Out of Hours

Overlooked 1

A partnership project between St Thomas the Apostle College and the Out of Hours Schools Programme at Tate Modern.

In the autumn & spring terms 2003-4, Year 8 students from The St. Thomas the Apostle College in Nunhead took part in this project, working with artist educator Annie Davey and art teacher Gemma Casserly. The aim behind Overlooked was to create interventions in the Landscape Suite. The project participants represent all levels of ability at the school. They are now familiar with many of the art works at Tate Modern and have developed new confidence in critically discussing modern and contemporary art and the institutions which display them.

Project Overview:

In order to get to grips with the idea of 'intervention' and gain a sense of how artists have challenged conventional ways of looking at familiar objects, we began by exploring a whole history of artists who have done just that. In particular, we looked at the Surrealists making our own 15 minute sculptures in response, combining unlikely objects to alter our reading of them.

We then turned our attention from the artworks to what surrounds them - the gallery itself. At Tate Modern, we looked at 'everything except the art', later drawing a comparison, by analysing the same features in a very different gallery- the Courtauld Institute at Somerset House. From picture frames to seating, protective barriers to ventilation units we contrasted the context of the artworks in each institution to highlight aspects of the space normally overlooked. We made a collage to record these observations.

The idea of re-directing viewers' attention led to our first intervention; we each selected and recorded one overlooked aspect of the Landscape suite and together produced a set of postcards. Rather than reproducing artworks, the postcards are the artworks themselves and subtly subvert the function and convention of Museum postcards.

Recognising the school as another institution, we set up interventions there as well as what we present in the Landscape suite this evening. In both institutions, we considered expectations, atmosphere and associated objects, twisting them to reveal and create new situations. From introducing new objects to simply moving objects around, we found how intervening with familiar things and looking at the overlooked can powerfully alter peoples' perceptions and experience of a given place.

Project Participants

Gareth Truong
Liam Thomas
Dwight Williams
Thomas Wells
Gabriel Owusu
Dene Weekes
Nathan McGuire
Teon Harris
Michas Vanni
David Buchanan
Terence Ansah-Ayeh
Jordan Bent

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