About this resource
Are you looking for inspiration for your externally set Art & Design assignment?
Discover artworks on Art UK
We have over 400,000 artworks on our website including paintings, sculptures, prints, photographs, ceramics and textiles. Try typing your chosen theme or words relating to your theme into the search box.
Top tip! You can see artworks in art galleries and museums near you by selecting the location option on the search page.
Search and discover artworks on Art UK
Explore art terms
Find out more about materials and techniques, art movements and topics.
Be inspired by exam-themed Curations
We've pulled together some artworks and ideas to help you get started. Use the links below to see Curations of artworks relevant to a selection of GCSE themes.
Top tip! Use our Curations tool to gather and save your own collection of artworks. Use this for personal research, or make it public to share your ideas with others. Find out more.
Exam themes
- OCR (Hair, Music, Movies, Construction)
- Edexcel (Gathering – People, Human made, Environment, Natural world)
- AQA (Flora and Fauna, Narrative)
- CCEA (Inside, Outside, In-Between)
• OCR themes
Hair
Hair can be used to express identities, histories and cultures. For many of us hairstyles, like clothing, are a statement that reflects who we are. Hair is often used as a powerful symbol of Black identity, culture and history, for example, artist Chris Ofili uses braided hair as a motif in his paintings and prints. Artist Lorna Simpson presents Black hair as a source of power in her collages.
In historical art, hair can be a symbol of beauty, status and power.
The decorative qualities of hair – its shapes and textures – are also explored by artists and designers.
Music
What does Music look like? Can colours, marks and shapes express the way music makes us feel?
Sound artists often use music as their art. Scottish artist Susan Philipsz records herself singing and plays the recordings in public locations to create moving and ephemeral artworks. Sound is an important part of Christian Marclay's video installations. Video Quartet brings together 700 movie clips which focus on sound or music. Rebecca Horn's upside-down piano periodically bursts into sound.
From paintings that express artists' responses to music and artworks that explore the abstracted shapes of instruments to tributes to musicians and bands, explore how artists and photographers have been inspired by music.
Movies
Artist Cindy Sherman created a series of suspense-filled staged photographs, that suggest film stills. Steve McQueen pays tribute to movies in many of his videos. Sonia Boyce addresses racism in cinema history in her mixed-media artwork From Tarzan to Rambo... (You can read more about this in our Sonia Boyce learning resource.)
Discover iconic movie scenes, details and stills that have inspired painters. Explore how the drama and unease created by film sets, stark lighting and striking camera angles in movies are a powerful inspiration for artists. Be dazzled by the glamour of the movie world and its stars.
Construction
The shapes, patterns, and textures of structures, buildings and construction sites are a rich source of inspiration for artists. Architecture can reflect culture, history and the dynamism of modern cities.
The term construction also relates to the creation of artworks. Artists build artworks from formal elements such as materials, forms and colours.
Constructivism was an art movement founded in the early twentieth century. It focused on abstract geometric shapes which reflected modern industrial society and urban space. Constructivism influenced much of the abstract art produced in Europe in the following decades.
• Edexcel themes
Gathering – people
People gather to spend time with each other. They gather for parties and special events, to watch concerts and sporting fixtures, or to celebrate religious festivals. They might gather online, following each other and sharing what they've been up to. People also gather for work, often sharing tasks and working together to get a job done.
People often gather to show their unity in expressing their feelings or beliefs on marches and demonstrations. Posters, flyers, banners and placards promote these gatherings and their messaging.
Refugees gather and journey together for safety when fleeing war, famine or natural disasters.
Gathering – human made
Artists sometimes gather human-made objects or images of objects to create artworks. Assemblages are often made from manufactured objects – or bits of manufactured objects.
Structures and patterns are formed by repeating objects. Cornelia Parker gathers similar objects together – such as silver tableware and musical instruments – to make spectacular installations. By repeating human-made objects Pop artists commented on consumerism.
