Students across the whole school from the nursery all the way up to 6th form have been working on a collaborative art piece inspired by the work “Field” by Antony Gormley. Each person has made their own tiny terracotta person who looks up from the ground at the viewers. The piece uses the human form to explore man's existence in and relation to the world. It consists of approx.. 400 individual terracotta figures, each between 8 and 26 cm high, installed on the floor of a stairway facing the viewer. We were trying to make something as direct as possible with clay: the earth.
The piece explores ideas about our collective future and our responsibility for it. Gormley wanted the art to look back at us, its makers (and later viewers), as if we were responsible - responsible for the world that it [FIELD] and we were in.
Our piece is made from 40 bags of clay energised by fire, sensitised by touch and made conscious by being given eyes.
The body-surrogates completely occupy the space in which they are installed, taking the form of the stairway and excluding us, but allowing visual access.
The work can be seen in the stairway to the right of the cottage on your way through to Lydney. This amazing collective artistic feat documents the work of the whole cohort of this school at this point in time and demonstrates what we can accomplish when we work together.
