The Arts

Art is a very important part of the curriculum at St George's. This year we will continue our successful partnership with our resident artist Sarah Gallagher-Hayes. We will also work with fabulous ceramic artist Spence Hollands and the Wirral advisory teacher Ian Fennelly.

Click on the links below to find out more about these artists:

Sarah Gallagher-Hayes

Sarah was engaged as Artist in Residence at St George’s in 2013 and has completed a range of projects with the children including large-scale mini beast sculptures, an Alice in Wonderland installation, The Naughty Bus fabric banners and a woodland creatures fence for our Forest School site.

Sarah Gallagher-Hayes trained in sculpture at Southampton University and the world famous Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice. She began to work with metal rod transforming her figurative 2 dimensional drawings into 3d forms by using each rod of steel like a pencil line. The metal rod had fluidity to it allowing her to twist, bend and rework into whatever shape she desired.

As Sarah's work developed she also began to use willow, a material that allowed her to work in the same style but gave a more natural finish, some of the willow sculptures were sometimes planted to produce living sculptures. Sarah's work has always been based on natural forms, the human figure and her favourite animals.

Upon graduating Sarah's career was kick started when she won her first commission from Kew gardens to build a willow lion to represent Aslan in their Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe themed exhibition. At this point the metal work took a back seat as she became known for her individual style of working in such a versatile material.

To date Sarah has produced sculptures for an array of clients including English Heritage, The National trust and numerous county councils.

For the past three years Sarah has built sculpture gardens for the RHS Tatton flower show and Chelsea flower show.

Over the last year there has been an increased demand for sculptures with more of an industrial feel which has steered Sarah back to the material she began working with steel. The metal tree at Sakana Manchester is her largest metal commission to date. The tree is based on a Japanese Maple and stands 6 metres in height.

In the Forthcoming year Sarah will be show casing her work in five large-scale exhibitions at Chester Cathedral, RHS Garden Wisley, Chelsea flower show, Hampton Court and RHS Tatton.  For more information about Sarah please visit website:

Early in September Sarah Gallagher-Hayes came to our Claremount Road site to work with Year 5 children to build a willow fence for our Forest School site. The structure was inspired by woodland creatures and provides a fantastic entrance to Dragon Wood.

In October, Sarah returned to St George's to work with children in Year 5 on an amazing art installation inspired by the classic children's novel 'The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe' by C. S. Lewis. Pupils worked in small groups to recreate key characters from the story including Aslan, Mr Tumnus and the four children - can you spot them hiding amongst the trees at the entrance to our Claremount Road site? Back in the classroom the children's Literacy learning was linked to the text too - they studied the methods C. S. Lewis used to develop rich and believable characters during guided reading; watched extracts from the film 'Narnia' as part of a year group assembly and honed their creative writing skills when drafting their own scenes from the story. Click on Aslan to visit our Year 5 page and find out more about these projects:

Spence Hollands

This week the Year 6 children worked with Spence Hollands to master clay skills linked to their topic The Great Outdoors. After learning a range of new techniques they let their imaginations run wild as they created 3D images of nature and fantasy lands to embellish large tree trunk tubes. Once it has dried out Spence Hollands will glaze and fire the art work before returning it to school in November - we can't wait to see it!

After working with the children Spence Hollands held a clay workshop for staff, which was attended by 30 enthusiastic teachers, teaching assistants and associate teachers from St George's and the Wallasey Cluster. The event was enjoyable and informative and gave us lots of ideas and inspiration for working with the children.

Ian Fennelly

Ian Fennelly studied painting at Wimbledon School of Art and gained a 1st Class Honours degree. After graduating Ian worked as a drawing office manager for several years which gave him the opportunity to develop his drawing skills. Ian Fennelly has always been attracted to the urban environment and loves the feel of a busy city. Ian paints very quickly and loosely, but it must happen within the context of an accurate drawing, which holds the paint in.

Ian Fennelly works from a light and airy studio overlooking the beach and often works on several pictures at once which enables him to plan the colours, and allows different ideas to bounce off each other. Ian uses photographs and on site drawings to plan compositions and draft out ideas. Part of this information gathering is travelling to different cities which is really important.

Inspiration for Ian's paintings comes from visiting places, spending time there, meeting people and getting honked at by buses. But when Ian paints, the subject is just the starting point; it’s the battle on the paper that’s really exciting. Colours, shapes, lines and patterns are all jockeying for position, while the water flows within the textured grooves of the heavy Fabriano paper.

Russell Kirk

..............

Below are the details of just some of the art projects that took place at St George's last year:

Before the half term holiday children from Year 5 and Year 2 got together after school for two art workshops at the lower site. They worked collaboratively using wax relief techniques, printing and collage to create displays for both sites to commemorate Remembrance Day.