‘FOLLY’ In the aftermath of the Covid pandemic and in a world increasingly dominated by technology, one of the biggest successes of the ‘Folly’ exhibition and the ensuing workshops was the return to a love of making and a renewed relationship with materiality, writes Georgia Mackie A MYSTERIOUS SPACE OF OPPORTUNITY WHERE PLAY CAN UNFOLD
A t the heart of the philosophy for our exhibition in The Store during September and October was bringing art and artists into schools so that conversations could begin to happen between students, artists and artworks. Three of the artists whose work was shown in ‘Folly’ were invited to lead workshops with students, and the work that was produced sits in direct dialogue with the paintings, prints and sculptures made by the visiting artists. Students in Year 10 were treated to a day’s workshop working with artists Eusebio Sanchez and Sarah Christie. Sanchez, whose large stalactite-like structures dominate The Store and have been a favourite of many students, employs coiling as a form of drawing in space. A method normally used to give structure to ceramics but ultimate- ly smoothed over and hidden is instead used by Sanchez to draw attention to the craftsmanship and material nar- rative of the work. It was a pleasure to walk into Studio 1 and see every student completely transfixed: utterly en- grossed in the process of coiling and building, enjoying the malleability of the clay, and watching forms emerge in front of them. The resulting sculptures, sprayed with luscious colours, come alive in the basement space of The Store. Sarah Christie, who is well known to Dulwich after having worked with many boys for the 400 Celebrations, works predominantly with clay as a means to understand our sensory, entangled and shifting relationship to the materi- al and living environment. She challenged the new GCSE students to think about gesture and the way clay can hold and convey a relationship with our body. Working with both large-scale charcoal drawings and abstracted clay sculptures, the students produced a series of works which explore expressions of touch, materialisations of imprints and passages formed by movement.
The Year 12 artists, still at the earliest stages of their A-level journey, collaborated with sculptor William Farr to produce a large-scale installation using scavenged objects. Placed very much outside of their comfort zone, the students learnt how ideas can be born out of the most mundane of objects, how risk-taking can propel creative development and how an artwork can evolve, pulsing be- tween good, bad, ugly, elegant, overworked and refined. Their sculpture in many ways captured the essence of the show ‘Folly’ in a nutshell: a decorative and yet fragile construction, a secret, mistakes can happen, and creativi- ty can blossom. ◎
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