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HIJINX

In the mood for tea: A visual representation of emotion. This was my group project collaboration between the Hijinx theatre group and community group Oddessy and secondary schools with the first-year students studying the course of the creative and therapeutic arts at the University of south wales USW.

A portable celebratory space artwork was created in student groups as part of an exhibition accompanying Hijinx Theatre Company’s Christmas production of ‘Wonderland’ which was displayed at the entrance of the wales millennium centre and also on the stage larger artworks made by the children of the Marion centre.

 

Each of the student group members created their own mood boards to research ideas and themes around the character of the artwork and the script and how it would be ingrained into the piece whilst also considering how it would play with all the other characters.

 

This group was given the character tea party. The tea party was constructed with a mixed media of materials carefully considering each student's preferred art skills for example recycled resources, text styles, painting, withy. Once the ideas were coming together it then informed the inspiration with the secondary school children at the Marion centre Cardiff to create larger artworks "giant teacups and teapots" which then were created over some weeks and then got displayed on the stage as part of the show. Each cup represented a different colour to personify a mood change which was part of the script in the character hatter.

 

Each mood was created by the perspectives of our participant groups over the weekly sessions and inspiration from oddessy community groups. The Mad Hatter represented our attempt at recreating a character to appeal to a larger target audience and age bracket, and it was our hope that our piece introduced a refreshing perspective on how mood is viewed and that such allows for a personal moment of reflection.

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