Teacher Resource Notes – KS1 & KS2 Summer Season 14 May – 25 September 2011

Martin Creed / Fischli and Weiss / / Lucio Fontana / Anri Sala / Margaret Mellis / Agnes Martin / Roman Ondák /

These notes are designed to support teachers and students as they explore and engage with the art work. As well as factual information they provide starting points for discussion, ideas for simple practical activities and suggestions for extended work that could stem from a gallery visit.

To book a gallery visit for your group call 01736 796226 or email stivesticketing@.org.uk . Season overview

This season uses the gallery to display eclectic work from eight different artists, featuring art from the Tate Collection as well as loans of contemporary international work. Walking through the galleries provides an opportunity to experience work which responds to the architectural spaces, sometimes playfully, and to connect themes of light, structure and space in a mix of various art practices and media.

The Heron Mall and Lower Gallery 2 displays work by Martin Creed (b1968), the 2001 Turner Prize winner. Text, light and latex balloons transform the gallery spaces, inviting surprise and visitor participation. Also in the Heron Mall three monitors display thousands of photographs by the artistic partnership of Peter Fischli (b1952) and David Weiss (b1946), exploring travel and the exotic as well as the everyday reality of human life and its combination of ordinariness, humour and drama.

Gallery 1 displays Prototypes for Sculpture , exploring the working processes of Naum Gabo (1890 –1977) in drawings and maquettes, as well as final sculptures. Gabo was a Russian exile who came to Carbis Bay in 1939; his constructivist work had a profound influence on artists in St Ives, especially and .

Terracotta and ceramic sculptures and paintings by the Italian artist Lucio Fontana (1899-1968) are shown in Upper Gallery 2. These include some buchi (‘holes’) works, where the artist punctures through the materials in order to explore variations of space and time.

The video Ghost Games by Albanian artist Anri Sala (b1974) is shown in the Apse. Ghost crabs appear in beams of torch light on a night time beach, as if participants in a playful game; but the video also invite other personal responses.

Gallery 3 displays early collages, made in St Ives, and later assemblages by Margaret Mellis. Visitors can compare the constructivist influences of Naum Gabo and Ben Nicholson in St Ives with Mellis’s later intuitive work, exploring colour in driftwood assemblages.

Gallery 4 shows another in the series of ARTIST ROOMS at Tate St Ives: the minimalist, delicate but powerful works of Canadian artist Agnes Martin (1912-2004). Martin is often identified with American minimalists like Donald Judd, but she related her own grid-based work to Expressionism and the influence of Mark Rothko and Barnet Newman. She lived and worked in New York in the 1960s and also responded strongly to the space and simplicity of New Mexico.

The work in Gallery 5 will be made as the summer season progresses and all visitors are invited to participate in its process, performance and making. Roman Ondák (b1966) is a Slovakian installation and performance artist and in Measuring the Universe 2007 he changes the empty white gallery space by recording physical traces of visitors, marking their heights, names and dates around the walls.

Ways of Looking: ideas for KS1-2 groups

Listening to others/responding personally/sensory experiences A huge amount of information can be revealed just by asking the question 'what do you see?’. Once a few ideas are circulating this often cascades into very imaginative and perceptive ways of viewing the work. Asking 'why do you say that?' invites further consideration and sharing of ideas from students.  What word(s) does the work make you think about?  Have you seen anything like this before?  What do the titles tell you?  What does the colour make you think about?

Visual experience/what can you see?/traditional and new media What materials and processes has the artist used to make the work? Have you seen this material in art before?  Is the work made in traditional or new materials?  What is it? (painting, sculpture, drawing, collage etc)  How is it displayed? What space does it occupy and how does it relate to other work in the exhibition?  What is the scale of the artwork and how does this affect our relationship to it?  Is the work made to be permanent?

Communicating ideas and meaning  Is it about real life?  Is there a story or narrative in the work?  Does it relate to contemporary life?  Does the title affect the meaning of the work?

Art in context/cultures/times. Local/national/global  Is the work about a particular place?  Who is the artist? Is it important to know who created the work? Does the artist’s background inform the work?  Does the work connect to art from other times and cultures?  Has the artist reinvented art from other times and cultures?

Heron Mall

Fischli and Weiss Visible World 1997 Video installation Tate. © The artists and Matthew Marks Gallery New York

Three monitors display thousands of images in a slide-show providing a chronological account of travels the artists have made. These evoke familiar tourist photographs mixed with individual responses to the unexpected splendour of the world.

