Eye-catching artworks by Perse pupils to appear in calendar

1 Nov 2019

Daniel Chen

Nicholas Malasiotis

Sheen Gahlaut

Three Perse pupils are set to have their amazing artworks included in the 2020 Protein Data Bank Europe (PDBe) calendar.

Eye-catching works by Daniel Chen, Sheen Gahlaut and Nicholas Malasiotis (all Year 10) have been chosen to appear in the calendar, which showcases art created by students within their school curriculum and inspired by 3D structures of molecules from the PDBe archive.

A piece by Old Persean Ayshini Senadeera (2019) also features as part of the initiative, a collaboration between PDBe, the Arts Society Granta, the Arts Society Cantab and four local schools, including The Perse.

Daniel, Sheen and Nicholas created their pieces during Year 9 as part of the programme, led by Perse art teacher Mandy Wilkins. She initially forged links with the Hinxton-based PDBe in 2016 when a number of Lower Sixth art students used the organisation’s library of images as the basis for their Rouse Award projects.

Inspired by the structures of DNA, Daniel produced a chalk and charcoal drawing and Sheen created a ceramic sculpture, while Nicholas’ ceramic artwork was a stylised version of the HPV (human papillomavirus). They also wrote up how their ideas were influenced by their chosen protein.

Current Year 9 pupils will be visiting an exhibition featuring these works at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology later this month before starting work on their own PDBe projects in art and biology lessons.