Art Collection

Two new artworks are now on display in The Burgess Room of the Sixth Form Oakwood building.

Mayflower, All Flowers by Yinka Shonibare CBE is a complex combination of woodblock and relief printing, depicting the iconic ship which transported a group of colonists from Plymouth to the New World in 1620. The work, which was generously donated to the school, seeks to champion and reassert the great American principle and tradition of the right to equality. The Turner Prize-nominated Royal Academician explores issues of race and class, using wry citations of Western art history and literature to question the validity of contemporary cultural and national identities. In 2010, Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle became Shonibare’s first public art commission on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, now on display outside the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich Park.

Our second new work, Idle Hands, is a screen print with woodblock by Clare Woods, which was part of the Royal Academy 2022 Summer Exhibition.  “For me, the idea of a vase of flowers represents a lifespan, in a tiny little environment… You’ve got the youth of the buds and the flowers are in full bloom, before they droop and discolour… It’s the whole life cycle that I am interested in.” Clare studied at Bath College of Art and Goldsmith’s College and now works in Hereford. She was commissioned to create a permanent ceramic mural of the London Olympic Park and her paintings are held in numerous major international collections.

The latest additions to South Hampstead’s art collection join works by numerous illustrious artists, including the late, great Gillian Ayres’, whose bold, abstract Hampstead Murals are displayed in the atrium; Belgian sculptor William Sweetlove, whose quirky blue and gold eco-penguins are dotted around the school; David Spiller, whose silkscreen print, One Day (I’d Walk a Million Miles), is on the fifth floor; former parent Mira Cinnamon, whose sculpture, Looking Beyond, is in our Oakwood garden; and craftsman Bobby Mills, who was specially commissioned to create an oak lectern in memory of our former Chair of Governors, Helen Strange, in 2020.

You can find out more about our art collection here