What a joy to spend last week with a great group of Scarborough 6th form and foundation students at Crescent Arts working in response to the historic Woodend Gallery – a Victorian conservatory owned originally by the famous Sitwell family that once hosted exotic plants, reptiles and birds including allegedly Europes largest fern, then later the towns natural history collection and taxidermy.
Over 4 days influenced by all this, the light, space and the drafts created by the amazing windows, we played with process, materials and ideas. Including once exotic plants such as the potato (which is grown on mass locally to supply the McCain factory and of course all the chippies) and Sebum’s which now on their portable plinth act as drip catchers when the due to be repaired original roof leaks.
We made, using seemingly exotic, yet discarded plastics and foils from Hulls scrap store, a 46m inflatable vine like object that weaves itself through the space, tiny and oversized flowers, a hanging wall of silver featuring strange tendril’s, a beautiful bird like costume suspended from a modern day perch and what we believe to be the regions largest potato print.
By restricting ourselves to only 2 or 3 materials per object we challenged ourselves to work collaboratively and craft new and bold sculptural pieces in a very short time for this huge space.
Thanks to students: Millie, Emily, Mary, Nina, Monika, Rijanna, and Scarlett.
Plus Kyra and Martha for all their efforts and support
The show titled Hothouse runs until Sept 11 2022.
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