Making it Exhibition Book for Sevenoaks School by Direct Design

SEVENOAKS ALUMNI EXHIBITION: INVENTION & IMAGINATION

Published by: Direct Design Books Distributed by: Sevenoaks School Curator: Oliver Barratt • OS 1981 Designer: Gerry Diebel • OS 1975 Design and Production: www.directdesign.co.uk Print: www.generationpress.co.uk Editor: Helen Nisbet Editorial Assistant: Katy O’Neill Proofreader: Charlotte Hails www.sevenoaksschool.org/making-it MAKING IT has been funded with support from Mr Stanley Leung and LST Capital Partners www.lstpartners.com ISBN 978-0-9571242-5-7 Direct Design Books, The Warehouse, Culverden Square, Tunbridge Wells, Kent TN4 9NZ www.directdesign.co.uk First printed in 2015 Copyright © 2015 Sevenoaks School Copyright © 2015 Direct Design All rights reserved. Sevenoaks School has the right to be identified and credited as the originator of this copy as part of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published in August 2015 to accompany the exhibition at Sevenoaks School of the same name. All rights reserved. The rights of all artists, writers and photographers to be identified as the author of their work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the copyright owners and publishers.

ACKNOWLEGEMENTS

‘ I remember sitting in a Design lesson at school, which was a new subject then. I received what might have been my first A grade for a piece of homework and remember thinking, I can do this.’ Thomas Heatherwick, 2015

Sincere and grateful thanks to Stanley Leung whose generosity has made the whole project possible, and to all the staff at Sevenoaks School for their support for Making It, in particular to Dr Katy Ricks, Head, for her boundless enthusiasm, clear insight and warm personal encouragement, to Michael Joyce, Director of Development for his immediate, energetic embracing of the idea and to Katy O’Neill, Development Manager, for her tireless concentration, her sharp attention to detail and efficient goodwill. To Gerry Diebel at Direct Design for his refined visual understanding, so clearly articulated in the catalogue and visual identity, to Helen Nisbet and Fabienne Nicholas from the Contemporary Art Society for their professional high standards and invaluable advice, and to David Merewether for his elegant photography. Finally I would like to thank all the artists and designers for their open-hearted approach to the project, for their time, creativity and thoughtfulness and above all for the rich and stimulating work generously loaned to the school for Making It. Oliver Barratt Curator, Making It

Oliver Barratt Oliver Beer Andrew Burton Thomas Heatherwick Emma Hope Matt Humphrey Celia Pym Richard Reid Sophie Roet Simon Starling

THE CONTEMPORARY ART SOCIETY When approached by Sevenoaks School to work with them on Making It we were interested in the opportunity to be involved in a project that celebrates the great importance of an open and supportive art education and the opportunities and life tools such an education can provide. What we were not expecting was the variety of approach, form and ideas from each of the artists and designers in the show. Turner Prize winner Simon Starling is one of the UKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most celebrated conceptual artists, a key figure from Glasgowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s powerful contemporary art scene. Richard Reid is an RIBA award winner whose ability to find beauty in the detail of everyday life mimics his status as an internationally renowned architect who has remained firmly rooted in Sevenoaks. Thomas Heatherwick has become a household name in the UK. His work defies genre, spanning architecture, technology, furniture design and urban infrastructure. Celia Pymâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s works are so intrinsically related to care and mending that the fact she is also a nurse makes absolute sense to her practice as an artist. However disparate the outcomes, from the domestic to the monumental, each exhibitor is unified through the humanity, vitality and excellence of their work. On spending time with the artists and with staff at Sevenoaks School it is apparent that the inspirational teaching offered by the Art Department, from its inception to the present day, has been essential to this.

Our mission at the Contemporary Art Society is to encourage an understanding and appreciation of contemporary art to a wide audience. Making It is an exciting forum for us to do this. We are thrilled to be involved with this exhibition, which marks the influence of inspiring teachers, the importance of creative freedom and imaginative thinking. We look forward to seeing the next generation of artists from Sevenoaks School. www.contemporaryartsociety.co.uk

MAKING IT: INVENTION & IMAGINATION ‘Old stones to new buildings, old timbers to new fires.’ Four Quartets, TS Eliot

A bike, a bus, half a light bulb and a mended jumper do not at first glance seem likely companions, but the makers of these diverse objects have at one time over the past five decades passed through the art room doors at Sevenoaks School. They represent a small slice of creative talent and imaginative reverie that has been uniquely encouraged here. Making It is a celebration of the careers and diverse practices of ten Old Sennockians (OS). The shaping of early experience and encountering intellectual influence has a profound effect on the form and pattern of your future life. Our futures are woven out of the threads of the past; at school these future threads are not always visible and are often difficult to disentangle, but on reflection the seemingly unconnected events and unique encounters with remarkable people have a formative role in determining possibilities. For my part it was not so much the discrete lessons or particular disciplines that I learned under my teachers’ careful tutelage, but an attitude towards creativity: the revelation that it is a highly prized activity to imagine, to express, to make. For, above all, amid the music and the mess, the art room, with its battered red doors and oversized ceramic sinks, was a place where thoughts were made.

Image: David Merewether

There is an intangible algorithm involved in every act of making that has both shared and unique qualities. This making algorithm requires an informed cultural intelligence, an enjoyment of uncertainty, a tenacious belief in a far-off solution and a delight in material matter, the thread and dust of the workshop.

The artists represented here in Making It balance conceptual thinking with practical making and, for most, the point at which they think most clearly is when the material is most evident. As a graduate Thomas Heatherwick became very interested in the master builder, the craftsman engineer: ‘where the generation of ideas was connected to the process of turning them into reality.’ This process of thinking through materials is evident in the leather uppers and beaded decoration that fill Emma Hope’s studio stores, or in the many halffinished half-objects that fill Oliver Beer’s studio. It can be seen in the quiet, purposeful atmosphere of Heatherwick Studio, where a glass wall divides the intense concentration of the many architects, designers and engineers from the workshop, where resin is poured, acrylic extruded and timber sanded. Simon Starling, though deeply embedded in theoretical investigation and bookish research, has an abiding interest in the process of making. For him the making process passes through cultural identity and the individual’s hands to build up a full picture of an object’s reality, and by implication its geo-political significance. In a lecture given at Perez Art Museum Miami in 2009 he says that amongst other things he is interested in: ‘interrogating the making of things’. But beyond a love of making and the happenstance of their early years within the walls of the Art Department, do these ten diverse artists have anything in common, working as they do across a wide range of disciplines from photography to sculpture, filmmaking to textiles?

