St George's International School Displays Students' Artworks

On Thursday 12 June 2025, St George's International School in Luxembourg-Hamm opened its Art Exhibition 2025, featuring artwork from students across all year groups.

Speaking to Chronicle.lu, Ruth Taylor, Secondary Art Teacher and Head of Arts, explained that the artworks of two A-Level and fourteen GCSE students were on display, as well as the works of four Year 12 students, eight Year 10 students and all students from Key Stage 3 (Years 7-9).

Presenting some of the artworks, she pointed out Year 7 students' work which looked at British visual artist Mark Hearld and explored foregrounds and backgrounds with animals. "They also wrote some text pieces to accompany it," she said.

She also spoke to Chronicle.lu about a collaborative artwork made by one Year 7 class, linked to the works of artist Björn Westman. They each took a zoomed in square and had to "work out the shapes and all the different colours that make up that section of the painting. So they learnt about colour mixing," noted Ruth Taylor.

Year 7 students also explored portraiture and self-portraits. "They learnt about the proportions of the face and how you can use different materials to draw. And also lots of different artists who make different styles of portraits. So, they've looked at wire using continuous line," she continued. "They've also looked at monoprint with a digital background using Adobe Capture. And they've explored ink, charcoal and pen in their self-portraits".

One project by Year 8 students focused on surrealism and Dadaism: "They played with ink blots and symmetry and added collage and text to create a set of playing cards". Another was Year 8's "craftivism" project, "exploring activism and addressing issues through craft". The students "each stitched a section of a puzzle piece that joined together as a whole year group. So, issues such as saving energy, switching off the lights or clean water".

Also on display is Year 8 art inspired by Jean-Michel Basquiat: "The students looked at anatomy drawings of the skeleton that we have in the art department and the skulls and they combined it with self-portraiture. They looked at lots of different materials, oil pastels, pens, acrylic paints, coloured paper and collage".

Moving on to Year 9 artworks, Ruth Taylor noted that some students had made self-portraits: "They looked at different artists to inspire them, including Gabriel García Román and Victoria Villasana. They combined different experimentations of collage using brusher and marble and also digital editing on Adobe Fresco. And for Victoria Villasana, they used hand stitching onto printed photographs. They also looked at a thorough kind of investigation into photography. They took photos of architecture and buildings and created 3D structures".

"They looked also at the origins of photography using an old technique with cyanotypes, so kind of a sun print, personal objects and acetates, like negative acetates to create a photograph," she added.

Other examples of Year 9 works include architecture pieces which saw students explore different media, such as ink, charcoal and pen. "And we also explored etching. We used recycled materials from packaging, tetra packs, juice cartons to scratch in buildings and then inked them and printed them," explained Ruth Taylor.

She also looked at a Year 9 ceramics project inspired by a South African project called "Ardmore". The students at St George's "selected animals from countries that are personal to them. It might be where they have lived before or where their grandparents have lived. And they looked at different species that belong there and created a vessel inspired by those," said Ruth Taylor. 

Meanwhile, Year 10 GCSE arts students "explored a range of media from pencil to acrylic paint to printmaking. And they've arranged their own kind of composition of artwork here". Ruth Taylor also presented some of the Year 11 artworks on display.

Year 12 students, who are in their first year of A-level art, had the opportunity to explore "a variety of different media, including 3D sculpture, printmaking, drawing, painting, photography".

Students also explored careers in art: "They took a particular job, could be fashion designer, graffiti artist, makeup artist. And they explored the kind of day-to-day or the training that the person had to undergo," the St George's Art Teacher noted.

Elaborating on the work done by A-Level Art, Craft and Design students, she said: "Over the course of two years, they make very personal projects and respond to any medium that kind of suits their investigation. So, these students have explored a lot of painting, mixed media, animation, sculpture, textiles and photography".

"Both A-level and GCSE [students] sit an exam where they produce a final outcome: in A-level fifteen hours and for GCSE ten hours," said Ruth Taylor. "So, it's all very personal to them but they respond to a theme".

The Art Teacher noted that the school offers three different clubs for secondary students: a garment making club (also with primary students), an arts and craft club and a digital illustration club.

The Art Exhibition 2025 is no longer open to the public.