Conversation to Creation

17 May 2024

Visitors smiling in a gallery, with boxy geometric sculptures of people behind them.

This collaborative project, with students from Fine Art and Printed Textile courses at University Centre Colchester, opened up conversations about multidisciplinary practice, and explored the differences in making work in studio environments and for public space.

About the project

Responding to the studio spaces in which Moore made his iconic work, the students and tutors considered how process-led practice evolves from an initial concept, through sketches and models, to a finished sculpture and beyond.

Students worked with their peers from complimentary courses: experimenting with cross-disciplinary ways of working, helping to develop new relationships with space, scale and each others’ work.

Students setting up a sculpture exhibition in a white-walled gallery space.

People sat in a horseshoe shape watching an art lecture. Images of people roller-skating are on a screen in front of them.

For one week in May, we opened up a temporary project space to publicly display the students’ creative outcomes. Their work drew on themes that Moore often made use of – such as family groups, war, nature, the female figure and the male gaze – as well as sculptural processes using metalwork, plaster casting, drawing, textile design, and collecting objects as inspiration or for model making.

The event was rooted in our 2023 seasonal theme of Vitality as a creative force. Midway through the display, we welcomed artist Tyreis Holder for a public discussion with the students, opening up conversation about personal identity within creative practice, the opportunities collaboration can bring, and the differences in making work in studio environments compared to public space.

Participating students

Chrissie Richards
Demelza Fanshawe
Lucy Palmer
Millicent Glasgow
Samantha Martin Vega
Samantha Vinnell
Via Thyme
Zumrad Khamidova

With thanks to tutors Sarah Sabin, Stephen Ellison, Matthew Giraudeau and the wider team at University Centre Colchester.

Cross-departmental staff from the Henry Moore Foundation supported the project by sharing their expertise, talking about the career paths that led them here, and explaining how their roles relate to real-time projects.

A group of smiling people face the camera. Their artworks can be seen on display in the gallery behind them.

Laughing visitors looking at sculpture in a gallery.

A man is finishing making a sculpture, attaching drawings of smiling mouths to a large spiral shape, while two other people look on.

Visitors talking in a gallery, with a large, bronze-coloured sculpture in the shape of a spiral behind them, and a long, floor-based work in front of them.

View of a gallery space, with a painting of a woman on an easel, a table covered in painting supplies, and framed posters and photos of Henry Moore behind.

Loops of barbed wire sat on top of a textile sculpture resembling sandbags.

An abstract painting of a human body, that is also somewhat reminiscent of a diagram of a heart, a map of an underground railway, or a clockwork or technical diagram.

A wooden table with objects including a diagram of the London Underground, an air raid shelter sign, pencil drawings of children sleeping, and part of a plaster cast.

Want to collaborate? We’d like to hear from you

If you’re interested in getting your students involved in something similar, we welcome enquiries from universities, colleges and sixth forms to discuss and develop new opportunities together.

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Visit

Experience Henry Moore’s iconic work in the beautiful Hertfordshire countryside with a visit to the artist’s former home, studios and sculpture gardens.