I would suggest that there are two distinct and related areas of collective interest. The first is a degree of thoughtful iconoclasm, a uniquely English respect for the past, revisiting old assumptions in the light of new knowledge, and, with the wry smile of the mischievous, altering, reshaping and reinventing. • SONG This quietly determined revolution has led Oliver Beer to initiate the Resonance Project that he has been working on since 2007. Here he deploys nothing more than the human voice and the natural frequency of the building. He calls out to the space and waits for a secret voice to reply; liberating the latent resonance of the architecture. He sings and the building sings back. Jonathan Watkins, director of the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, writes: ‘A car park, A church. The Pompidou Centre. A sewer. Oliver Beer’s Resonance Project is wonderfully democratic in its various locations, reminding us that epiphanies can happen anywhere.’ In his work Deep and Meaningful, 2010, he plays with the idea of the hidden and the seen, light and dark. He trained a small choir to perform in one of Brighton’s Victorian sewers. Amid the hidden underground tunnels, they sing with polyphonic clarity, transforming the sewer into a subterranean organ pipe that echoed with the richness of a cathedral; the sound spilling into the plumbing system above ground. This work was a counterpoint to a work he made for the Pompidou Centre in Paris where the light-filled, elevated escalator hosts the choir. The source of the sound is in full view, its resonance echoing through the glass chambers.

‘One tunnel full of light, physically and metaphorically lifted above the city; the other physically and metaphorically below humanity, taboo.’ (Oliver Beer) • AIR For my own sculpture, mischief is mingled with grace. Turning Into Air, 2009, is constructed from a solid steel bar — its twists and turns are achieved by subjecting the material to intense pressure. But, far from displaying the making process on its surface, the secrets of its origin are concealed beneath the red painted surface. At points, fine stainless steel lines fly out from the painted surface and connect one turn to another. They are thoughts and counter-thoughts, afterthoughts and second thoughts, all trying to find connections to a previous suggestion. At each twist the tensile steel turns into the air around it. Both in this work and in the larger Thinking Aloud, commissioned in 2014 for the Sevenoaks campus, the work is playful in form and in the title’s wordplay, expressing an aerial lightness and elusive energy that is the essence of imaginative freedom. • THREAD Sophie Roet equally does not stand on ceremony, but confidently mixes new material into her woven textile, at times adding aluminium thread, foil-backed silk and woven paper into her designs. • FIRE The spirit of respectful disagreement has also led Thomas Heatherwick to reinvent the monolithic

Olympic Cauldron. In his design for the London 2012 Olympics, 204 separate copper petals — one for each participating nation — create a single fire-breathing form, the many giving shape to the one, acting out in front of an audience of two billion the poetic, ordered dance of collaboration. • LEATHER This polite revolution can also be seen in Emma Hope’s velvet-finished sneaker where a throwaway design for a sports shoe is transformed by fine material and attention to detail. The low in conjunction with the luscious. The past for our students is not an incumbent weight, rather a starting point from which they can adventure into the new. The second shared element is the articulation, in the creative process, to social and environmental concerns. Art is not made in isolation, but draws on society and speaks to society. • JOURNEY The work of conceptual artist Simon Starling begins with extensive research. He follows a thread of enquiry that often leads to work about journeys and transformation. He engages in the archaeology of an object’s cultural history, finding connections in its forgotten past that often have implied social or political meanings or beg rhetorical questions. In his work Autoxylopyrocycloboros, 2006, a wooden boat fitted with a wood-burning, steam-driven engine is launched into Loch Long in Scotland. The boat is then broken apart and dismantled as it journeys into the

loch; the wood of its frame is cut up and fed into the furnace to power its progress. It is a doomed, slapstick journey and soon the boat sinks below the waves. Perhaps there is a message here of the determined folly of a carbon-dependent economy that eats itself in order to power its progress, or maybe the work is a comment on the nearby Faslane submarine base where nuclear submarines lie in the dark waters with the capacity to initiate total global destruction. In Carbon (Hiroshima) a bicycle is adapted into a motorbike by the addition of a chainsaw motor. The motorised bike is then driven into a forest to cut logs in a synergy of pragmatism and destruction. There is a touch of the shamanic in Starling’s work where wisdom is folded into a language that is not always legible. • MEND Celia Pym seeks in her practice to be as close to her audience as possible. She is immersed with the quiet immediacy of the everyday. A textile artist, she sees the clothes we make and wear as a second skin, an intimate covering of our vulnerability to face the world. The longer we wear a garment the more memory it accrues, snagging experiences like sheep’s wool on a hedge until the weight of memory transforms it from a utilitarian object to a catalogue of days lived. She often makes work in collaboration with groups and communities. In 2014 she was invited to be artist in residence, working with Dr Richard Wingate, Head of Anatomy, at King’s College London dissecting room, where she set up her mending studio close to the space where the bodies were being examined. She quietly darned, stitched and patched the worn out garments of the students and professors in

work that attended to the warmth of the familiar, as a counterbalance to the dismantling of the bodies nearby. In her work Norwegian Sweater, 2010, she selected a threadbare worn out sweater from Annemor Sundbø’s ragpile of knitwear that had accumulated in her Norwegian factory. The memory of the sweaters’ owner is lost but its history is written on its battered surface. Celia meticulously darned the broken garment, but far from blending in with the old, the means of its mending is laid bare; a type of healing of the continuously decaying past. • SPACE This attentive social understanding can also be seen in the sensitive masterplanning of Richard Reid’s architectural vision. The balance between the developer’s need to realise the potential of a site is tempered with the design for the community that will inhabit the space. His guiding principle in design is the balance between architecture and building. Architecture, according to Reid, is the product of a cultural mind, a particular expression of personal and cultural vision almost like painting or sculpture. Building, on the other hand, is mostly vernacular, springing from place and responding to immediate materials and needs. Reid has an open-minded absorption of the lessons of both the vernacular and the modernist. The past joining forces with the present to address the future. This is nowhere more evident than in the masterplan for the Lower Mill Estate where he designed a new village around the banks of a series of Gloucestershire lakes. Each house has its own particular individuality, but shares a common visual language as they are organically grouped like

