Rachel Fox, Public Programmes Coordinator at City Gallery Wellington, invited our Wellington centre to a guided tour and morning tea.

Rachel aims to encourage a wider audience into the gallery, so our Central City English Language Group decided the offer of a personal tour AND morning tea was too hard to resist!

The gallery is only a short walk from our classroom, so one sunny morning the class and their teacher Sarka headed over to the gallery.

Some surprises were in store for learners as their expectations, if any, were quite different from their own experiences of art galleries.  he City Gallery exhibits mainly modern art and all the current artists exhibiting were New Zealanders.

As the saying goes ‘beauty lies in the eye of the beholder’ and so the reactions to the artworks were very diverse and interesting!

Some of the art was seen as appealing, fascinating, brilliant, enchanting, magic or quite unique.

Others thought it was boring, messy, absurd and shocking, but during morning tea the art stimulated lots of discussion about the different types of art and the way it is exhibited in other countries.

A follow up lesson was partly inspired by the huge 'one word' art works on display as the class brainstormed many different words to describe what they saw and then discovered the meaning and context for these words.

 Our other classes are keen to take up this valuable opportunity to have a personalised art tour. Thanks so much to the gallery for hosting us!

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