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Still Lives

Still Lives art project with artist in residence, Katy Bentall.

Following previous successful projects, Faces (2019) and Locals (2020), we were delighted to welcome back Katy Bentall as an artist in residence at Occold Primary School 9th - 10th March 2022. 

Katy lives between Poland and the UK. She has exhibited in London, Warsaw and Felixstowe among other places. She makes books, drawings and watercolours and often combines them with found objects to make installations. 

The Still Lives project has involved the children at Occold Primary School working together, across ages, to explore how to place objects and consider the relationship between them. We made drawings, collages extending into three-dimensional objects and photographs based on the shapes and forms of the objects.

 

 

Still lives - made from a hundred things - a poem by Katy Bentall

made to rest your eyes on. gaps, shapes, shadows, colours - side by side,

an odd assortment of things - special things, not special things,

ordinary things and extraordinary things.

A coffee cup and saucer, a big stone, an apple, a very old book of poetry, a sea shell, an old teddy.

Placed together on a window ledge, put on a table or even the seat of a chair by a bed. Grouped, arranged, re-arranged, in a corner on the floor, high up on a corner shelf…

contemplated and watched, sometimes forgotten.

Left to get dusty - dusted occasionally, removed completely, put in another place. coffee cup used and washed.

Let’s make a still life arrangement here today, study it carefully and then slowly capture it in a drawing; perhaps make a still life memory book. Then cut out some of the shapes we’ve drawn in cardboard - glue, tape and staple these shapes together, add paint colour - new colours. create a new geometry…

A new and wonderful ‘thing’ a three-dimensional collage - we could even call it a sculpture.