A mixed-media exhibition of artwork inspired by Tunbridge Well Museum’s collections.

Nova was one of three professional artists working alongside three local community groups. She worked with a group of students from Skinners’ Kent Academy to create new work on the theme of the environment.  Inspired by interesting and unusual objects from the Museum’s collection, the students created striking sculptural pieces inspired by the forms found in nature.  Nova describes what happened;

'The process started with two elements; the first element was to look at the museum’s collection and the second was to consider the architectural design of the new school building, inspired by the Guggenheim Museum in New York, with its circular shape originally inspired by a nautilus shell. The final piece of artwork would be installed in the reception area of the new school building.

We started by making our own sketchbooks to use as a journal and explored our surroundings by taking a ‘nature walk’ in the school’s extensive grounds. We listened to the sounds of nature and explored what these sounds might look like if we were to draw them as well as collecting objects from nature. We looked at various objects in the museum’s natural world collection and compared our findings.

Through this project we developed our own concept; this was to explore the relationship between architecture and nature, bringing the shapes and forms of nature into the new building therefore blurring the lines between the two.

Through discussion it became clear that the process of sculpture was an area that the young people wanted to explore further and had sparked a genuine interest. We explored sculpture by creating very simple sellotape sculptures of objects, making objects from nature using bars of soap and moving on to creating nature-inspired maquettes. Following on from making individual maquettes, we worked together to design a large–scale abstract sculpture inspired by natural forms and shapes.

The exhibition took place from Saturday 10 March – Saturday 26 May 2012 at Tunbridge Wells Museum and Art Gallery.