Connections Bursary: A Research Trip to Reignite the Classroom

Paul Raymond

I successfully applied for a Connections Bursary from The Paul Mellon Centre to fund a research trip from Newcastle to London. The purpose of this trip was to visit three separate exhibitions and inspire my teaching practice through engaging with contemporary art. Experiencing art first hand is vital for art educators, and I believe it can be amongst the most powerful methods of CPD in terms of inspiration and idea generation.

The exhibitions I planned to visit were Jonathan Baldock’s ‘0.1%’ at the London Mithraeum Bloomberg Space. Mike Kelley’s ‘Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #36 (Vice Anglais)’ at Hauser & Wirth, and Hardeep Pandhal’s ‘Inner World’ at The Drawing Room in Bermondsey.

I wanted to visit these exhibitions because all three artists incorporate complex themes and experimental processes within their practice. Ideas relating to these exhibitions could certainly contribute towards a diverse, engaging and challenging curriculum.

The first exhibition of the day was Jonathan Baldock’s ‘0.1%’ at the London Mithraeum Bloomberg Space. I did not know what to expect from this unusual gallery space as this was my first ever visit to the site. Situated in the City of London amongst contemporary office buildings, it houses the reconstructed remains of the Temple of Mithras (a faithful recreation of the ruin that was discovered in 1954 by archaeologist Professor W.F. Grimes during the excavations carried out following the Blitz in 1941). I arrived just as a tour of the temple was about to begin. The tour was more like an immersive experience involving theatrical lights and sound recordings of chanting, whispering and footsteps. The strange performative element, and the bizarre juxtaposition of this archaeological site amongst the glass-fronted financial buildings was already somewhat jarring, but Jonathan Baldock’s work then added another dimension to the experience.

Jonathan Baldock is a queer artist who works predominantly with textiles and ceramics. His artwork often takes on a biographical form, addressing trauma, sensuality, mortality, and spirituality around our relationship to the body and the space it inhabits. In this exhibition he responds to the ruins of the Roman temple of Mithras and the site’s archaeological history – but he also responds to his own personal history and his relationship with his mother. Baldock’s use of symbolism and personal narrative challenge the patriarchal roots of this Temple, which was built to worship the macho god of justice and war. I thoroughly enjoyed this exhibition and believe that it would be an extremely interesting way of opening discussions around patriarchy, histories, juxtaposition and narrative with students.

My next destination was Hauser and Wirth on Savile Row. I wanted to see an exhibition by the late artist Mike Kelley, titled ‘Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #36 (Vice Anglais)’. This work followed on from Kelley’s major artwork ‘Educational Complex’ (made in 1995), which comprised an architectural model of all the educational institutions he ever attended – rendered from memory. Exploring the public fascination with repressed memory syndrome (the inability to recall traumatic events), Kelley left all the forgotten spaces empty, suggesting some kind of trauma had occurred within these institutions.

He later produced his EAPR videos to fill in these blank spaces, creating rituals and performances based on found photographs of extracurricular activities. Through this work, Kelley explored the pervasiveness of repressed trauma and parodied the imposition of patriarchy and institutionalised power. This work is complex and layered. I think it would be one of the more difficult pieces to explore with students, but its themes are incredibly powerful and relevant to education at all levels.

My final visit of the day was the exhibition ‘Inner World’ by Hardeep Pandhal at The Drawing Room in Bermondsey. Pandhal is a British artist, born in Birmingham (1985) to Indian migrants and now living in Glasgow. He creates mythical narratives that explore the complexities of contemporary culture, class, racial violence and power. Pandhal works in a variety of media, including drawings on paper, airbrushed paintings, animations and computer games. In the exhibition ‘Inner World’ he has created a site-specific drawing that extends around the gallery and engulfs many of his earlier artworks.

This exhibition was incredible. It explores themes of migration, colonialism and cultural assimilation in an accessible and exciting way. It is also extremely inspirational in terms of practical techniques and processes. I have already used Pandhal’s work to open discussions around extended drawing with my current year 11 students, and I would like to use his work within a more formally planned project.

I really valued this opportunity to spend the day immersed in artwork. I have a longstanding interest in ways in which complex and challenging ideas can be taught in school; these exhibitions have all provided a great deal of inspiration for developing ways of doing this. The work supports my own ideas about how we might make connections (e.g. connecting the historical and the contemporary, connecting the materials and processes to the context and meaning of the work), and ways in which power structures can be questioned and challenged through artistic practice.