On Wednesday, students in MYP 4&5 Visual Arts spent the day visiting the Tate Galleries in London.

We initially visited Tate Britain and spent time learning how to analyse artists works, specifically looking at the work of JMW Turner, a pioneer in the use of light and dark to dramatically portray the industrialising Britain of the late 18th and early 19th Century, using the colour analysis investigations that the artist Olafur Eliasson carried out about his work.  After spending time at Tate Britain we went by boat to Tate Modern where we saw the current exhibition of Olafur Eliasson, an Icelandic-Danish artist whose installations are often on a grand scale and focus upon the interplay between the viewer, and elemental materials such as light, water and air tempteratures.

This retrospective exhibition, "In Real Life” not only featured the interactivity that typifies Eliasson's work, but also looked at several aspects of environmental issues and global problems. The students had a full, fun packed day and the overall consensus was that the fog walk called “Your Blind Passenger”, at Olafur Eliasson’s Exhibition, where you walk through very thick clouds of different intensity and coloured light, was the best experience of the day.