The Stormont Awards for artwork created by children launched their exhibition at the Rye Art Gallery on Saturday, January 11. This is the third year that the Rye Art Gallery Trust has run the initiative with even more of our local Primary schools participating, resulting in over 120 works being put on show. The theme this year was “Monster” and the children had really enjoyed letting their imagination loose and creating some vibrantly colourful and scary creatures.
The judges, sculptor, Guy Portelli, Artist, Matt Hardman and Gallery Director, Jane Fenn spent a very enjoyable day selecting our winning pieces of artwork but they all commented on how diverse and wonderfully original the submitted works were.
At the prize giving presentation, organiser, Kate Van Der Pump, emphasised the importance of finding the time to sit down with our children to draw, paint or make models, to have conversations about stories and develop young children’s imagination, “It is important to not let the wonders of technology, computer games and delivered imagery substitute or stunt original creative thought in young minds. Creative thinking is not just for the art room, it should run through all subjects, particularly maths, science and English.”
Cllr. Rebekah Gilbert, who kindly presented the prizes, encouraged the children and their families to just pop in and visit the Rye Art Gallery on a regular basis to see an exciting range of paintings, prints and 3D work which could be the starting point for children to think about their own creative ideas.
The Stormont Awards, along with the valuable support from Kate Sims and her team at The Rye Community shop and Nick Moon of Artwrite continue to be committed to doing everything possible to assist our local schools and pupils to have greater creative opportunities. Please do come along and see the fantastic results of all their hard work, the exhibition is in Gallery 6 and runs until January 25.
Image Credits: Susy Benn .