The annual British School of Bahrain (BSB) art exhibition will open its doors in Hamala to the public on Sunday, showcasing the giant colourful creations of senior students.
After completing intense course work and examinations, the GCSE and A-Level students will finally be able to share their work with families, friends and art lovers in the kingdom. Poonam Ridgway, BSB’s Senior School head of art, said: “It’s such a great opportunity to celebrate the success of our students and it gives a chance for the parents to see their children’s work as a whole. “The GCSE and A-Level students have worked very hard to produce such a variety of work. We have everything from portraiture to 3D and even expressive abstract pieces focused on manipulating materials and certain patterns. “This course is always about them, their interests, how they interpret the project title and which direction they feel. After looking at their work, you wouldn’t have thought that they all started off with the same project titles.” The GCSE students begin the two-year course starting in Year 10, in which they spend the first term learning to structure their projects and sketch book. Then they choose their own topics and artists to focus on. During the examination period, the students had to complete a whole project in eight weeks and the final piece had to be created in eight hours under exam conditions. The course work structure is similar for A-Level students of Year 12 and 13, but the exam duration differs as Year 12 (AS) students sit in an eight-hour exam, while Year 13 (A2) pupils must complete it in 12 hours. While some students such as Clara Lombardi, 17, Alexandra Rodney, 17, and Fathima Ansar, 16, explored the beauty of colour and touched on identity, others like Laura Ashi, 16, and Éva Roy, 18, focused on the darker side of art. For Éva, from Saar, this will be her last exhibition before heading to university in Canada to major in Art Studio. Being a twin, she used her course work to showcase the similarity and differences between her and her sister, Marina, through the use of light. Her examination work, which is based on ‘Growth and Evolution’, is entitled animal slaughter. Her aim was to create something ‘grotesque and completely different’ and food for thought in more ways than one. Classmate Latifa Al Khayat, 17, from Muharraq, incorporated embroidery techniques in her course work as well as print. For her examination project, she combined her love of science with art and used light to portray a laboratory atmosphere. First-time exhibitor Sayf Turkomani, 16, from Saar, is excited to see his art work in gallery form. He focused on his passion for music culture. The exhibition will be open to the public from 3pm to 5pm until June 12 with various schools visiting the display during the week. The exhibition’s launch is to be inaugurated in a ceremony attended by British Ambassador Iain Lindsay. For further details, contact 17610920 or visit www.britishschoolbahrain.com
