Year Five at Boutcher school have made extremely good progress in their artwork under the tutelage of local artist Ed Gray. After participating in ‘A Bermondsey Progress: Boutcher School 150th Anniversary Art Project’ they now have an exhibition of work that shows a maturity way beyond their years, writes Michael Holland.
Gray is one of London’s leading visual artists of the highways and byways of our great capital, but more so of our wonderfully diverse people, so he is perfect for teaching the young of Southwark about their area’s history and how to depict it in a painting.
I asked how the project came about: ‘I wrote to several local schools to see if any were interested in working with me on a project. Eilidh Verhoeven, the Head at Boutcher, had been to one of my exhibitions so she was familiar with my work and she asked me to create a project to celebrate the school’s anniversary.’
The project, funded by the Dyers Guild, aimed to make narrative artwork that showed life in and around the area of the school through the last 150 years. ‘I wanted to show the progression of an idea from intention to inspiration through research, sketches, drawings, composition and a final painting on canvas,’ explained the artist. ‘I split the class into three groups, past, present and future, and pupils focused on creating a story by drawing each other from life, acting out things we had learned from research, portraiture, studying photographs from local historian Debra Gosling’s Bermondsey archive, and present day photos of the area.’
Twenty eight young people took part in the project, one day a week for one term, learning about changes in working life, plus social and political changes.
‘We spent some time discussing the women’s rights and the suffragette movement once we discovered an incident of sabotage that occurred when the school was used as a polling station in 1909,’ he said excitedly, pointing out several paintings in the exhibition depicting this event. All by girls, who had obviously enjoyed this tale of the early battle for equality.
As to the art side of the project, Ed emphasised that ‘I had to get across that drawing from observation is the basis of making art and that it takes time to create a story within a painting, that their local area is a treasure chest of stories to create art from and that they are great at making art.’
Did you notice a difference between their ‘before’ and ‘after’ artistic skills? ‘Absolutely. Pupils missed so much art during the pandemic so now struggle with confidence in problem-solving and creative thinking, which are such important life skills. Physically, they are less able to draw and paint because they are lacking those skills. These pupils from Boutcher learnt so much about painting and drawing and creative thinking in the limited time we had.
And that is confirmed both within the work and in the confidence the young art students showed when discussing their work. Adriana (The Bermondsey Hairdresser), who was inspired by her mother to paint a hairdresser’s as it is the industry she works in, said she had learnt so much about depicting ‘skin colours and getting different tones’.
Once Benjamin (The Docks) heard about the history of the docks that were once Bermondsey’s main employer he told me, ‘I knew straightaway that was what I wanted to paint’. Benjamin said he had learnt how to mix colours and use shades.
Alisha, whose painting (Following in Dr Salter’s Legacy) portrayed both past and present, told of how she learned how to use primary colours to create different hues. ‘I liked learning how to create textures, and I’m ready to continue using the techniques Mr Gray taught us,’ she added.
Richard (The Old Bermondsey)painted people making the dragon that sits atop the steeple of St James’s Church, alongside a coalman with a hundredweight sack of coal on his shoulder and Russell The Fishman from The Blue. Richard told me, ‘I like art more now that I know about narrative and how to tell a story in a painting.’
But the loss of school time from Covid lockdowns has its problems. ‘Now things are easier,’ says Gray, ‘there is even more pressure on teaching the curriculum, and the arts always get squeezed into short moments on the timetable. Art becomes an add on.’ There are plans for another art project at Boutcher, which is fantastic news for the creative young minds who have been missing out. And also good for Ed Gray: ‘This is my first teaching work since COVID so it’s been great to be back working with a school, and the pupils were such characters with great enthusiasm.’
There are hopes to find a public space to exhibit these artworks that range from Lowryesque to art from the Naïve genre, with Magical Realism in there too. It is plain to see how much the students had learned about perspective, portraiture and creating narrative, and does need a wider audience. It would be good for the powers that hold the pursestrings to see how much this is needed in schools.
Photos: M. Holland