the nearby Cotswold villages. Even Somerford Villa, with its square form and angular massing projecting out into the lake, has deliberate echoes of the village manor; new architecture with a deep understanding of the vernacular. • CHESS Matt Humphrey’s recent Cuban photos describe with empathy the lives of others at close quarters. A black, big-bellied man sits in a threadbare room, his bulk turned towards a rattling fan in an attempt to keep the sultry Cuban heat at bay. He could, like all the images in this recent set of photos have stepped out of a 1950s film, untroubled by the digital world of today. In these images Matt is not only hinting at a relative solitude of each individual or small group, but by implication the isolation of Cuba itself. At the same time he is delighting in a world that has changed little in the past decades, that still has time for chess on the street or a game of string toy trucks. • CLAY Andrew Burton, Professor of Fine Art at the University of Newcastle, collaborates with other makers, for his preferred material is the humble brick. Often these bricks are reused once a major project has been completed and thus they hold on their surface traces of a previous incarnation and the hidden hands that gave form to the brick in the first instance. The vessel forms he makes from bricks challenge our assumption about the straight-edged and flat lines that are the fate of most bricks. He is perhaps asking the viewer to reflect on the handmade uniqueness of the individual

bricks that together build an ever-changing habitation for the imagination. As TS Eliot says in Four Quartets, ‘Old stone to new buildings, old timbers to new fires’. As much a celebration of the substantial achievements of these alumni and the finely tuned balance they all demonstrate between respect and revolution, the exhibition could also be seen as a hymn to the abiding influence of the founder of the Art Department and Head of Art from 1956 to 1993, Bob White. Bob’s determinedly high expectations, his rigorous teaching of both the skills needed to articulate ideas and the subtle, informed intelligence needed to understand them, has been instrumental in all our creative lives. He stands at the beginning of our nascent creativity and through example and intensity of purpose, through the respect that he commanded from his students and peers, he opened the gate for us all to pass through. For all the substantial achievements of these alumni there is one overriding lesson that can be learned from this collection of work. That the uncertain journey of creativity is not without hazards, but the rewards of investing in the imagination are profound. It might lead to a quiet conversation over a patched sweater sleeve or to the masterplanning of the Google headquarters, but encouraged creativity graces students with the ability to trust their own intuition and take their own private thoughts seriously. It is perhaps this that is the real subject of Making It. OLIVER BARRATT • OS 1981

OLIVER BARRATT• OS 1981 Oliver Barratt studied sculpture at Falmouth School of Art, graduating in 1985. Soon afterwards he started a teaching programme for adults with learning difficulties at a residential home near Sevenoaks while establishing his first sculpture studio. This pattern of teaching and practice has remained central to his work ever since. In 1990 Barratt was awarded the Henry Moore Fellowship at the Kent Institute of Art and Design and in the same year he won his first major public commission. Since then he has worked on numerous public projects including Skyline for Liverpool, European City of Culture 2008. Represented by the Beardsmore Gallery, London, Barratt has shown work with galleries from the Guggenheim, Venice to the Royal Academy, London. In 2002 Barratt installed the Everest Memorial, a work dedicated to the climbers who have lost their lives in the attempt to climb Mount Everest; the work is situated one day’s walk from Everest base camp in Nepal at a height of 17,500 feet. He recently completed the Antarctic Memorial in both Cambridge and the Falkland Islands.

‘The slightly creaky, battered red doors and oversize ceramic sinks, determined older students with oil paint on their hands and the Velvet Underground playing on a record player in the corner. Piles of painting, prints hanging from the ceiling, the maze of film studios, strange scented darkrooms and silk screen presses. The art room in the mid-1970s was a place of energy, imagination and mystery. Bob White’s open-minded, highly informed and virtuosic teaching gave us all space to think and room to work. I remember painting directly on to the art room wall, cutting my first linocut, drawing an object by contours around its form and not its outline, and most of all I remember the electric energy of creativity. There can have been no better place to start one’s life as an artist.’ Oliver Barratt, 2015

Barratt was appointed Head of Art at Sevenoaks School in 1993. Thinking Aloud • 2014 Stainless steel and painted bronze, 150 x 150 x 320 cm Site: Sevenoaks School Image: Oliver Barratt

Oliver Barrattâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sculptures attempt to make clear what he does not understand, to formulate in the poetic language of line, colour, space and material signs of the unseen, the transitory made solid; sensual and gracious but essentially internal. Often the works are inspired by something the artist has seen. Turning into Air began life as Barratt watched a single fly navigate its self-imposed frame within a room, finding its invisible edge and bouncing upwards or sideways to describe something almost like a pattern. It acted out a choreographed metaphor, a dance of understanding known only to itself. The capturing of a fleeting moment, turning it into something more permanent and lasting is a key characteristic of Barrattâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sculptures. The formal properties of his work nod to modernism but with a fluidity and movement that place him within contemporary sculpture.

Skyline â&#x20AC;˘ 2007 Site: Liverpool Painted steel, 5 x 7 x 5 m Image: Oliver Barratt

OLIVER BARRATT

Turning into Air • 2010 (above) Steel, stainless steel, paint, 50 x 65 x 65 cm Standing Still • 2014 (left) Steel, resin, paint, 30 x 40 x 110 cm

OLIVER BEER • OS 2004 Oliver Beer studied music before attending the Ruskin School of Fine Art, University of Oxford. His background in both music and fine art led to an early interest in the relationship between sound and space, particularly the voice and architecture. He has translated his research into performances in which spectators take part by the mere fact of their presence, and he makes sculptures and videos that embody, literally or metaphorically, the plastic expression of this subtle relationship and the way the human body experiences it. Within and alongside his work with sound, Beer creates subtle and diverse sculptural, installation and film projects whose provenance sometimes seems biographical, but in which his play with universal − often intimate − concerns draws on shared emotions and perceptions. Beer gained his BA at the Academy of Contemporary Music in 2007, his BFA from Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in 2009, and as a postgraduate he studied Theory of Cinema at the Sorbonne in Paris. He has undertaken commissions and featured in exhibitions nationally and internationally including solo exhibitions at the Pompidou Centre, Paris (2014), Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, Paris (2014), a permanent installation at Ikon Gallery in Birmingham (2013) and group exhibitions at Palais de Tokyo (2014) and Moma PS1, New York (2014). He was awarded the Daiwa Foundation Art Prize in June 2015.

