BACKAuckland Art Gallery Trip Toi o Tāmaki Inspires Our Senior Visual Arts Students
Year 13 Scholarship Visual Arts and Year 12 IB Visual Arts students were fortunate to visit the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki on a recent school trip for the day, along with Mr Paul Stevens and Mrs Nicola Ov from the Visual Arts Department. The trip provided a unique and enriching opportunity for our students to engage with a diverse range of artworks from some of the 20th century’s most renowned artists.
The highlight of the trip was a guided tour with members of the gallery’s amazing education team of The Robertson Gift: Paths through Modernity, a new exhibition celebrating the monumental donation of significant artworks from the collection of New York philanthropists Julian and Josie Robertson to the city and the nation.
Our students were captivated by works by influential modern European artists, including Pierre Bonnard, Georges Braque, Paul Cézanne, Salvador Dalí, André Derain, Henri Fantin-Latour, Paul Gauguin, Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, and Pablo Picasso.
Students were particularly interested in learning about the different art movements represented in the exhibition, including Cubism, Fauvism, and Surrealism. They also enjoyed exploring the various techniques and styles used by the artists, such as Cézanne’s geometric abstraction and Matisse’s bold use of colour, and had the opportunity to have a go themselves at Cubist still life drawing, surrounded by artworks by the masters of this field, Picasso, and Braque.
They also explored contemporary work from Aotearoa, including the Walters Prize 2024 and the new Modern Women: Flights of Time exhibition, and were encouraged to consider how artworks they saw could influence their own artistic practice.
This trip was a valuable learning experience for our students. It provided them with a deeper understanding of modern art history and gave them a chance to see works of art that they had previously only studied in textbooks.
We are grateful to the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki for hosting us and for providing our students with this culturally-rich learning opportunity. These exhibitions are still on, so if you get the chance definitely head into the city with your family yourself to check them out!
