Brentwood School - Brentwoodian 2020

16 were playing. It was interested to see how many rooms felt more like experiences than pieces of work to observe. Entire rooms were set up to create a particular atmosphere for the audience to participate in. A particular part of our trip which I felt was important was our trip to the Jewish Ghetto. It is always important to remember the historical events of a city, and especially to acknowledge the oppression which took place. Mr Lonsdale gave us an informative talk about how the Jews were segregated into the ghettos during World War Two. I believe this was important because it is easy to forget that these events took place in our world today, and realising that we are walking on the same ground as the segregated Jews once did, allows us to create a sense of understanding. We also visited the Punta della Dogana, an art museum in one of Venice’s old customs buildings, the Dogana da Mar. This museum also had a piece of video work which experimented with using video to capture the concept of stopping and starting time. We saw a lot of conceptual work and 3D pieces which were displayed without information and left up to the interpretation of the viewer. One piece which experimented with different materials and what they could infer consisted of multiple large rectangular black boxes, which appeared from most angles to be solid, but when looking closely you could make out the shape of plants. Later in the day, we also visited the Palazzo Grassi which was probably the most traditional museum we visited. It had some fascinating pieces relating to my project of puppets, including sculptures of manipulated faces and some more traditional artists’ use of models. On the third floor, there was a historical section which I found to be the most interesting floor, and most relevant to my project as there was an entire section on traditional wayang puppets and the beginning of puppetry within Asian history. I feel that everyone on the trip was able to find work which related to their project, at least in a lateral sense, and I found that the Venice trip gave everyone new influences and ideas for their project which they might not have thought about before. Similarly, the process of looking around each museum to find something which relates to your project can make you think of connections in new ways and help your project become personal and not always follow the traditional line of thinking. By Tara Priddey