Shadow boxes

Here are some photos from a recent project I worked on for UCL Culture

From September – November 2017 I ran an Art Club for 15 Year 6 students at William Tyndale Primary School in Islington. We had workshop sessions every Wednesday from 3.45-5pm where we learnt about UCL Museums collections and objects from the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, Grant Museum of Zoology and the UCL Geology Collection.

The whole project was pinned around the ideas and artistic philosophies of American surrealist artist Joseph Cornell.

“He preferred the ticket to the trip, the postcard to the place… Cornell’s boxes look like dreams to us, but the mind that made them was always wide awake”. The New Yorker on Joseph Cornell

We explored Cornell’s idea of wunderlust and being an armchair voyager and dreamer to work with artists Rebecca Loweth and Natalie Ryde to develop techniques around collage and found object sculpture. The students then made their own shadow boxes inspired by Cornell’s own installation work, using objects from the collection as their starting point.

I couldn’t have done it all without the help of volunteer Marijke Keyser from the Slade School of Fine Art so a big thank you Marijke.

It was so much fun to work on this project. I want to do it all again now!