Almost everything, from all over the world Have you travelled to any of these places as a tourist? Do you recognise any images? Which photographs seem really ordinary and about everyday life and which would you consider exotic or beautiful?

Compressing time Can you imagine how long it took to take all these photographs? How do you think the artists travelled to these places? Think about the carbon footprint of making this work from all these journeys.

Sketch book responses Make quick sketches about your favourite photographs in the slide-show and drawings about places you have visited, or where you’d like to go.

Back to back descriptions Stand with a partner who has their back to you and try to describe a photograph so your partner can draw it in their sketchbook.

Gallery 1

Naum Gabo Model for ‘Spheric Theme’ c.1937 Tate © Nina and Graham Williams

The modernist sculptor Naum Gabo (1890-1977) lived in Carbis Bay (1939-46) and it was in St Ives that he began first to use nylon filament in his work. This gallery displays small models, sketches, drawings and templates as well as finished sculptures, providing an insight into Gabo's hands-on working process. Experiments in simple materials developed into complex finished sculptures in glass, metal and the new plastics (some of which proved to be quite unstable). Gabo sometimes produced multiple versions of sculptures, using different materials, exploring themes of space and time. You can view films about Naum Gabo in the Studio – access via the lift at the end of gallery one.

Hand-made Compare the models with the finished sculptures; do you think the sculptures are hand-made or completed with the help of machines or technology? Look closely at the notches in the threaded works; can you see any unevenness? How would you calculate where to make the holes? Carving/constuction Kinetic Stone Carving 1936-44 was Gabo’s first pure carving. He started working on this in London in 1936 and completed it in . He admired the work of Barbara Hepworth. What do you think are the main differences between the carvings and the constructions? Discuss how Naum Gabo would have made his carved sculptures in stone compared to those constructed in man-made plastic.

Mathematics in nature Gabo was interested in mathematics and engineering, but also in shapes and forms in nature. Does the work remind you of anything you have seen before in nature, like shells or bones perhaps?

Doodles in space Without looking at your sketchbook draw a continuous curving, criss- crossing line. Gaze at your drawing for a while and see if you can find a sculpture within it, influenced by the work of Gabo. Draw over the lines, using a different colour if you want, to make a sculptural drawing. When you return to school you could develop this drawing into a sculpture using wire.

Upper Gallery 2

Lucio Fontana Concetto Spaziale, Attesa 1960 Coutesy Robilant + Voena © Fondazione Lucio Fontana

The Space Age of the 1950s and 1960s had a great impact on the work of Lucio Fontana (1899-1968), an Argentinean artist who worked in Italy. In this new era his artistic vision focussed on time, matter and space, and he responded with gestures that produced the hole and the cut (the buchi and the tagli ). Fontana worked with paper and canvas, as well as terracotta, ceramic and bronze.

Space eggs Why do you think Fontana has chosen egg shapes for his sculpture? Invent a story about what made the holes in these eggs and what emerged from them. Imagine the planet where they might have been found and make drawings about your ideas. Use these drawings later to make models using recycled materials.

Stars like holes in the sky Have you ever looked up at night and imagined the stars are holes in the sky? Look around the display and see if any work reminds you of stars and planets.

Interplanetary space travel In the 1950s and 1960s Fontana thought about new technologies and the possibilities of space travel, long before films like Star Wars. Discuss your ideas about space travel and create a mind map recording these thoughts – use colour, symbols and drawings on the mind map.

Surprise slashes The cuts and slashes in the work might seem quite destructive – why do you think the artist did this?

Lower Gallery 2

Martin Creed Work No. 210 Half the air in a given space 1999 © Martin Creed. Photo © Tate St Ives

Martin Creed won the Turner prize in 2001 with his installation Work No. 227 The lights going on and off. Tate St Ives is showing the largest ever version of Work No. 210 Half the air in a given space . Lower Gallery 2 is half full of latex balloons, fun containers of nothing but air, which will gradually deflate over time. Visitors are invited to participate by wandering through this balloon-filled space.

Walking through balloons Does this work make you feel like playing in the balloons? Have you seen anything like this before? Are you surprised to see a sculpture made of balloons at Tate St Ives? When you have walked through the balloons make a word list describing how you felt.

Measuring space How could you make a guesstimate of how many balloons are in this space?

Biodegradable sculptures The balloons are made from latex (rubber excreted by trees in the rain forests) which will biodegrade without harming the planet. In your sketchbooks make drawings to plan sculptures made from latex balloons, to make back at school. Will they be tied together or free in a space? Will you choose white only or add colour?