‘I think my Sixth Form at Sevenoaks may have been fairly atypical: I remember making casts of my head in lead taken from atomic bomb shelters; organising gastronomic performances; and making my first video art by accosting people who passed in front of the Art Department. The facilities may have burgeoned since my departure — and A Levels are no longer an option — but I hope that the students are still afforded the same amount of freedom and support that I had at school, as it certainly allowed me to follow my own path and started me on the road to working independently as an artist.’ Oliver Beer, 2015

Reanimation — Snow White • 2014 16mm film, digital transfer, colour, sound. Duration 3’4” Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Paris-Salzburg Image © the artist. Production: Villa Arson, Nice, France Reanimation — Snow White was made by extracting a 40-second clip from the 1938 version of Snow White. The 1938 film is animated at 12 frames per second, with around 500 unique images making up the frames in the 40 second sequence. Beer sent each of the extracted images with instructions to 500 different children in schools in the south-east of France. The children then traced the forms, whilst reinterpreting and reimagining them. The resulting drawings show all of the variety, freedom and unselfconscious expression that one might expect. We are able to watch and recognise the original Disney masterpiece, the birds flying, squirrels fleeing, the horror on Snow White’s face as she’s confronted with her nemesis the Queen — and yet at the same time we perceive the passing of 500 flickering personalities. The film was premiered at the Pompidou Centre, Paris, on 22 May 2014.

Deep and Meaningful (still) • 2010 Video 7’15’’ Part of the Resonance Project, Image © the artist Centre Georges Pompidou • 2008 Part of the Resonance Project, Image © the artist The Resonance Project is an ongoing series of performances, installations and films that uses the human voice to stimulate architectural spaces to resound at their natural frequencies. Resonance Project performances and films have taken place and been exhibited in such places as the Pompidou Centre, the Palais de Tokyo, Ikon Gallery, Modern Art Oxford, MoMA PS1, a multistorey car park and the Brighton sewers.

Clear Standard Classic (Leg Side) • 2014 Light bulb, sectioned and immersed in wall. Glass, metal, plastic, resin, paint. Dimensions: 27 x 22 x 1 cm. Image © the artist Courtesy of the artist & Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Paris-Salzburg White Pencil Drawing • 2014 Pencil, sectioned and immersed in wall. Glass, metal, plastic, resin, paint. Dimensions: 27 x 22 x 1 cm. Image © the artist Courtesy of the artist & Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Paris-Salzburg

In the sculpture-drawings of the light bulb and the pencil Beer plays with notions of presence and absence and interrogates the physical properties of everyday objects. They are made by slicing through real objects and immersing them into the wall.

OLIVER BEER

ANDREW BURTON • OS 1981 Andrew Burton creates sculptures that are about material, process and form. He works with various mediums including bamboo, clay and cow dung and often develops projects collaboratively. Experimentations with recycling and reuse is a common theme in his work, and sculptures are often conceived as temporary structures — once a form is resolved they are broken up, with the component parts salvaged to form the building blocks for the next work. Burton studied Fine Art at Newcastle University, where he has been Head of the Fine Art Department and is now Professor of Fine Art. He regularly works on projects around the world. Since 2011 he has worked with artisans and craftspeople in India, Korea, China, Australia, Europe, North America and Africa. He has had a wealth of residencies, commissions and exhibitions including that of artist in residence at Hifleager’s Cottage, Hill End, New South Wales in 2015. His solo exhibitions include Andipa Gallery, London (2014), the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Art at the University of East Anglia, Norwich (2014) and the National Craft Museum in New Delhi (2011).

‘Under Bob White and Chris Thomas the art room was an inspirational and nurturing place to start to be an artist. There was a tradition that seemed wonderfully subversive where Sixth Formers colonised a small corner of the art room. It was a kind of den, with partitions made from old stretchers and a stripy curtain for a door. Until very recently I still had a very large painting I made in it, and of it, with Emma Hope perched on a stool. There was a record player, with a heap of scratched vinyls, Lou Reed and the like, though when we could play them I can’t imagine. All this was hidden away behind a huge rack for storing paper. I especially remember Bob White saying, “Always think with a pencil in your hand.” That was very good advice.’ Andrew Burton, 2015

Vessels • 2014-15 (detail) Fired clay, paint, glaze, wire, adhesive, 130 x 30 x 30 cm Image © Jim Stephenson, 2014gl

Vessels â&#x20AC;˘ 2014-15 Fired clay, paint, glaze, wire, adhesive, 130 x 30 x 30 cm Image ÂŠ Jim Stephenson, 2014 Vessels were originally made for a site with a distinctly subterranean feel. Burton was interested in how the works could be read as vessels, but also as something more sinister, like bombs or torpedoes. The three sculptures are constructed from thousands of handmade bricks used regularly by Burton over the past ten years, utilised over time for temporary sculptures. After these works were completed and exhibited they were broken up, the component parts salvaged for building blocks for new work. Over time, and with their continual reuse, these building blocks have accreted palimpsest-like surfaces made up of the layers of paint, glaze, stain and cement that fixed the sculptures together. These surfaces convey a sense of the earlier structures and suggest the way that memories and histories gradually overlay one another. Akin to the mutable quality of memory, the residual traces of certain sculptures are more vivid and present than others where traces are barely visible. In its emphasis on the reuse and recycling of earlier sculptures, the works provoke questions about the nature of the monumental and the fugitive. Jug â&#x20AC;˘ 2008 Reused bricks, cement, steel. 2.25 x 0.7 x 0.5 m

