Empire community project week 5
June 2, 2009 Community
Judith, the project artist and Sousan from Barnet College making the table for the sculpture.
Click here to see more photographs from the project
Photos by Nick Landau
Hello, I’m Shauna O’Brien, and as you may have read in the previous community blogs, I am an intern here at Museum of London. Today was our fifth week of Empire looking to create a piece of artwork for an under floor display case as part of the new Expanding City gallery.
Today the students from Barnet College came to the Museum of London again after a week off for half term. In the previous session, they came up with lots of ideas for the sculptural piece made from goods traded in the Empire for the new galleries at the Museum. The final piece was decided on, inspired by Maria’s idea to have a table set up for a tea party, using the sugar, coffee, tea, porcelain, silk and spices that would have been first traded during the peak of the British Empire. Other ideas were used, by having the table in the shape of a ship, to have the table cloth embroidered with tea and coffee dyed thread and to have the sea beneath the table, by way of decorated card. The artist on the project, Judith Hope, had made a little model of the case for everyone to see. It made the visualisation easier and was great for us all to have a look at, especially for the people that were not in the last session.
So, today the group started making the elements for the case, which will be under the floor of the new Expanding City gallery, Judith and Sousan Luqman (lecturer at Barnet College) worked together to cut out the shape of the table from large sheets of foam board. They also made the base for the group’s work to rest on. The rest of us were painting sheets of strong paper with diluted coffee to be cut out for the waves of the sea beneath the table.
It was very relaxing painting with the coffee, and we had the perfect weather outside for them to dry quickly! Judith and Sousan made a template to cut the waves from the group’s dried sheets of paper, and began to cut them out towards the end of the session.
One of the group members, Maria, added that she was looking forward to working with the sugar next week when we come to decorate the waves. The group will also make little ships to ‘float’ on the sea and working on what will be going on the table-top too.