Axton Chase
International Artist: Christopher Le Brun
Creative Practitioner: Darina Garland
20 Y9 students from Axton Chase were encouraged to consider notions of private versus public, whispers versus shouts. Thinking about the concept of a winged messenger, they explored possibilities for communication - specifically ways of gathering and sharing thoughts across the school community.
Using the schools extensive grounds they undertook an intensive exploration of the familiar space in order to re-engage with and look differently at their immediate surroundings. Discovering a large bowl-like shape set approximately 50 metres into a wooded area on their site, the students choose to use this as the location for a site-specific work made in response to the work of Le Brun.
The group really embraced the project, developing a diverse range of exciting outcomes that reflected both the notion of site-specificity and ideas and possibilities for communication. They were responsible for producing a film about the passage of time and building their own large wing covered in messages and myths.
As part of the final celebration, which took the form of a live art happening, they recruited 50 volunteers to form a human chain along which bowls of water were passed in an attempt to fill the disk like shape. This piece reflected, both literally and conceptually, the ideas behind Le Brun's proposal and the nature of site-specificity.
The pupils managed to perfectly tie the elements of the Landmark Link Project together in an exploration that resulted in a better understanding and appreciation of their own environment as well as the project itself.
