This Is Guernsey

By Jennie Gill

International artists in residence programme director-curator Eric Snell oversees student Stacey Young’s work. (Picture by Daniel Guerin, 0556169)

GRANGE House students are battling it out to win the opportunity to advertise an acclaimed British artist’s local display.

All art students at the College of Further Education have been invited to create a poster promoting a Castle Cornet exhibition of Antony Gormley’s installations, which will run from May to October.

Organised by the international artists in residence programme, the competition has strict

criteria, set out by Gormley, who will judge it in April when he visits the island to set up his installations.

‘The competition is an extra so we are relying on the students’ enthusiasm and self-motivation,’ said the programme’s director-curator, Eric Snell.

The winning poster will be displayed around the island as an advert for the event and the winner and runner-up will be sent on an educational excursion to London.

First-year student Stacey Young said she decided to take part in the competition to see what she could achieve.

‘The poster has to tell people where it is and what it’s about but it is strict on what he [Mr Gormley] wants,’ said the 17-year-old.

‘We can use his images but we can’t change or put any text over them.’

Grange House student Stacey Young is using negative space in her posters. (Picture by Niall McSwiggan, 0556168)

Stacey has decided to use negative space – that within and around a given object – in her poster.

‘All his work is to do with him so by using negative space I am just representing him – he is not really

there,’ she explained.

Gormley will be installing five ‘insiders’ at vantage points around the castle and a diaphragm piece will be placed in the basement of the Carey Tower.

Mr Snell explained the exhibition.

‘The insiders are opposite pieces to the diaphragm,’ he said.

‘An insider is a compressed form that shows the core of the body. ‘

The diaphragm work is a cast of himself, which has been covered in lead and then he has removed the inner body so the space is void.’

The installations will be called Lot, which comes from the word ‘allotted’.

‘He believes that the location and the work are linked and work together so the installations will become part of the building,’ Mr Snell added.