As part of the Arts Council Collection National Partners Programme, The Exchange in Penzance present Hippo Campus, an exhibition exploring how we learn, where we learn, and who we learn from.
In recent years there has been increasing concern about the downgrading of arts subjects in primary, secondary and higher education. With the rise in fees, closure of courses and loss of studio space across UK art colleges, artists and their peers are increasingly initiating alternative models of education for themselves.
James Green, Gallery Director explains: “Our ambition is to the use the programme and the extraordinary access it provides to one of the country’s most important collections, to interrogate a range of urgent and pressing issues. For some years, we have been concerned about the shift away from creative subjects in the schools’ curriculum.”
Featuring more than 20 artists, Hippo Campus includes photographic images of schools and colleges around the world as traditional places of learning, such as Birmingham students by Vanley Burke and top-hatted pupils at Eton by Tony Ray-Jones. Devices for learning, memory aids, and the fallibility of memory are illustrated by works by Emma Kay and Mariele Neudecker. Mind maps and learning through popular culture are presented in works by Jeremy Deller and Andy Holden. The exhibition takes its title from Bedwyr William’s piece of the same name; Hippocampus being the part of the brain that enables memory and learning.
Other artists presented from the Collection include Pavel Buchler, Tarik Chawdry, Joan Hassall, Nick Martin, Bob & Roberta Smith and Libuse Taylor. Hippo Campus will also include work by other UK artists.
