Forget everything you've ever learnt and re-learn it according to Bevis Martin and Charlie Youle

Date
4 July 2012

I like to think that the future of education lies in the clay-stained hands of Bevis Martin and Charlie Youle – two folk on a heroic quest to take what we consider concrete ideas (namely maths and bodily organs) and reinvent them as something similar but slightly off-kilter.

As well as creating meticulous displays of odd ceramic objects, plastering whole hotel rooms in diagrams of reproductive systems and making disturbing wax casts of peoples fingers, Bevis and Charlie have also provided a “how to draw an egg” workshop amongst other exciting adventures into their whimsical world.

Did I mention that pied pipers of fun, Hot Chip, are their number one fans? So much so that Bevis and Charlie are the ones responsible for a whole heap of the artwork and videos early on in their musical career. A collaboration so perfect that it’s almost hard to get your head around the volume of philosophical whimsy that must have been floating around in that room.

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Bevis Martin and Charlie Youle: A Secondary Education

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Bevis Martin and Charlie Youle: Detail of Blackboards with Organs, Numbers, Imaginary Organs, Imaginary Numbers and Imaginary Number Organs

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Bevis Martin and Charlie Youle: Egg Drawing Lessons

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Bevis Martin and Charlie Youle: A commissioned hotel room in Paris

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Bevis Martin and Charlie Youle: First Notions

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Bevis Martin and Charlie Youle: Smoking

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Bevis Martin and Charlie Youle: Sand table with thinkers

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Bevis Martin and Charlie Youle: Civil Sculpture

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Bevis Martin and Charlie Youle: Piano Shelf

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Bevis Martin and Charlie Youle: Fingers

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About the Author

Liv Siddall

Liv joined It’s Nice That as an intern in 2011 and worked across online, print and events, and was latterly Features Editor before leaving in May 2015.

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