Art
In Art and Design we offer many extra opportunities through the year to support our courses to encourage creativity, develop skills and try out new ways of working.
We enjoy and encourage our students to work with different Art staff across the department. The department has a really busy and vibrant atmosphere all year, culminating in our June Exhibition. Look at our Pinterest account to see last year’s exhibition by clicking on the following link – https://www.pinterest.com/xavsartdept/
New Facilities
We have fantastic new facilities in the new Ward Hall development – a spacious designated studios for Fine Art, Graphics, Photography, Textiles and our pre-university Art Foundation course. We also have a dark room for developing photos, a printer room, kiln room and access to the Cine room. Our large foyer areas are excellent display and exhibition spaces and to add to this we have a beautifully converted old stable which is used as an installation and gallery space.
Artists’ Workshops & Gallery Visits
We offer many enrichment activities each year, ranging from local gallery visits to trips abroad. Trips to Berlin, Barcelona and this year, New York are always great experiences for everybody. We have very close links with the Whitworth Art Gallery, which is just 10 minutes’ walk away, have been involved in many projects with them such as “Sound is Art,” “Cow Parade,” and “Interactive Space.” We think it is really important to work alongside practising artists and we take students to gallery workshops and often artists want to come and work with students in college. Last year, the artists Jamil Keating, Sophie Mason and Bella Leonard delivered exciting workshops on Resin Casting, Performance/Conceptual Art and Sculptural Textiles. Every year students are part of the Creative Consultants group at Manchester City Art Gallery in which work with artist to create work and curate an exhibition.
In recent years students have been very successful in various Art competitions – a painting by Rosie Sevink- Johnson was selected for the London Royal Academy A level exhibition. Students have also had their 2D and 3D work chosen by Manchester Art Gallery for a project run in conjunction with the Matthew Derbyshire Exhibition. Also at the Manchester Art Gallery, Fashion students created amazing designs for “Fashion and Freedom.” These highly creative garments were professionally modelled on the catwalk in the gallery amid great excitement from the audience.