If you are passionate about the planet, gathering and re-using discarded human-made objects in art could be a powerful way to highlight pollution and waste, and shout about the the importance of recycling.
Gathering – environment
Villages, towns and cities are gatherings of houses and other buildings. They include a rich mix of architectural styles, designs, and features old and new. Town planners carefully plan the spaces where people gather – town squares, shopping centres and transport hubs. Maps and aerial views of places provide a way of seeing how buildings, roads, and other elements within a town are gathered and arranged. Infrastructure that supports human settlements, such as wind turbines and pylons, gather in quiet clusters in the landscape.
Land artists often gather objects and elements from nature such as stones or leaves to create sculptures in the environment.
Gathering – natural world
The natural world is full of gatherings. Forests are gatherings of trees. Plants gather or are planted together in fields and gardens. Petals gather to form a flower head.
Clouds gather in the sky to warn us of bad weather, raindrops gather and run down windows and snow gathers in drifts.
Animals, birds, fish and insects gather together in flocks, herds, and swarms. (Did you know there are collective terms for different gatherings of animals – such as a pod of whales, a mischief of magpies and a murder of crows?)
Research how designers often combine leaf or plant forms with birds or animals to create intricate designs. Investigate how artists use imagery from gathered natural elements to address personal and universal themes.
• AQA themes
Flora and fauna
The shapes and forms of animals and plants are sometimes abstracted or interwoven with other imagery to create intricate designs. Flowers, animals and birds are often used as symbols in art.
Flora and fauna can reflect the identity of a place or culture, as every place has distinct flora and fauna. (You often see plants and animals in the design of nations' flags.) Use the flora and fauna of your local area in an artwork or design that celebrates where you live.
The diversity of flora and fauna is also an indicator of the health of our environment. How could you use flora and fauna to make a powerful statement about pollution or climate change?
Narrative
What does narrative mean? How have artists and designers used narrative in their work?
A narrative is a story or account of an event. It can be a description of real events and histories. Artists and designers often explore stories and themes that relate to their own lives or the lives of their families or communities. Lubaina Himid uses narrative to tell Black histories. Photographers such as Alice Hawkins capture the stories of people within their communities. The imagery that Grayson Perry uses on his ceramics often explores identity and childhood memories.
Narrative is also used to tell fictional stories in art and design. These may communicate a message or simply be fantastical narratives to be enjoyed (or terrified by!). Stories from literature, religion or mythology sometimes inspire artists and designers. Pre-Raphaelite artists often painted scenes from literature, while textile artist Anya Paintsil weaves mythical tales into her tapestries.
Not all narrative art is figurative. (The term figurative art is used to describe art that includes people or recognisable figures.) Animals, objects, buildings, symbols, and even abstracted shapes, marks and colours can suggest a narrative. Artists sometimes use text – alongside images or by itself – to help tell stories.
• CCEA themes
Inside, Outside, In-Between
Are there spaces that inspire you? Interior spaces can range from a bedroom full of things that express who you are, to a public place with spectacular architecture, light and sound. Outdoor spaces could be streets or landscapes.
Looking from one space to another is an opportunity to investigate contrasts. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, artists such as Silvia Rosi explored our relationship between inside and outside spaces. Barbara Hepworth juxtaposed colours and textures to highlight internal and external spaces in her sculptures. She made sculptures for outside locations with holes we can look through from one place to another – to see the vista beyond.
People can feel like outsiders. Have you ever moved to a new place or gone to a party where you don't know anyone? How would you create an artwork that expresses what this feels like?
Inside and outside can refer to bodies. For his sculpture Mother and Child Divided, Damien Hirst bisected a cow and her calf so we see their outsides and insides at the same time. Gwen Hardie's Body Tondi paintings show human skin magnified, revealing the veins underneath. Surrealist artists explore the worlds inside our heads – often making art inspired by dreams and memories and devising techniques to surface thoughts and ideas buried deep in our minds.