Art Review: Ai Weiwei

Gone to Seed
Ai Weiwei is renowned for being a controversial artist and his new piece exhibited at the most sought after space for installation artists, The Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, is no different. Being nicknamed China’s Warhol, Weiwei filled the Tate with over 100 million hand painted ceramic seeds and suitably named his art ‘Sunflower Seeds’. Although on the surface Weiwei’s new creation appears to be a simplistic concept, it in fact has many layers to its complexity. Each seed is representative of a brand new life and the fact that each ceramic seed has been individually painted represents the uniqueness of just a small percentage of the world’s population.
Sadly, the initial photos taken at the unveiling of his art work, images of children playing in amongst the work, the crunching noise of people walking over it, are to be no more. Weiwei’s ‘Sunflower Seeds’ has been temporarily cornered off pending further investigation due to the potentially hazardous dust that has been churned up from the public being allowed to walk on the work. The work is still on show but strictly on a ‘do not touch’ basis similarly to the majority of work exhibited in the Tate Modern which somewhat takes the individuality out of Weiwei’s art.

Children's Stories

As part of my A2 English Language I was given the task to write a children's story. It turned out to be a much more difficult task than I first imagined because every word that is put into a child's story is deliberate. The aim of a children's book is to teach a child to read and recognise words on a page. The author has to use specific techniques to ensure the book is beneficial to a child's learning process.
My story was for children between stages 1 and 2 of reading.
Stage 1: Initial reading and decoding - children begin to learn the relationship between sounds and letters and are able to read simple texts comprising of short high-frequency (often used words)
Stage 2: Confirmation and fluency - This is the period of consolidation, during which children steadily increase their reading skills and vocabulary.

Douglas the Deer

There was once a little deer named Douglas.
He lived deep in the wood with his Daddy.

He went to Woodland School where he had lots of friends but Danny Deer was his best friend.

After the long summer holidays, it was time for Douglas to start a new school year.
His Daddy packed Douglas a lunchbox of carrots and grass and off he went to school.

Douglas was excited to see all of his friends again, especially Danny. Douglas ran to try and get to school quicker.

When he arrived, he was confused. He thought he was in the wrong class. He thought he was in a class for grown up deer’s because everyone had antlers.
He did not understand.
As he looked harder, he realised they were all his friends.
They all turned to him and laughed, even his best friend Danny.
Everyone had grown antlers but him.

Douglas turned and ran from school, he ran through the door, through the gate, through the playground and the woods.

He ran all the way to the river and started to cry.

‘Hello’
Douglas looked around and could not see where the voice was coming from.

‘I said hello’
Douglas looked around again, this time he saw a rabbit.

‘Hello, I am Rupert’ said the rabbit
‘Why are you upset?’ he said

Douglas told Rupert rabbit what had happened. Rupert had an idea.

Rupert ran away and a few minutes later came back with two big sticks in his mouth. Rupert put the sticks on Douglas’ head and tied them on with string.

‘There you go Douglas, you look like all your friends now’ said Rupert

Douglas was so proud that he thanked the rabbit and started on his way back to school.

On his way, he ran through the woods where he got his new antlers stuck in a spider’s web. He shook it off and carried on his journey.

On his way, he ran into Mrs Brenda Badger’s washing line, where he got his new antlers stuck on her clothes. He shook them off and carried on his journey.

On his way, he ran through the playground, where he got his new antlers stuck on the climbing frame.

He was so fed up and tired with his new antlers that he shook his head till they fell off.

He walked into the classroom with his head held high with no antlers on his head. This time he did not run away.

Everyone turned in amazement and then started to laugh again.

He told them he did not care what they thought.

Everyone thought he was brave for standing up for himself and Danny ran up to him, ashamed that he had laughed at his best friend.

No one made fun of Douglas ever again.

After the next summer, Douglas went back to start a new year.

He had grown antlers and they were bigger and better than everybody else’s.