LIST OF ARTISTS Please don’ feel that you need to use the artists listed here – there are many more! You will notice that there is a clear emphasis on painting and sculpture in this list. If you are keen to explore photography, film or digital media, please let us know more about your project so that we can give you some relevant pointers. Try to spend a bit of time on the internet just looking at the images by each of the artists so that you are well-informed before you select your artist influences. Google Images is a great way to do this, so that you don’t have to enter websites for each and every artist. Hopefully a few people here you will find inspiring!
BODIES, PEOPLE, PORTRAITS ANTHONY GORMLEY: British sculptor using bodies (often casts of his own) in multiples. You may have seen his piece walking into the sea in Corby, or people on the buildings around the South Bank Centre. Very accessible for children, and inspiring to develop work from. NIKI DE SANTE PHALLE: Bright and colourful sculpures of women and animals. Also produced many colourful design drawings and built an adventure park. Very popular with children!. Could be used for sports/bodies projects, either as papermache charactors or to influence paintings/print. ROMUALD HAZOUME: Beninese sculptor who uses recycled containers and materials to make portraits of different charactors. Very good fun and accessible for children. Recycling element also good for schools and Olympics link. CHRIS OFFILI: British artist of Nigerian heritage and one of the YBAs. His paintings incorporate paint, resin, glitter, elephant dung and magazine collage, to create portraits that often address racial stereotypes. More recently his work as incorporated more natural life-forms (plants etc) and the colours are bolder. WARNING: These images are exiting and accessible for children at a distance, but make sure you check any close-up images, as elements of the details collages are NOT suitable for children. JULIAN OPIE: British artist well-known for his simplified portraits using black outlines and flat colour (historically, he has also produced images based on buildings, grids and streetscapes) OTHERS GOOD FOR PORTRAITS/PEOPLE: ENRICO DAVID, JENNY SAVILLE, LUCIAN FREUD, JOHN STEZAKER, LUC TUYMANS. ALSO ARTISTS IN THE BP PORTRAITS AWARD (NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY), OR TALOR WESSING PHOTOGRAPHIC PROTRAIT PRIZE (ALSO NPG).
IDENTITY, CULTURES JUDY CHICAGO: Feminist artist famous for her Dinner Party project, where she made place settings for famous influencial women. Good template for ‘My heroes’ or ‘Aspirations’ projects – could inspire 2D work (drawing/paint/print/collage) or your could try plate decoration from ceramic blacks, or textiles pieces. JULIAN SINZOGAN: Beautifully drawn, coloured paintings of boats with coloured sails and flags etc. Good for creating new flags, emblems, national/global identities.
KARA WALKER: African-american artist who uses traditional colonial silhouettes to create giant silhouettes narratives exploring racial oppression. Powerful pieces that children often relate to well. Could be used with artist Lotte Reineger or shadow puppets as inspiration for puppet/video/2D collaborative piece. WARNING: please look at the images carefully before showing them to the children. Some of the images show violent acts. YINKA SHONIBARE: British-Nigerian artist who put Nelson’s giant ‘ship in a bottle’ on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalger square. Makes exciting sculptures from a broad range of materials, often using brightly coloured African fabrics in his work. His work acknowledges his phyical disability, and works with a team of ‘makers’. Work themes include race, class and post-colonialism.
INVENTIONS, SCIENCE, MACHINES, REPETITION. JEAN TINGUELY: makes mad machines/sculptures out of metals. Sometimes they are designed to run and run until they destroy themselves. Would be good for inventions/experimenting theme. KEITH TYSON: British artist who produces paintings and drawings often incorporating scientific formulae, diagrams, number etc. Some of his paintings look like biological closeups etc, but his early work is a good example of how much colourful fun you can have with symbols and signs, combining words and images. FERNAND LEGER: Painter who created angular, colourful paintings of people, places, construction sites, machines etc. His angular and mechanical style might be relevant for this. BRIDGET RILEY: British Op-artist famous for her large paintings of coloured (and sometimes black/white) grids and lines, which she creates to play with ideas of optical illusions. ROGER HIORN: In his piece ‘Seizure’ he filled an entire flat with copper sulphate solution and over the course of several months crystals grew all over the flat (bright blue).
MOVEMENT, DANCE, BALANCE, LIGHT, COLOUR REBECCA HORN: German sculptor, filmmaking and performance artist who made a whole selection of body-attachments which restricted her movements. She made a lot of work with feathers, stilts and body extensions, as well as films which documented dance and movement. ALEXANDER CALDER: American artist made mobiles and also minature animated sculptures (Calder’s Circus). Much of the work looked at balance, rhythm and movement. FLOW FLUX FLIGHT ARTISTS (Orleans House Gallery current exhibition) DAN FLAVIN and JAMES TURRELL: Artists specifically dealing with light and colour in art VANESSA JACKSON: British painter - formalist colour paintings dealing with balance, colour and spirituality. MARC REMBOLD: Paintings explore light and colour spectrums. RICHARD TUTTLE: American artist who makes small pieces of work, often quite simple, colourful and abstract. He uses painting, print, sculpture and installation, and much of the work is concerned with formal issues of material, form, scale. Very accessible at primary level. Could be used for several project themes, primarly object based.