ANDREW BURTON

Tholos • 2010 Reused bricks, 3 x 3 x 1.2 m

THOMAS HEATHERWICK CBE, RDI • OS 1988 Thomas Heatherwick is a designer whose work defies the conventional classification of design disciplines. His studio was founded in 1994 to bring the practices of design, architecture, sculpture and urban planning together in a single workspace. Heatherwick works on all projects in collaboration with his team of 170 highly skilled architects, designers and makers. His unusual approach challenges every new brief, to produce unique solutions for each project’s needs. In applying artistic thinking to the needs of modern cities, his studio is engaged in creating some of the most acclaimed and memorable projects of our time. Heatherwick graduated in 3-D Design from Manchester Polytechnic in 1991 and attended the Royal College of Art, London, in 1992. Notable commissions and projects include The Rolling Bridge, Paddington Basin, London (2014), the UK Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo (2010) and the Olympic Cauldron for the London 2012 Olympic Games. He has been appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He is also an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, a Royal Academician and in 2004 became the youngest ever Royal Designer for Industry.

The Heatherwick Studio was invited by the organising committee of the London 2012 Olympic Games and Danny Boyle, creative director of the opening ceremony, to design the vessel for the fire that burns throughout the games, which is known as the Olympic cauldron. Unusually, the cauldron was placed inside the stadium, a nod to the cauldron from the 1948 London Olympics. This precedent suggested that rooting it to the ground among the spectators could again give the cauldron a more intimate relationship to the crowd as well as connecting with the circularity of the stadium. This central position seemed to more fully express the cauldron’s ritual importance as the altar of the Olympic Games. The idea was that each country would bring a unique object to the ceremony and these pieces would come together and cooperate to form a cauldron. When the games ended, the cauldron would come apart again so that each country could take home their piece of it as a national memento of the event. Every one of the constituent pieces would be distinct, their size and shape in no way reflecting the relative wealth, size or global status of any one country. Until the moment when the cauldron was lit, none of the 80,000 spectators in the stadium or the billion viewers worldwide watching on television knew where it was located, who would light it or what it would look like.

‘I remember sitting in a Design lesson at school, which was a new subject then. I received what might have been my first A grade for a piece of homework and remember thinking, I can do this.’ Thomas Heatherwick, 2015

Olympic Cauldron • 2012 Image: Jasper White

THOMAS HEATHERWICK UK Pavilion: Seed Cathedral • 2010 Image: Iwan Baan Heatherwick Studio created the UK Pavilion for the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, China. It was the largest Expo ever, consisting of more than 200 pavilions. The studio’s finished design was ‘a cathedral to seeds’, seeds being immensely significant for the ecology of the planet and fundamental to human nutrition and medicine. For Heatherwick and his team, seeds seemed the ultimate symbol of potential and promise to showcase at this future-gazing expo. At the finished pavilion the Seed Cathedral was a box, 15 metres high and 10 metres tall. Silvery hairs protruded from every surface, consisting of 60,000 identical rods of clear acrylic, 7.5 metres long, which extended through the walls of the box and lifted it into the air. Inside the pavilion, the geometry of the rods formed a space described by a curvaceous undulating surface. There were 250,000 seeds cast into the glassy tips of all the hairs. By day, the pavilion’s interior was lit by the sunlight that came in along the length of each rod and lit up the seed ends. By night, light sources inside each rod illuminated not only the seed ends inside the structure, but the tips of the hairs outside it, covering the pavilion in tiny points of light that danced and tingled in the breeze. The Shanghai Expo lasted six months, during which more than eight million people went inside the Seed Cathedral, making it the UK’s most visited tourist attraction, nearly 6000 miles from the UK. It was also the pavilion most visited by dignitaries, diplomats, royalty, presidents, ministers, leading industrialists and celebrities, from many countries.

Spun Chair • 2010 Image: Susan Smart Spun Chair was born out of Heatherwick’s ambition to make a piece of furniture from the traditional techniques of metal spinning, conventionally used to make things like lampshades or drums. The resulting chair is a genuinely useful, comfortable piece of design that looks nothing like a traditional chair and instead uses the language of silversmithing or goblet making, appearing more like a vase, vessel or cup. Unlike the smooth metal version of the chair, the plastic one is covered with a detail of fine ridges, like grooves of an old vinyl record, reinforcing the rotational shape of the form. These grooves make it look a bit like a clay pot that’s been thrown on the potter’s wheel and still bears the marks of the potter’s fingers. The chair is a play object as well as a beautiful thing. It moves and rocks and spins around. At first the spinning actions distracts people from realising the chair is comfortable to sit in.

EMMA HOPE MBE • OS 1980 Emma Hope is an award-winning designer whose shoes and accessories are sold around the world. Emma graduated from the Cordwainers College in London and began her career at Laura Ashley. Alongside her own label she has designed shoes for Paul Smith, Anna Sui and Mulberry. Her designs can be seen in films such as Pride and Prejudice (2005) and she has made work for artists at the Moulin Rouge in Paris. Emma has also written for Vogue, Elle, The Times and Country Life. All of her works are made in small, familyowned factories in Tuscany, by specialists in the finest hand-crafted shoe making techniques. Emma has won five Design Council Awards, the Martini Style Award, the Harpers & Queen Design Award and the Clothes Show TV and DTI Accessories Award. In 2011 she was made an Honorary Fellow of The University of the Arts London and in 2012 awarded an MBE for services to the fashion industry.

