Our Trip to the Christchurch Art Gallery
Georgina H
On Wednesday we had a trip to an art gallery. We went on the bus. When we got there we went into a room and there was a man named Matua. He spent some time showing us Maori moves and symbols. He showed us the koru shape, poutama (shaped like zig-zag stairs) and hongia (shaped like teeth),
Matua showed us an artwork he called the ‘around and around thingy’. Electricity allowed the parts to circle around each other.
We split into two groups. Some of us went to see Maori Tikis. The real Tiki looked very small but when photographed with a format camera, they looked huge. We talked about what the Tiki might symbolise and thought it might be spiritual and connected to Maori ancestry.
Amelia also writes about the visit:
After being introduced to the art gallery teachers, we went back into the art gallery and looked at some art created by Andrew Drummond. These were moving pieces of art that were electrically controlled.
Then we split into two groups and moved around the art exhibitions with Gintra and Matua. We saw Tikis, a bear rug carved out of Kauri, a giant staircase made out of thin kebab sticks that went up to clouds that were made out of white plastic bags. Then we went to see the Blue Planet Room. Everything was blue. You could look through a kaleidoscope that made wonderful patterns. There was even a movie on a big screen about people riding bikes under water. In the Blue Room we saw an artwork created by Rueben Paterson that was decorated with glitter. It was this picture that we used to inspire our own artwork. This is what we had to do to create it:
My Procedural Recount:
First we had a painting race. We had to paint a sheet of cardboard with frosted blue quick drying paint. Our table won the race. Then we drew some Maori symbols onto our piece of paper that had been folded twice to form the shape of a triangle. Then we had to cut out our shapes to make a stencil. When we were finished the cutting, we opened out the piece of paper folded like a triangle and put it onto our piece of painted card. Next we had to use the screen-printing process. We used another shade of blue paint and screen printed over our laid out pattern. After that is was time to put the blue glitter on top of our artwork. Adult helpers dried off our work with hot blowers. Once we all had out paintings tucked into the art bag, we caught the bus back to school. We were really excited about taking them home to share with our families. This was my best trip with Room fifteen for the year.
