Visual Art in Practice

Module 1: Functional Art- Forms

This module explores processes of craft making. Year 11 students explore the ideas and applications of craft as function to create art that is “usable”, serving a purpose in everyday life. In this module students design and create handmade craft objects that serve a function within the home and are suitable for sale. They demonstrate and apply art-making processes, which may include but are not limited to the use of polymer clay, metal, and ceramic to make functional artworks.

Module 2: At Home Learning

During the unprecedented time of Covid-19 students engaged with a program that was modified for At Home Learning. In contact with their teacher via Teams, Year 11 students worked with the sculptural objects that they had at home, as well as some provided prior to school campus closures. They worked with 3D and digital media to create assemblage works, photograph them, and digitally manipulate them using basic processes in Photoshop. This prepared them for the next module, where they started learning back at school through a series of online workshops. Via a series of Zoom online workshops, professional Artist Adam Busby taught students skills in Photoshop including using gradient maps and blending modes.

Module 3: Commercial Photography

This module explores the medium of photography to represent a chosen client's creative practice and to promote their products for commercial purposes. Students create a series of photograph to promote and communicate the work of a creative practitioner or business. To do this they learn how to demonstrate and apply composition, lighting and editing skills to create professional quality photographs for digital display.

Visual Art - Arts as Lens

Students look at their material world through the concept of ‘art as lens’, applying different lenses or viewpoints. They explore how artists work through processes to create new ways of thinking, meaning and representation. Beginning with tangible forms as inspiration, they examine and respond to focuses of people, places and objects, producing figurative and non-figurative representations.

Students apply the contexts, foregrounding the personal and contemporary contexts to analyse and interpret visual communication and meaning in artworks. Students will be exposed to multiple viewpoints by examining the artist’s value systems that underpin or influence the way subject matter is perceived and represented. Students use a range of materials, techniques and processes to create a folio of experimental work in response to artist research and personal observations.

Students experiment with a range of approaches to improve technical skills, foster curiosity and creative thinking, and inspire innovative art practices. They are guided through the inquiry learning process to develop, research, reflect and resolve responses through learning experiences that facilitate investigation and experimentation.

Visual Art - Art as Code

Students explore the concept of ‘art as code’ to learn how visual language is capable of expressing complex ideas. Although both spoken language and visual language vary by culture, visual language has the potential to transcend and communicate across cultures, time and geography.

Students apply the contexts, foregrounding the formal and the cultural contexts to analyse and interpret visual communication and meaning in artworks. As students make and respond, teachers unpack the art processes of creating a body of work. Students are guided through the development of an individualised focus through learning experiences that facilitate more student-directed investigation and experimentation. Students use a range of materials, techniques and processes to create a folio, including experimental work, artist research and at least one resolved artwork.

Through the inquiry learning process, students explore how visual language, symbol systems and art conventions can express ideas and feelings in images, objects and experiences. They experiment with language in art that can be verbal, inaudible, literal or implied, narrative, metaphoric, persuasive, or decorative. They employ a range of materials, techniques, processes and technologies to make artworks that may be ephemeral or permanent, physical or digital.