This week, our Year 9 Photography pupils visited Coughton Court an English Tudor country house, situated on the main road between Studley and Alcester in Warwickshire. Part of a National Trust site, the main house is a Grade I listed building.
The house has a long crenelated façade ( a rampart built around the top of a castle with regular gaps for firing arrows or guns) facing the main road, at the centre of which is the Tudor Gatehouse, dating from 1530; this has hexagonal turrets and oriel windows in the English Renaissance style. The gatehouse is the oldest part of the house and is flanked by later wings, in the Strawberry Hill Gothic style, popularised by Horace Walpole.
Pupils visited, to take a range of photographs based on ‘macro’ – focusing on detail and texture. Pupils have been studying the work of the artist ‘Slinkachu’ :
I started working with miniatures in 2006. My work involves remodelling and painting of miniature model train set characters, which I then place and leave on the street. It is both sculpture, street art installation and photography. The street-based side of my work plays with the notion of surprise and I aim to encourage city-dwellers to be more aware of their surroundings.
Slinkchu.com – quote from artist
Pupils had a tour around Coughton Court to hear the history of the building and a countryside walk around the property, into the woodland area to provide the maximum opportunity to take a range of photographs in various settings.