Apse

Anri Sala Ghost Games 2002 Colour film with sound Courtesy the artist; Johnen Galerie, Berlin; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York; Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris and Hauser & Wirth. © Anri Sala

The video work Ghost Games by Albanian artist Anri Sala (b1974) is set on a North Carolina beach in total darkness. Ghost crabs are steered across the black space by beams of torchlight. The structure of a game becomes apparent, but the film also evokes other emotions and responses.

Playing games Can you recognise goalposts and a game being played? Did you see the score of the game? How does this game make you feel? Is there danger playing games near the shore at night? Make a list of words describing this game with crabs.

Wildlife films Does this work remind you of any TV programmes about wildlife? How is this film different from TV documentaries?

Narratives and stories Do you think there is a story being told in this film? Perhaps you think the artist is just observing – or has he made up some rules?

Ghost crabs Use your sketchbook to make quick drawings of the crabs moving in the light beams. Use these drawings later to build crab sculptures from recycled materials. Which other seashore creatures can you name?

Gallery 3

Margaret Mellis Scarlett Undercurrent 2001 The Davenport Collection © Estate of Margaret Mellis

The Scottish artist Margaret Mellis (1914-2009) made collages when she lived at Carbis Bay during the 1940s, encouraged by Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo, and then began to make driftwood assemblages when she lived at Southwold in Suffolk in her mid-sixties.

Hidden images Do these assemblages look like abstract colours and shapes or can you discover any representational images, such as heads, boats or the sea? Do the titles give you any clues? Make drawings about the hidden images you discover and invent new titles and names for the images you discover in the work.

Histories from recycled materials Margaret Mellis went beachcombing for driftwood used in her constructions; search around the gallery and find wood in the work that may have been colourful beach huts or boats. Is there evidence that some of the driftwood has been in the sea a long time? How old do you think some driftwood might be? Imagine the story of the travels of pieces of wood that came to be washed up on the seashore and draw a storyboard. What was the wood before it became art?

Shape deconstruction Talk about all the different shapes of the driftwood and count how many different pieces of wood are in an assemblage. Can you draw all these different pieces and shapes separately to reconstruct into a new assemblage?

Gallery 4

Agnes Martin Happy Holiday 1999 ARTIST ROOMS Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008

Tate St Ives is showing the powerful, restrained work of Agnes Martin (1912-2004) as part of the ARTIST ROOMS series. Martin was a Canadian artist who became a US citizen in 1950. She associated with New York painters like Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman in the 1950s and 1960s, but preferred to live a solitary life in New Mexico. In 1967 she built a remote house and studio spaces and did not paint for seven years. As she became older she reduced the size of her canvasses from 6ft to 5ft square so that she could lift and carry them herself.

Colours and stripes What do these colours make you think about? Where have you seen stripes like these? Talk about how you think Agnes Martin has mixed these colours.

Lines, shapes and art Martin used lines to design her paintings; have a close look at the work and see if you can identify grids, squares and lines, dividing up the space in the paintings. She worked out mathematical measurements before drawing her lines; can you work out the patterns and order in the lines?

Titles Martin described her work as being about the sensation of joy and a memory of being happy in the world. Read out the titles; do they make you think about joy? Some works have no title; why do you think this might be? Talk about how the paintings make you feel and what you would call the nameless works.

Gallery 5

Roman Ondák Measuring the Universe (detail) 2007 Collection Pinakothek der Moderne. © the artist

Roman Ondák (b1966) is a Slovakian installation and performance artist. Measuring the Universe 2007 is a playful work that, over the time of the exhibition, will transform the white gallery space into an infographic black wall drawing with the participation of the visitors and gallery attendants. Each visitor to the gallery is invited to stand against the wall, their height is measured and a mark made, named and dated using a pen, leaving a record of their presence in the space.

Measuring children Roman Ondák took his idea from measuring his children's height against a door frame at home. How many of you have been measured like this? Do you want to be a part of this art work and be measured in the gallery?

Global names Ondák is Slovakian. Explore the wall – are there names you have never heard before? Where do you think those visitors might live? What do you think is the most unusual name?

Guesstimates Guess the height of the tallest and the smallest person measured in the drawing and then find these on the walls. Any surprises?

Drawing in text and numerals This drawing is made from names and dates of visitors. Are these just words and numbers or can words and numbers be a drawing too?

