Module 4: Additional Teachers Notes: Sculpture and Installation
These Teachers’ Notes are for use with Tate Tools Module 4 – Sculpture and
Installation.
You can print out these Teachers’ Notes to use alongside the PowerPoint. The
PowerPoint will include a section with brief bullet points to remind you of the main activities and discussion elements for each slide.
Slide 1: Sculpture and Installation
Set up the PowerPoint to this title page to start the lesson.
This module will introduce students to the expanded fields of sculpture and installation and develop their confidence in thinking and talking about these media, using a range of skills and strategies for learning, including Tate's ‘Ways of Looking', which have been developed through Tate Tools Modules 1-3.
Taking traditional bronze-cast work as a starting point, students will explore the changing role of sculpture through investigation into materials and techniques, the permanence or temporary nature of sculpture, and what makes a work ‘site-specific'.
Using exciting and challenging works, this module goes on to look at installation art, inviting students to discuss and explore how artists make use of space and unusual materials in order to convey meaning.

Slide 2: What is sculpture?
1. Discussion: What is sculpture?
Sculpture can be found in many forms and made from a diverse, and often unexpected, range of materials. At the start of the twentieth century, more traditional media and techniques were used, such as bronze casting or stone carving. Today, artists use anything to make sculpture, including everyday found objects and light and sound, and they often use manufacturing processes in making their work.
The traditional definition of sculpture is taken to be 3D work which can be seen ‘in the round’ or in relief, created using materials shaped primarily by the artist. Sculpture needs to be experienced in the round and therefore demands that we walk around it and view it from different angles: from each side, from above, from below or through the middle. This more physical relationship brings questions to mind as we look.
As sculpture evolved, by the 1970s artists had begun to use sound and light in their work, causing the definition of sculpture to expand beyond physical materials.
Discuss with your group about what they think sculpture is and how it is made.
Discussion should develop out of their own experience of using different processes and techniques in creating their own sculptures, as well as from sculptures that they have seen. Ask them to name as many kinds of materials and processes as possible that they think a sculptor might use.

Some questions to ask about sculpture include:
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What do you think sculpture can look like?
How big or small can it be?
What kinds of shapes and textures can make up a sculpture?
What can it be made of?
How can it be made?
What can it be about?
What sculptures can you think of?
Where can sculpture be found?
How can it be displayed?
Who can create a sculpture?

The sculpture shown on this slide is Pelagos (1946) by Barbara Hepworth, who used wood and strings to create the piece.
Slide 3: Looking at sculpture
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Discussion: What questions can we ask when looking at sculpture?
Activity: Class sculptures

1. Discussion: What questions can we ask when looking at sculpture?

Look at the two sculptures pictured here – The Kiss (1901-4) by Auguste Rodin and
Your Are Driving a Volvo (1996) by Julian Opie. What are the similarities and differences? Questions to ask:
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What do you think it might be about?
What is your first one-word response?
How does it make you feel?
How do you think it was made? What materials do you think were used?
What is it made of? Do you know of any artists who work in this medium today?
What tools do you think the artist used? What techniques?
When do you think it was