CREATIVE Sydenham School students have triumphed at the Young London Artists Awards with one teenager citing ‘Tracy Emin meets the Terminator’ as her inspiration.

A number of pupils from the school in Dartmouth Road were recognised for their work in the competition which celebrates culture across the capital.

Emily Fidel, 17, from Sydenham,  received the 2013 Young Artist Award of £100 for her multi-screen TV installation Kiss constructed from the splicing of 100 film sequences showing people about to embrace but always cut just before they connect. 

Eva Bashford-Harrison, 18, from Grove Park, was shortlisted for the award and has subsequently received a number of commissions including one that will see her images on clothes.  Her exhibit, an installation and performance piece in one,  required Eva and a friend to sit in a crisp-strewn tent brandishing weapons and gas-masks as though waiting for a nuclear apocalypse.

She said: “It is a bit like Tracy Emin meets the Terminator. I built the frame with the help of my mum and it still took all day to assemble.”

Emma Savage, 17, from Forest Hill,  was a runner up for her art history practical project, a documentary exploring the shifting architectural story of Sydenham School, which she projected onto one of the exterior walls of the main building.

She said: “Unusually at Sydenham we submit a practical project for this subject alongside more conventional essays and although it is not a compulsory part of the course, it is a great way of getting to know more about the artists or topics you are studying.”