Confiscation Cabinets

V&A Museum of Childhood, Cambridge Heath Road, London
Confiscation Cabinets image
Ad
Event has ended
This event ended on Sunday 1st of June 2014
Admission
free
Venue Information
V&A Museum of Childhood
Cambridge Heath Road, E2 9PA
Nearest Tube/Rail Stations
Bethnal Green 0.04 miles

Artist and teacher Guy Tarrant's Confiscation Cabinets show artefacts confiscated in 150 different London schools over three decades. The Cabinets focus on the everyday actions of school students, with objects including pen tubes used as pea shooters, toy guns, colourful plastic toys and jewellery, make-up, gadgets and improvised missiles. Many confiscated items have been made from found paper, carefully decorated and looked after.

Since qualifying as a teacher, Guy Tarrant has investigated pupil interaction, play and resistant behaviour. He has been making artworks since 1987, always seeking to reflect the situations he finds himself in. The Confiscation Cabinets characterise the flotsam and jetsam of school life, and highlight the distracted behaviours often played out in the controlled school setting where children spend much of their time. The objects are evidence of the pupils' playful and impulsive activities and how they may reject or evade rules.

The majority of items on display were donated by senior and head teachers, while others were collected by Guy Tarrant while working as a teacher in primary and secondary schools, and in centres and schools for pupils with emotional, social and behavioural difficulties. Each school has its own policy for returning confiscated items: the objects on display represent the small percentage of cases where pupils have been given the opportunity to reclaim their property but chose not to do so. The exceptions to this are weapons, stolen items, or items believed to have been used to cause damage to a person or property.

Tags: Exhibition

User Reviews

There are no user reviews