‘At my previous girls’ grammar school I had been told that I had no imagination, and although I loved drawing comics, I only decided to take Art as a last minute A Level option, not thinking I could make a career using it. My first memory of the art room, arriving in September 1978, era of The Clash and The Sex Pistols, from a Miss Jean Brodie climate, was teacher James Enderby wearing a bin bag, sitting on the worktop next to a ringing phone, saying, “That’ll be the telephone.” We were allowed a space to paint and keep our stuff and I got to sit next to Andrew Burton who had immediately endeared himself to me by scathingly pointing out that I was supposed to be learning how to do it instead of letting helpful boys stretch paper canvases for me. I remember Bob White doing “flow of consciousness art speak” when he set us projects. Apart from knowing we were doing a mural or silk screening I never knew what we were meant to be trying to conjure up, but that wide open space was what made it your own. Bob was always encouraging and showed me that drawing was about light and shade, not just outlining shapes. He didn’t sneer when I drew a picture of a Coke can, just wondered if he might have seen someone do that somewhere before. Olly Copplestone was a brilliant cartoonist and the year above me. After I left the Cordwainers College I asked him to design my logo, which he did and which has been with me as a reminder of the brilliant art room crew I was lucky enough to hang out with all those years ago. If I hadn’t been lucky enough to make that last-minute decision to take A Level Art, I would never have known the support and search for originality that Bob set us up for.’ Emma Hope, 2015

Images: David Merewether

EMMA HOPE

MATT HUMPHREY • OS 1997 Matt Humphrey is a professional portrait, travel and reportage photographer. His interest lies in how people interact with one another and capturing moments of honesty in everyday life. His photographs explore social tendencies, inclinations, actions, mistakes and rituals and how these reveal and expose aspects of our characters that are universal. He says, ‘There is an aesthetic to be found in the most mundane of actions, and it is through these vignettes of routine that we discover and unravel a culture or community.’ Humphrey has worked and exhibited internationally. He has had solo exhibitions at the Strand Gallery, London (2010 and 2012) as well as in his own workspace theLOCALgallery, London (2013 and 2014). Next year, his exclusive backstage theatre photos will be part of a transatlantic exhibition opening at the V&A and transferring to the New York Public Library, celebrating 40 years of the Olivier Awards. ‘The art room was always a sanctuary, somewhere I could get lost in my work, and explore my creativity; it became my second home. Life at Sevenoaks set me up with big expectations and an open mind to then explore the world.’ Matt Humphrey, 2015

Ritual de lo Habitual • 2015 Photographic prints, each 40 x 60 cm This series of photographs came out of Humphrey’s recent trip to Cuba. He first visited the island when studying there in 2000 and was interested to see what had changed in the last 15 years. Humphrey found it refreshing to see a fully functional society where community values rank so highly, and people live out so much of their day-to-day lives on the street. From work stations set up in doorways and roadside chit-chats, to the daily game of dominos and families preparing meals in the road, for Humphrey, Cuba created the perfect conditions for capturing life through street scenes. Humphrey notes that Cuba is much more than old American and Russian cars parked outside crumbling buildings preserved by a World Heritage status, but feels that they form a fitting backdrop to the strong community values embedded in Cuban culture. Humphrey wanted to explore the spaces that people create for themselves within the urban environment and how they affect and extend a visual exploration of that particular character and life story.

ÂŠ Matt Humphrey

MATT HUMPHREY

CELIA PYM • OS 1996 Celia Pym works in knitting, darning and embroidery, making repair work visible in order to highlight process and to embody notions of care. She is interested in how things are made and how they work. She describes darning as a tender act which helps us to understand the things we mend. The act of mending and caring is central to Pym’s artistic practice and is also a crucial element of her other vocation — Pym is a qualified nurse. She is a Visiting Lecturer (Textiles) at UCA Farnham and Royal College of Art, and teaches on the Fashion Foundation Programme at West London College, London. She received her BA in Visual and Environmental Studies (sculpture) at Harvard University in 2001 and gained her MA in Textiles at the RCA in London in 2008. She completed a PGDip in Adult Nursing from King’s College London in 2013. Pym was recipient of the 2014 Crafts Council and King’s Cultural Institute Parallel Practices Residency with Dr Richard Wingate, making darning and repair work with Anatomy students at KCL’s Dissecting Room. Her work has been included in numerous shows nationally and internationally including the Pump House Gallery, London (2015) and The Festival of Love at the Southbank Centre (2015).

‘I joined Sevenoaks School in the Sixth Form. I spent most of my time in the evenings and free periods in the art room and weaving studio. Lesley Millar and Oliver Barratt were really wonderful teachers. They were both so excited about their art and weaving, very encouraging and I was impressed with how much they knew about materials, artists, exhibitions, and making a living as an artist. It was inspiring to me that they were teaching what they loved. Learning to weave was a big deal for me. I could organise colour in windings, play with line and pattern and didn’t have to draw still life, which I didn’t feel very good at. Instead I could make technical drawings calculating my thread count which I loved. I still love a good diagram.’ Celia Pym, 2015

Norwegian Sweater • 2010 (detail) Annemor Sundbø’s Ragpile collection, white wool darning, 90 x 130 cm. Image: Michele Panzeri

Hope’s Sweater 1951 • 2011 (left) Moth-eaten sweater and darning 30 x 40 x 3cm. Image: Michele Panzeri These were both sweaters Pym was given to repair — unlike Norwegian Sweater the owners and the origin of the damage was known. The sweaters were no longer worn by their owners but had been held on to, without knowing what to do with them. So Pym became their temporary caretaker.

Norwegian Sweater • 2010 (right) Annemor Sundbø’s Ragpile collection, white wool darning 90 x 130 cm. Image: Michele Panzeri Pym visited Ose in Norway in 2009 to meet Annemor Sundbø, with friend Siri Johansen. Sundbø has an amazing collection of Norwegian knitwear that she had amassed since the 1970s and which she calls her Ragpile. Pym was excited to see the collection of knitwear that had been rescued. During the visit Sundbø showed the pair her most damaged item, a sweater in rags, the group spent some time discussing how the sweater might have got so ragged and found evidence of already darned patches and a shift in colour on one sleeve. Sundbø offered Pym the sweater to mend. Each time Pym exhibits it she finds a few more small holes that need attention – it needs constant care.

Ghost Chair • 2003 Hand-knit mohair, 100 x 45 x 45 cm (chair), 80 x 95 x 50 cm (table). Image: Celia Pym Pym had in mind a dust jacket for a chair when she made Ghost Chair. She wanted to see the form of the chair in its cover. Like an echo or shadow of the heavy solid object; she was making the form of this everyday object light through the use of knitting to construct the sculpture.

