Out of Hours

The Overlooked at School

Introduction
Activity 1: Looking at the Overlooked at School
Activity 2: Interventions at School

Discuss: Re-cap last week's artists' work- what do they have in common? Photographic documentation, an event that took place, using conventions, borrowing style, taking by surprise... What is the subject of this work? Context/situation.

Discuss Intervention as using the conventions/expectations of a situation and turning them on their head. If context/situation is central to the artwork, the context needs to be surveyed/analysed. What would the artist need to know? (For example, expectations, who goes there, when, normal conditions). To know this we must know the situation inside out. (Eliasson's Weather Project could be reflected upon here; he carried out extensive research on Tate Modern and how people experience it, from visitors through to canteen staff). We also looked at various dictionary definitions. This would be a good opportunity to try and think of definitions, perhaps in light of interventionist artworks with which pupils may now be familiar.

Introduce the term 'Overlooked', and that now that we are aware that context affects experience, we are going to be developing strategies to draw people's attention to 'overlooked' aspects of the gallery/museum (Tate) and the school.

Location: in school

Learning Objectives

To become familiar with the concept and mechanics of Intervention
To understand some motives for artists who work in provocative ways
To recognise school as another institution, and institution as subject matter/site of play for many artists.
To begin to develop ideas and proposals for possible interventions at school