of other artists and discovered inspirations for their final piece.
Recycling was a good theme for the term and exhibition because it taught the students that there are always materials which can be made into art; materials which otherwise would be thrown away and pollute the earth. One piece was a life sized dog, labelled 'tin tin'. It was a dog, covered completely in thin strips of metal cut from tins.
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