CELIA PYM

RICHARD REID • OS 1957 Richard Reid is an architect whose practice is based in Sevenoaks and Guangzhou, China. He is best known for his work on the award-winning development at Lower Mill Estate, competition-winning projects for Kleinzschocher, Leipzig, the Bertalia-Lazzaretto District of Bologna and the masterplan, in collaboration with Lyons+Sleeman+Hoare for the Garden City of Greenville. Reid’s practice is celebrated for an understanding of the scale and appropriateness for a range of projects — from a small hamlet in the Cotswolds to a new town along the banks of the Pearl River. When the practice was working on a masterplan for Nansha Bay, China, they were also awarded the prize for the best small house in The Sunday Times British Homes Award 2012. He also specialises in regeneration and mixed use housing developments where place making is key. Reid is a member of the RIBA and studied architecture at the Northern Polytechnic (1957-63) and later at the Academia Britannica, Rome as a Rome Scholar in Architecture (1968-69). He was both a teacher and external examiner at numerous architectural schools in the UK, Europe and the USA before setting up in practice in 1987.

Somerford Villa • 2005 Lower Mill Estate, Cotswold Water Park

‘I was a boarder at Park Grange and later Johnsons, during the transition from James Higgs-Walker to Kim Taylor and, at that time, there was no Art Department as such, just a classroom in a corner of Park Grange. The big changes came with Kim Taylor and a group of hugely talented and enthusiastic teachers, including Bob White, whom he had attracted to the school. Any new facilities, as such, were still some years away. The Art Department was relocated above a Manor House garage, for Bob’s first term, which we helped him to redecorate before he could begin the first of many discussions as he helped us marshal head, hand and heart in pursuit of our creative directions. When you look around at the wonderful facilities of the school today, at the great Art Department, and the fine Performing Arts Centre, and the marvellous opportunities these help provide, I’m also reminded of how, in the hands of a great teacher, you can still be shown the way with the most limited of means, as Bob showed us during those early weeks so many years ago. When we helped Bob redecorate the first floor garage space he didn’t just put a few colours in our paint boxes, so to speak, but provided the most profound, enthusiastic and inspirational teaching for a class I was so lucky to be a part of.’ Richard Reid, 2015

Alsace Sketchbook • 1982 Hill Village, Nansha, China • 1995-96 Italian Sketchbook • 1982-86

RICHARD REID

Replacement House • 2003-07 Sevenoaks Epping Forest Civic Offices • 1985-92

Masterplan for Bologna • 2001-14 Aerial view of Lower Mill Estate • 2002-10 Third Phase

SOPHIE ROET• OS 1988 Sophie Roet is one of Europe’s foremost creative woven textile designers and innovators of luxury fabrics. She gained her BA in Woven Textile Design from the University of Brighton in 1991. She completed her MA in Woven Textile Design from the RCA in 1995. She is dedicated to creating innovative, sumptuous textiles of the highest quality that go back to the roots of craftsmanship to mark the importance of handmade textiles to the fashion world. She says, ‘Beautiful craftsmanship is becoming rare and precious — it takes time and irregularities occur. I want to celebrate these irregularities and the soul of the fabrics which are produced and embellished by hand.’ Her current and recent clients include Lanificio F.lli Cerruti, Biella, All Saints, London, Willow, Sydney, Nicole Farhi and Hussein Chalayan. Textiles from Sophie Roet for RB, Kolkata, have been bought by Lanvin, Rochas and Givenchy. Sophie’s works are held in collections worldwide including the permanent collection at the V&A, the Berlin Technikmuseum, the Museum of Art Rhode Island School of Design and the Textile Arts Gallery in New Mexico. Roet also co-founded and successfully launched the high-fashion Australian womenswear brand Willow. Roet has featured in exhibitions including Milan Smart Fashion (2009), Evolution/ Revolution at RISD, Rhode Island (2008) and an exhibition at the V&A, London (2002).

‘Prior to joining Sevenoaks School at 16, I hadn’t studied art or design although I already knew that I wanted to work with fashion and textiles. Fortunately Bob White, who ran the Art Department, recognised my passion and commitment and agreed to my taking Art as one of my Higher Level subjects for the International Baccalaureate. With his support and guidance, I was introduced to a wide range of artistic mediums and I was encouraged to “think outside the box” — the main project he set for me was to create garments with anything but fabric! My final presentation for the IB exam consisted of a collection of garments made from paper, photographs, bubble wrap, lacquered leaves and stapled foam. In addition to this highly experimental and inspiring approach in the art room, I also had the invaluable opportunity to learn about, and make my own fabric, in the weaving studio under Lesley Millar’s caring guidance. The portfolio I created at Sevenoaks got me a place on one of the top foundation courses at Central School of Art.’ Sophie Roet, 2015

Marble Print • 2005 (detail) Hand-printed marbling on silk satin textile, 87 x 40 cm Image: Andra Nelki

Images: Andra Nelki

Space Dyed Silk • 2005 Silk, 120 x 70 cm

Marble Print • 2005 Hand-printed marbling on silk satin textile, 87 x 140 cm

Ikat is a textile technique that combines hand-painted threads with hand-weaving to create bold and colourful patterns. Roet wanted to create a subtle, minimal and contemporary Ikat design that was reversible. ‘Reversible silk’ was handwoven using the finest hand-painted silk threads.

Rather than using a screen to produce a marbled design, Roet wanted to create the marbling effect by hand so that each length of cloth would be completely unique. Every length would differ, depending on the amount of ink used and how the hand-marbling process was executed.

SOPHIE ROET

Paper Textile • 2004 Paper and steel, Polyamide Monofilament, 120 x 150 cm

Metal Beaded Silk Scarf • 2005 Silk and metal beads, 50 x 143 cm

‘Warp and weft threads are, by rule, straight and regular. I wanted to challenge this “norm” of strict and straight lines, through the creation of a textile with wandering threads. This design is made of Japanese paper and steel combined with polyamide monofilament. Once woven, I manually manipulated the textile length in order to create the irregular wavy lines.’ Paper Textile was commissioned for the interior of a chateau in France.