Resources

A broadsheet is available for this exhibition £4.99

Available in Tate bookshop Agnes Martin by Lynne Cooke et al. ISBN 9780300151053 £25 Anri Sala by Mark Godfrey et al. ISBN 9780714845272 £27.95 Fischli and Weiss by Beate Soentgen et al. ISBN 9780714843230 £27.95 Lucio Fontana: Sculpture 1937-1967 by Silvana Editoriale (editor). ISBN 9788836610143 £16.25 Lucio Fontana by Barbara Hess. ISBN 9783822849187 £6.99 Margaret Mellis: A Life in Colour by Emily Whalley et al. ISBN 9780946009596 £15 Margaret Mellis by Andrew Lambirth. ISBN 9781848220485 £40 Martin Creed by Jonathan Watkins et al. ISBN 9781904864455 £12.95 Martin Creed by Martin Creed and Tom Eccles. ISBN 9780500093535 £36 Naum Gabo: In Space and Time by Sean Rainbird. ISBN 1607511 £2 Roman Ondák: Measuring the Universe by Magali Arriola et al. ISBN 9783037640241 £17 http://www.tate.org.uk/research/researchservices/archive/gabomicrosite / Naum Gabo http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2001/mar/14/art.artsfeatures Agnes Martin http://www.whitehotmagazine.com/articles/scottish-national-gallery-modern-art/1978 Agnes Martin http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article403708.ece Agnes Martin http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/the_odd_couple/ Fischli and Weiss http://www.absolutearts.com/artsnews/2000/06/27/27148.html Fischli and Weiss http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue8/fischliweiss_flowering.htm Fischli and Weiss http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/dont_worry/ Martin Creed http://www.edinburgh-festivals.com/viewpreview Martin Creed http://www.artcornwall.org/features/margaret_Mellis_essay Margaret Mellis http://www.margaretmellis.com Margaret Mellis http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/anri_sala1/ Anri Sala http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/whats_the_difference/ Anri Sala http://www.speronewestwater.com/cgi-bin/iowa/articles/record.html?record=108 Lucio Fontana www.tate.org.uk Visit the Tate website for glossary definitions and for work in the Tate collection

A selection of films to support this exhibition will be available at the Exhibition Study Point on level three. Ideas for follow up and extended art projects with links to cross-curricular themes

Geography & Environment Seashore inspirations Make a collection of natural objects like pebbles, shells, bones and driftwood and make drawings from them. Develop these drawings into ideas for sculptures and discuss what recycled materials you could use to construct them. Consider the space inside the sculpture as well as the outside edges. Local journeys/global travels Use a digital camera to record your journey exploring the daily life in your school. Use computer maps to invent an imaginary journey you would like to make and search for images about places on your imaginary travels, recording ordinary lives as well as beautiful places. Use maps, text and photographs to create a display. Latex balloon project Biodegradable latex balloons come from rubber trees in the rain forest. Latex harvesting does not harm the tree which can produce rubber for up to 40 years. Use books and the internet to find more facts, maps and images about latex. Can you research other sustainable everyday materials that you could use to make art? Invent another way of using balloons in a sculpture and decide where you will display your work. Record the sculptures with photographs before they deflate over time – or pop !

Maths Maths/grids/measuring paintings Use rulers, graph paper or templates to draw your favourite mathematical shape, then take measurements of the drawing and work out how you are going to divide up the space inside the shape. Calculate this on another piece of paper then carefully rule out the spaces. Use ideas from Agnes Martin's work to draw lines and to paint spaces – what colours will you mix? Public performance/collective document Find a place in your school to recreate Roman Ondák's idea and make a drawing that records all the names and heights of everyone in the school, or in your class. Would you choose just black or work in different colours? Use the information to produce graphs about heights and the most common names or to work out averages. Mathematics and art Use the internet to find interesting websites about string art, using thread and card and spirography; both use curves and lines. Produce a group display developed from the research.

Science & Technology Images from space In 2011 we can see images from space that Lucio Fontana could only dream about! Use ICT and books to research images from space exploration. Make a collection of these and develop an artwork: paintings, sculptures, prints or textiles. Literacy Balloon story connectives Watch visitors and each other walking through Martin Creed's artwork, and then begin to make up a story about an event that could happen with the balloons. Use these words to connect your ideas: once upon a time, one day, first, then, next, after that, after a while, a moment later, meanwhile, soon, at that moment, suddenly, unfortunately, unluckily, so although, the next day, however, as soon as, now, eventually, finally.