Posted 27 June 2018

The Hepworth Gallery is certainly worth a visit!

As part of the Go Higher programme at Immanuel College a group of year 12 students visited the Hepworth gallery in Wakefield on one of the hottest days of the year. Luckily the venue was very well air conditioned! The visit was designed to give the students a taste of the work of Barbara Hepworth, the Yorkshire sculptor, and then the opportunity to make a “connection” with one of the art works.

We had a short tour of the gallery which helped the students to see the common threads in Hepworth’s work – monumental shapes, the natural world, lines of tension and brutal materials. Then the students chose a work to sketch for our own exhibition, which was really good at making us look very closely at the work.

We decided in the end that Hepworth was a very powerful artist who actually was very interested in growth, fertility, tension and possibly music too. She was not in any way “girly” but was very feminine in her approach, coming back time and again to shapes that suggested protection such as eggs and towering angels.

The trip was to help our students to have a range of cultural experiences to reflect on in their UCAS statements. Other Go Higher experiences have included a visit to the West Yorkshire Playhouse and an afternoon at PwC’s new offices in Leeds.

Joanne Welding Go Higher (NCOP) Progression Officer, Immanuel College