Combining metal elements with textiles enriches the cloth, giving it a beautiful weight and enhancing its precious quality. This hand-woven scarf has been made with tiny metal beads, which have been laboriously hand-knotted onto silk thread prior to being woven into the textile. Roet’s focus was to integrate the beads into the structure of the cloth, rather than applying them after the textile had been constructed.

SIMON STARLING • OS 1986 Simon Starling is one of the world’s best-known conceptual artists. He makes objects, installations, and pilgrimage-like journeys which draw out an array of ideas about nature, technology and economics. He completed his BA in Photography at Nottingham Polytechnic in 1990 and graduated from the Glasgow School of Art with an MFA in 1992. He was Professor of Fine Arts at the Städelschule in Frankfurt between 2003 and 2013. Starling won the Turner Prize in 2005 and represented Scotland at the Venice Biennale in 2003. He has exhibited internationally with solo exhibitions at Mass MoCA, Massachusetts (2008), The Power Plant, Toronto (2008), The Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (2011), MUMA, Melbourne (2013) and MCA, Chicago (2014).

Carbon (Hiroshima) • 2011 (right) Chainsaw, bicycle, camphor wood, dimensions variable Installation view at Hiroshima MOCA, 2011 Image: Keiichi Moto (CACTUS). Courtesy of the artist and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow Part performance, part design project, this ongoing series of works has been realised in a number of locations over the past decade. The sculpture gives the chainsaw motor at its heart a double life as a device for chopping and subsequently transporting logs. Originally inspired by both a particularly resourceful piece of Cuban makeshift technology, a chainsawdriven bicycle and the design of the French VéloSoleX moped, this hybrid machine has been built using locally sourced components and used to harvest timber in the area surrounding the sites of the exhibition.

‘For me the Sevenoaks School Art Department was all about feeling connected to the wider world, the world beyond the parking lot panorama of the semi-subterranean art room. Those connections came primarily through three fantastic members of staff who were the driving force behind the department. There was the charismatic and somewhat aloof Bob White, the then head of department, whose straggly long hair and well-lived-in face were alone enough to make an aspiring teenage artist feel somehow connected — connected to what, you were perhaps never quite sure. What we did know was that Bob’s son was in a fantastically cool band and that he had an “art practice” above and beyond his teaching position. Then there was the mercurial Simon Evans, a part-time DJ, folk music fan and Morris dancer, who ran the photographic darkrooms. Photography has always been central to my activities as an artist but over and above that, Simon opened up a whole world of grass-roots culture to me, the complexity and depth of which was a revelation. Finally, and no doubt most significantly, my time at Sevenoaks was most deeply marked by the arrival of a young and extraordinarily gifted and energetic teacher, Graham Coupe. Graham, who came pretty much fresh from studying at London’s Goldsmiths College, was hugely influential on me, opening up a range of possibilities, constantly pushing new books under my nose, tipping me off about the best exhibitions to see in London and perhaps most importantly, making me feel that my interests really mattered, that they shouldn’t be understood as peripheral or extra-curricular. With his openness, generosity and sense of excitement, Graham I think, also taught me how to teach — something that has also been important to my development as an artist in recent years. With this team behind me the move into the socially and politically more complex realm of art education could be handled with a degree of confidence and conviction.’ Simon Starling, 2015

SIMON STARLING

Autoxylopyrocycloboros • 2006 38 colour transparencies, Götschmann medium format slide projector, and flight case Duration: 4 minutes Projected dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist and The Modern Institute/ Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow Tabernas Desert Run • 2004 Lambda Print, 76 x 89 cm Photo: Simon Starling

On 9 September 2004, a 41-mile crossing of the Tabernas Desert was made by the artist on an improvised, fuel-cell powered, electric bicycle. The bicycle was driven by a 900-watt motor that was in turn powered by electricity produced in a portable Nexa fuel cell fitted into its frame. The fuel cell is capable of producing up to 1200 watts of power using only compressed bottled hydrogen and oxygen from the desert air. The only waste product from the moped’s desert crossing was pure water, of which 600 ml was captured in a water bottle mounted below the fuel cell − the rest escaped as water vapour. The captured waste water was subsequently used to produce a ‘botanical’ watercolour illustration of an Opuntia cactus. The painting of this most ‘ergonomic’ of plants refers back to the site of the journey and to Sergio Leone (who introduced cacti into the area as part of his film sets), while also parodying the somewhat clumsy prototype moped. The work and its title make a direct reference to Chris Burden’s 1977 Death Valley Run, a seven-hour desert crossing made in the real Wild West on a bike powered by a tiny petrol engine.

PRINCIPAL PATRON: STANLEY LEUNG LST Capital Partners Sevenoaks School wishes to extend sincere thanks and appreciation to Mr Stanley Leung and LST Capital Partners for so generously supporting the MAKING IT exhibition. www.lstpartners.com

Stanley Leung attended Sevenoaks School 1985-87 completing the Sixth Form with distinction. He went on to study Monetary Economics at LSE before returning to Hong Kong. Over the past 25 years Mr Leung has had a formidable career in investment banking in Asia. Before founding LST Capital Partners in 2013 Mr Leung was Managing Director of China Construction Bank International Securities. LST Capital Partners is a Hong Kong SAR-based SFC-licensed investment adviser. Mr Leung serves as CIO and oversees all investment activities. Comprised a team of eight investment professionals, the company strives to generate superior long-term capital appreciation through a portfolio of economic franchises with sustainable competitive advantages. The fund strategy is global equity long/short with a long bias, that capitalises on opportunities arising from mispriced securities based on a strong understanding of brand value and the interlinkage between Asian and global companies. Investors include both high net worth individuals and institutions. Mr Leung has been a patron of the arts in Hong Kong SAR and China for more than 20 years. In recent years he has generously provided the staff of Sevenoaks School with access to his extensive private art collection so that they may develop their understanding and appreciation of Chinese art and culture. This has helped deepen and enrich the schoolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s art curriculum for students, particularly drawing attention to Chinese contemporary art in a global context.

ACKNOWLEGEMENTS

SEVENOAKS ALUMNI EXHIBITION: INVENTION & IMAGINATION