working whispers
Creative Practitioner- Sarah tombs
sculpture
Sarah Tombs
•Sarah Tombs is a practising sculptor and lecturer, working to commission and making sculpture for research projects and exhibitions. Sarah currently works as a gallery artist and lecturer in the National Gallery, London.
• Her sculpture practice is varied and uses a range of materials including steel, copper, bronze and stone.
•She recently completed a commission for the Morriston Burns Unit, ‘The Lady of Llyn y Fan fach’ working with Tata Steel.
Working Whispers Reflection
The Copper Boat
I found Working Whispers a very exciting project in that it brought together visual art, music, dance and performance. Pupils from both schools: St Joseph's in inner-city Swansea and Pontarddulais Primary school on the outskirts of rural Swansea were encouraged to witness the stories of the industrial heritage in the Swansea area and make their own creative responses through a series of workshops. This enabled the pupils to think about history of Swansea from a personal perspective and perhaps think about the role their own families have in this history.
I’m a sculptor and I often work in metal, so I researched the transportation of copper and Swansea’s maritime history, looking at the ships that carried the copper from Cornwall and beyond.
My concept for this project was to encourage the pupils to work in metal, to learn new metal-working skills and to make 3D work, developing ideas from prints that the pupils made with Dr Lewis in previous sessions.
Our first meeting was in October 2019 at the Jamboree Day.
I made a large metal boat structure for the pupils to work with. It was a noisy and energetic day- over 100 pupils clad and embellished the boat with various materials, recycled drinks cans, bric-a-brac and old coins.
For my subsequent school sessions pupils collected metal drinks cans which were made into flat panels- each student made embossed drawings on their panel- which were put into their sketch books.
These designs were scaled up and then made onto copper panels. Images from their visits to the Big Pit and Hafod Copperworks were sourced from their sketchbooks- the students told stories from their own memories of the visit to the Copperworks and made connections with the role of the boats in this industrial heritage.
Pupils attached the copper panels to the boat structure to make a copper boat and sails formed of individual embossed panels. The boat is a collaboration and is made from individual panels from every pupil.
The pupils were very enthusiastic and clearly gained a good understanding of why we were using copper to make a boat- they often related this to their visit to the Hafod Copperworks. They loved using the tools- especially the hammer! Perhaps they liked making a lot of noise.
In some of the sessions we used all sorts of scrap metal mainly car parts to make machine sculptures- this was a collaboration with Imogen Higgins and the pupils. The pupils found the process of dismantling, cleaning and creating machine creatures very inventive- they enjoyed having the freedom to explore the shapes- we drew around the objects, working in small groups. I think it was good not to have a pressure of a prescribed activity or finished outcome and they used their imaginations, testing ways to construct the pieces and to see what was possible.
We wrapped pieces of coal in copper wire – the contrast of colour and texture looked beautiful and this will be made into a sculptural installation as part of the celebration.
For me the experience of working with large groups of pupils was a challenge which I greatly enjoyed- the pupils worked so well together and if there was one aspect I would like to capture would be the conversations and comments the pupils made when we were all together making this work in the school hall and classrooms
