Merchants’ Academy
The Academy is a distinctive, specialised and extremely flexible learning village. We worked with pupils, staff and the school’s governors to determine the brief for the inclusion of artwork throughout the project.
Tod Hanson has drawn inspiration from a growing, fast-paced world filled with technology. His colourful murals play with popular graphic imagery at a large scale and include comics, computer games, fantasia and technology. They are present both internally and along significant portions off the buildings’ facades and have become a symbol for the school and its many endeavours.
The emblems were chosen from Merchant Venturer and Bristol coats of arms. I chose to use Heraldry because it is pictorial and a little spooky. I wanted to add a fairy tale aspect to the school, like entering a kind of Gothic realm rather than a modern institution. By taking elements, enlarging them and spinning them on their head I was playing with the weighty history of Heraldry, to make an image that was a declaration, a fanfare for new possibility. The scale and cropping also adds an abstract graffiti-like aspect; an urban feel in a suburban context. Tod Hanson, Artist
Gallery
Merchants’ Academy