NARRATIVE & IMAGINATION GRAYSON PERRY: British ceramic artist often drawing and writing on the surface of pots/ceramics to tell stories/narratives. Also made the Walthamstow Tapestry, inspired by the Bayeaux Tapestry, and some other textiles. Good for exploring narrative and looking at ways to combine images and words. A very good example of stopping you worrying about drawings being ‘perfect’! WARNING make sure you check images carefully before using in classes – there are many suitable images, but also some that have inappropriate sexual imagery. LOTTE REINEGER: German artist/filmmaker who created animations of fairy tales using silhouettes/black paper LAUREN CHILDS: contemporary illustrator – eg Charlie and Lola QUENTIN BLAKE: illustrator: famous for all his illustrations for Raold Dahl books FOR SOME REALLY GOOD EXAMPLES OF CHILDREN’S ILLUSTRATORS, VISIT THE TATE MODERN BOOKSHOP ON SOUTHBANK FOR AN HOUR AND LOOK THROUGH THEIR SELECTION. PAULA REGO: British/Portuguese feminst painter and printmaker. Makes figurative work, often of families and women, but also of well-known stories and nursery-rhymes. Accessible, almost illustrative images - with a twist. PIYALI GHOSH: Indian artist painting strange and imaginary scenes and creatures – brightly coloured and stimulating for schools work. KEN KIFF and ODILON READING: both earlier examples of imaginary work.
LANDSCAPE AND ENVIRONMENT SULING WANG: Taiwanese painter who’s bright and colourful paintings explore the changing landscape and rapid industrialisation of Taiwan. Her work looks quite abstract at first, with lots of swirling movement in it, but up close you can see elements of drawing, landscape and also some quite cartoony/manga-like references. PETER DOIG: British artists making figurative landscape paintings – romantic, colourful and atmospheric. Accessible for children. CY TWOMBLY: American artist who’s paintings are in between colourful abstraction, scribbles and writing. Can be interpreted in many ways and great for younger children still exploring mark-making and compositions. EARTH: ART IN A CHANGING WORLD (2009): MANY INTERESTING WORKS AND ARTISTS FROM THIS EXHIBITION – LOOK ONLINE AT THE WEBSITE http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/gsk-contemporary-season-2009/
MANIFESTOS AND IDEAS: USING TEXT IN ART SIMON PATTERSON: produced The Great Bear, changing all the words on the London Underground Map to names of philosophers, artists, explorers etc. He also produced alternative versions of the Periodic Table etc. JENNY HOLZER (USA) and BARBARA KRUGER (Germany): both feminist artist who use words, advertising, digital printouts etc to get their messages across. This approach could
be used if you wanted to try photographic collage or text-only art. BOB AND ROBERTA SMITH (Patrick Brill) predominantley paints words directly onto canvas or board, merging the line between art and political slogans. ILYA KABAKOV’s PALACE OF PROJECTS included over 100 examples of inventions and imaginary ideas about how to make the world a better place to live. The ideas where displayed through printed and written text explanations, drawings and very home-made looking sculptures and installations.
BUILDINGS: ARCHITECTS, ARTISTS AND INTERIOR DESIGN, BRIDGES, TENSILE STRUCTURES Architects and architect practices: COOP HIMMELBLAU (Falkestrasse) FRANK GEHRY (Dancing House, Bilbau Guggenhiem) ASH SAKULA (Freeform in Hackney) FOSTER ASSOCIATES (NORMAN FOSTER) WILL ALSOP (fun drawings and peckham library) RENZO PIANO (Shard) DANIEL LIBESKIND (Spiral V&A) ZAHA HADID (Many fun buildings, currently London Aquatic Cenre for Olympics) ANTONI GAUDI (Barcelona buildings) BUILDING EXPLORATORY (Educational organisation re architecture) FUNDAMENTAL (community architecture) RACHEL WHITEREAD (Sculptor) PAUL NOBLE (Artist) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OTHER ARTISTS THAT YOUR COULD USE AL ANATSUI GARY HUME DELAUNAY CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI GILBERT AND GEORGE MONA HATUOM EVA HESSE BARBARA KRUGER JEFF KOONS ELIZABETH PAYTON SARAH LUCAS
SIGMAR POLKE RICHARD SERRA FIONA BANNER TRACY EMIN BILL VIOLA CORNELIA PARKER MICHAEL CRAIG MARTIN PHILLIP GUSTON SUSAN HILLER For more ideas, search CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS, MODERN ARTISTS, VIDEO ARTISTS, and so forth on Wikipedia. Or look at BRITISH ART SHOW 7 which has just finished or search on gallery websites such as: TATE MODERN AND TATE BRITAIN VICTORIA MIRO WHITE CUBE TURNER PRIZE ICA WHITECHAPEL GALLERY FRIEZE MODERN ART GALLERY SERPENTINE GALLERY