Posted July 2024.
Some of the Year 10 Art students at WMG Coventry along with several students from WMG Academy Solihull were chosen as winners of the recent National Gas Art Competition. The work was selected to be displayed at the National Gas HQ at Warwick Business Park and the winning students were given lunch and a private tour by Luke Fieldhouse, the Investment Governance Manager and Bayan Golmohamad, ESG Analyst at National Gas. Following on from lunch, the students were shown the Control Room and Incident viewing room which monitors and controls the entire gas supply and pipeline for the United Kingdom. A final talk about future careers followed and we left the site feeling very proud that the students’ work had done so well. Some examples of the students’ art work and their reflections are included below.
Vera Moiseef (Year 10)
For my art piece, I was very inspired by my childhood and going on trips to Russia, seeing all the pollution so I made a deep contrast having factories emitting pollution and having wildlife on the other side to show to impact of modern day factories, I thought this would serve as a reminder about the damage we have caused to the planet and it was just something that deeply interested me for the piece. I used acrylic paints which is a very hard medium to master and in fact, that piece was my first time using acrylic paints.
Madusu Doumbouya (Year 10)
For my art piece, I thought very differently. I recognised that work places are quite boring places to be at so I decided that the story of this piece will go way out there! Having the pipes be dragons and the workers trying to fix them felt like a fun challenge to create and illustrate. I used water colours, wax pencils and alcohol markers to create a dreamlike and colourful piece.
Matilda Evans (Year 10)
I used the word simplicity and thought about how gas energy is seen as one of the main energy sources and how many people rely on it for energy. I decided to use watercolour to mute the colours so when I wanted brighter colours they would stick out more. Using the idea of gas energy holding up people’s home life I drew a house that had been built on pipes. I wanted it to feel positive so I made the house childish with the treehouse that I’m sure many kids wanted when they were young and I added lots of small things so then whenever someone walks past they get to notice something different. It took me 6 ish weeks with only 3 art lessons each week to finish it with some time at home to do the line art. I’m really happy with it.
Fiyon Awosokanre (Year 10)
My piece was to signify different aspects of Gas production and distribution. When given the prompts, the first link I thought of was pipes and pipelines so I utilised this as a base for the majority of my initial sketches. I ended up mixing pipes and nature into my piece using flashes of blue to signify the colour of burning gas. I used red pipes to signify how this business is a “labour of love” in providing for so many people. I used recycled materials like old newspapers and scrap paper from other projects to create the pipes, plants and flowers to play into the company’s sustainability message and I shaped the board I worked on akin to a story book to show that even though now we use gas, the next chapter will be Hydrogen.