Mill Tye Galleries work within the community ended the year with a visiting artist program at Thomas Gainsborough School.
This year Mill Tye Gallery has worked in collaboration with Thomas Gainsborough School to support young artists to develop their art practice and encourage them to experience the impact of their work in the wider community.
The project started earlier in the year when Mill Tye Gallery partnered up with Thomas Gainsborough School and The Arts Society Sudbury, to see how we could work together to encourage the next generation of artists. We started by sponsoring the exciting ‘Sudbury on Canvas’ project, which involved Thomas Gainsborough Art Students displaying their work in 40 shop windows on the high street, creating a trail of artwork. Retailers included well known Sudbury department store, Winch and Blatch, as well as recently vacated disused shops. The aim of the project was for the young people to experience working in the community with retailers and to showcase and promote the work of Thomas Gainsborough School in the community.
Leading on from this excellent project students were invited to have their own exhibition at the Mill Tye Gallery, called 'Art Gallery Takeover’ this brilliant exhibition showcased artwork by students from year 8 to year 11 and represented a variety of art forms, from fine art painting, to photography, mixed media and textiles. The exhibition was a great success attracting record numbers of new visitors to the gallery including students along with their friends and family. The exhibition also provided an opportunity for students to meet Imogen Candler a young artists who has been volunteering at the gallery and receiving support with her first steps into the arts industry, since graduating from Farnham University.
Imogen has been working with Mill Tye Gallery since April 2019 to gain valuable experience of working in a gallery environment and to work towards her first solo exhibition. Her exhibition called 'The Island’ followed on from the 'Art Gallery Takeover’ exhibition and Students from Thomas Gainsborough school came to Imogen's exhibition and interviewed her for their art homework.
Imogen Candler worked alongside Mill Tye Gallery Photographer, Jackie Mellor and Lucy Nichol (Thomas Gainsborough Arts Practitioner in Schools) to gain experience in planning lessons in order to share her work and inspire young artists.
After several weeks of planning Jackie and Imogen visited the school and worked with 81 young people, including 4 Gold Arts Award students and three classes including years 8,9 and 10. The sessions allowed students to meet Imogen Candler, an up and coming contemporary artist, find out about her working practices and the inspiration behind her work. They also gained experience of early photographic sun printing processes, which enabled students to explore the imagery created by Imogen on a much deeper level and to produce their own photographic work in response to the artists exhibition.
The Students enjoyed working with Imogen and Jackie, here are some comments from three Gold Arts Award students...
“I have really enjoyed being able to talk to someone who has created a series of work with an interesting backstory. Also, I have enjoyed learning new techniques that I will take further in my personal work.” THANK YOU
“I have enjoyed learning new techniques within photography - taken in lots of different ways to progress any work I produce much further. I thought it was great inspiration from Imogen and how she gets inspired!” Thank you.
"I learnt how to use the processes of chemogram photography out of the dark room. I also learnt the technical aspect of photography in terms of how to improve my photograms.”
Younger students enjoyed learning about Orford Ness and were inspired by working with the artists from Mill Tye Gallery.
“Today was really fun, I found out a lot of cool things. The activity with the leaves was the best in my eyes because seeing how the first chemical made it go black was awesome. The photos that Imogen took were really cool and inspiring. It makes me want to do the same job.”
Lucas Marseille - Lychre
"This lesson was interesting for me because I found it cool to work with people from the Mill Tye Gallery. The chemicals were fun to watch changing the colour of our work.”
Jasmine Linn
What’s next?
Mill Tye Gallery are continuing to work with Thomas Gainsborough School and are planning further workshops with artists in school as well as an exciting new student exhibition for the summer next year. Watch this space!