The National Gallery of Zimbabwe, in celebrating the 60th Anniversary, presents the April Holiday Art Camp. The Camp is set to take place from April 24 to 28 this year and will offer an opportunity for students to explore and appreciate new ideas, development skills, making new friends, and showing leadership, all while having a great time, too!
From exploring their creativity through drawing, painting and sculpting techniques to daily snack-time spent with new friends in the Gallery’s Sculpture Garden, a fun experience will be had by every pupil at Holiday Art Camp.
The Art Camp is part of various education programmes organised by the National Gallery of Zimbabwe with the aim to educate children on visual arts, art history and improvement of their art skills while exploring various art material, themes and creative expressions. The Camp also serves as a resource and information centre that is in line with and in support of the new Education Curriculum which emphasises the significance of arts and cultural education from an early age.
“The broader theme for this year is celebration. The National Gallery of Zimbabwe is celebrating its 60th Anniversary. The entire year will be about celebration and introspection, as such all the programs we are doing are celebratory in nature.
The lessons for the Holiday Art Camp will include an aspect of celebration and will also be linked to the currently running exhibitions, that is the Amali Malola and the Dis(colour)ed Margins exhibition,” said education officer at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe Akim Nyakudya.
The Amali Malola show is a celebration of the contribution made by the late veteran artist towards the development of modern art in Zimbabwe.
The show takes in a variety of works from the National Gallery of Zimbabwe collection, Amali Malola’s family collection and the Chapungu collection. Malola used to sculpt from conviction as an artist that he had a message to impart and he continued to deliver from his heart full of stimulating ideas until he passed on. The students will learn about the history of early Zimbabwean sculptors through the Amali Malola show.
Meanwhile, Dis(colour)ed Margins presents works that offer alternative visual accounts of the politics of women’s bodies, race migration and displacement.
Regardless of considerable achievements in the battle for equality, many still feel restricted and are stuck into the margins of humankind.
In many parts of the world today, being a woman, being a foreigner, being part of a previously oppressed majority, being a minority, being of particular religious persuasion or generally existing in a periphery still means being ghettoised, omitted, displaced, or silenced.
In the margins of society, there exists barriers that determine whether or not one is granted access, and if so how much access one gets. The much older students will learn about significant discourses that are taking place not just at a local, but global level.
The programmes for the Art Camp are age specific and build on knowledge and skill, extending the children’s opportunity to discover new concepts.
The Holiday Art Camp is designed to adopt a formal approach with regards to the instruction of students as it takes into account the needs of the student’s full-time commitments to mainstream academic pursuits in the School Curriculum whilst offering a practical bypass to help relieve the pressures of learning.
“This year’s camp has some new and exciting aspects for the students. Those who are going to be sitting for their ‘O’ level and ‘A’ level art examinations, will get a chance to be coached on how to approach actual examination question papers such as still life, design and human figure by professional artists. They will also be offered an opportunity to access the library and research on local contemporary artist as one of the papers they will write will require them to know at least one contemporary artist and to produce work that is inspired by that artist,” said Nyakudya.
