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Children's creative spaces

Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam’s giant crochet sculpture

Last month I was fortunate enough to visit the Hakone Open Air Museum, an outdoor sculpture park located a couple of hours outside of Tokyo. A highlight of the visit was seeing the wonderful crochet play ‘sculptures’ of the artist Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam. The artwork, titled ‘Knitted Wonder Space 2,’ is a gigantic textile structure that has the appearance of a net suspended in mid-air. The sculpture has a strong architectural quality to it, creating an immersive and sensory-driven play space for children. Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam’s crochet play sculpture ‘Knitted Wonder Space 2’ at Hakone Open Air Museum On the afternoon that I visited, there was a tribe of toddlers and elementary-aged kids climbing, jumping, rolling, somersaulting, dangling and swinging their way through it. As the children played in the net, it moved and swayed with them, igniting squeals of delight and even more physical play. Creating the crochet sculpture…

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Children's creative spaces

teamLab’s digital art from the future

This post features a review of the teamLab Borderless exhibition at the MORI Building’s DIGITAL ART MUSEUM, Tokyo. You might not have heard of teamLab but you will probably recognise their work from your hipster friend’s Instagram account. The Tokyo-based digital art collective has been making immersive art installations since 2001. During this time they have exhibited their work around the globe including at London’s Pace Gallery, the National Museum of Singapore and at Australia’s National Gallery of Victoria’s 2018 Triennial. Inspired to use digital technologies to expand the connection between art and people, teamLab’s work sits at the intersection of science, art and technology. Image credit: teamLab, Exhibition view, MORI Building DIGITAL ART MUSEUM: teamLab Borderless, 2018, Odaiba, Tokyo © teamLab In March of this year, I visited the MORI Building’s DIGITAL ART MUSEUM in Tokyo where teamlab’s ‘Borderless’ exhibition is on permanent display. The exhibition consists of 60 digital artworks spread across 10,000m² of gallery…

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Children's creative spaces

The ‘Atelier van Licht’ at the Centraal Museum, Utrecht

The Atelier of Light at the Centraal Museum, NL www.louisapenfold.com

This post features a reflection on my visit to the Atelier van Licht at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht, The Netherlands. The Atelier was being presented as part of the museum’s Nice’n’Light exhibition that ran from 17 October 2015 – 24 January 2016.  Above: Atelier van Licht at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Image credit: Atelier van Licht A creative space for children’s play and experimentation with materials Back in February 2016, I travelled to the Netherlands to meet with Annemieke Huisingh, the founder of the wonderful Atelier van Licht. I was interested in learning more about the Atelier’s approach to designing children’s material-based creative learning environments. At the time, the Atelier (which is another word used to describe an artist’s studio) was on display at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht as part of a contemporary art show that was exploring artist’s experimentation with light. The Atelier had been designed for children of all ages…

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Amazing artists and educators

Eamon O’Kane’s Fröbel-inspired installations

Eamon OKane's Frobel inspired art

Frederich Fröbel’s founded the first kindergarten in 1700s Germany. Since this time, his work on education has influenced many people including a myriad of teachers, artists and architects. In this blog post, Eamon O’Kane – an Irish-born, Norway-based visual artist and Professor at Bergen University – talks about how different early childhood educators, including Fröbel, have inspired his art practice.  Eamon O’Kane’s installation ‘Frobel’s Studio.’ Image credit: Eamon O’Kane “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” George Bernard Shaw “In every real man, a child is hidden that wants to play.” Friedrich Nietzsche Can you talk a little bit about your background as an artist, an educator and now academic? I have been working as an artist for over 20 years. For the past 19 years, I have also worked full-time in universities in Ireland, England and more recently in Bergen, Norway.…

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Children's creative spaces

Peabody Essex Museum’s Play Time exhibition

Martin Creed 'Work No. 329' in PlayTime at the Peabody Essex Museum

This post features an interview with Trevor Smith, curator of the Present Tense at Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. Trevor is also curator of the museum’s current PlayTime exhibition. In our conversation, Trevor discusses the dynamic role of play in contemporary art and culture – a core theme driving the show.   Play and artistic practice have a long and enduring history from Surrealist games that aimed to unlock subconscious creativity to more recent participatory live art practices. Play can be understood as a significant catalyst for artistic, social, cultural and technological change. The Peabody Essex Museum takes this rich conceptualization as a starting point for their PlayTime exhibition. The show features nearly forty works from renowned contemporary artists such as Lara Favaretto, Martin Creed, Teppei Kaneuji and Nick Cave. The museum has also put together a FANTASTIC PlayTime digital publication that is free to access online at playtime.pem.org. The publication includes contributions from distinguished artists, poets, writers…

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Children's creative spaces

Play Rebellion at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art

Play Rebellion at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art

This post shares BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art’s latest play exhibition, ‘Play Rebellion.’ The show is an interactive installation collaboratively developed with artist Pippa Hale. Image: Play Rebellion at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art. Picture by Pippa Hale Opportunities for people to engage in play have declined in recent years as a result of a shift in school curriculum priorities and a rise in risk-averse attitudes. In response to the decline in creative play, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art have teamed up with artist Pippa Hale to present Play Rebellion. The show is an interactive exhibition for people of all ages where visitors can transform the gallery space using large foam shapes. These shapes can be arranged in a myriad of ways, encouraging visitors to use their creativity and experience the gallery in an embodied way. By doing so, visitors can take back ownership of their playtime and play spaces……

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Amazing artists and educators

Children’s creative learning through the sculptures of Rachel Whiteread

Rachel Whiteread's sculptures and artwork 'Untitled (One hundred spaces) at Tate Britain sculpture sculptor space clay resin

This post looks at the art of Rachel Whiteread, a contemporary British sculptor who creates objects and spaces using different materials such as resin, plaster, concrete, rubber and plastic. Her works range from small-scale moulds of everyday objects such as hot water bottles to gigantic life-sized houses. Tate Britain in London recently exhibited a retrospective of her sculptures. As part of the show, her installation ‘Untitled (one hundred spaces)’ (1995) was displayed in the main entrance hall of the gallery. In this post, I use this artwork as a thinking tool for considering how its materials, tools and processes could be used to produce a children’s creative learning environment. This post is part of a series that aims to share innovative ways that artists are working with materials and how this may be used as a starting point for children’s creative learning. The first post in this series explored the…

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