Here, No Frame Art and Education showcases young artists’ personal and purposeful responses from the exhibition Slash:PAPER UNDER THE KNIFE. These are valuable examples of connecting the creative projects of a gallery and current artists we discover, how a new generation learns to practise art in a contemporary way along with tailored classroom tuition. By encouraging young artists to think and act in a professional manner has resulted in them winning prestigious awards, including those of the Royal Academy of Arts.

Most of the works showcased here were made in the during a 6 - 8 weeks class workshop. Some were extended for longer period: showing a range, from a quick initial interpretation to a full and active development, in response  to the chosen artist’s work. 

In 2015, I (Seungah Lee, Director of No Frame) was designing a 6 weeks long workshop for students aged 16-17 yrs., intending to grow their inventive thinking skills and encourage them to break out from their comfort zone of the media and techniques that each student was familiar with. To do this, I came up with an idea to give students two conditions: firstly, with the limit of material (paper only), secondly, create a 3D work. 

Now, they needed ‘examples’ to scale-up the game. 

Slash: PAPER UNDER THE KNIFE was exceptional resource for both students and myself, as an artist teacher. The exhibition suggested progressive ways of evolving new ideas and qualities from traditional methods.  Displaying the work of 50 contemporary artists, each student could engage with at least 2-3 works, whether with the topic, technique and or aesthetic qualities as their reason of choice. Students learned how artists expressed a range of subjects, exploring the manipulation of paper, such as landscape, the human body, architecture, politics, and language. Also, by seeing the varieties of display employed, such as sculptural installation and video animation etc., it opened new possibilities for the young artists to develop the use of spatial awareness to enhance the intended message in their work.  

To solve their given challenge, students needed to interact with different tools and media and practice new skills with patience to strengthen hand-eye coordination. Like the artists in SLASH, young artists examined the diverse use of paper in a range of art forms by cutting, weaving, tearing, shredding and layering.

With focused experiments and tailored feedback, students could move on with more confidence. They started to bring their true interests and valued qualities to their projects and develop their ideas and skills further. In the end, students were able to illustrate an authentic story of their own e.g. hardship of emotional experience, fun yet critical observations of the world around them, human intervention over environment, culture clashes, race and political issues which they had experienced. 

Through this experience, students were developed diverse problem-solving skills which allowed them new, creative workflows and expanded their visual vocabulary to become better communicators. Students who wanted to make a progression to a wide range of arts such as illustration, game design, film, fine art sculpture, fashion, architecture were highly benefited by this, gathering a positive and productive influence of artists’ works and gallery projects in art education.

“This project has given new grounds to my ideas as an artist and also provided me with sense of adaptability in terms of using my surrounding materials as part of my art medium.”

Oheji Anthony UPELLE-ODOH  17yrs. 2021 - 2022. University preparation programme

All works are Seungah Lee’s former students’, at English secondary schools (mainstream & private), produced between 2016 -2022.