Focus on Visual Arts
Captivated by Collage
After spending term one being engrossed in colour, we are now cutting, tearing and pasting all sorts of papers, even our own painted ones! We are captivated with the art of collage!
The Surrealists considered collages as a means to show how to combine different images to create something new. So, we have used Salvador Dali’s art to inspire our collages!
Foundation Collage Artists
We interpreted his “Woman with Drawers” by drawing ourselves, collaging drawers to our bodies. We tore pieces of tissue paper and pasted them to cover a box that transformed into “a drawer of dreams”.
Year 1&2 Collage Artists
Our two painted works of hot and cold colours were just perfect to be collaged together to replicate Salvador Dali’s “The Elephants”. We added an animal interpretation, detailed with pattern and long legs printed with card to complete it!
On a torn paper background of one colour, we collaged cut out images of an animal and a person riding, a juxtaposition, two unrelated objects together to create an interesting effect.
Dali's 'The Elephants'
Dali's 'The Elephants'
Year 3&4 Collage Artists
We used our two painted complementary coloured papers to be our background for our version of Salvador Dali’s “Meditating Rose”. An horizon was cut on one paper and layered on the other to form the landscape. A large, coloured object was pasted in the foreground of the sky, known as dislocation, where an object is in an odd place.
Year 5&6 Collage Artists
Our collages are being influenced by Salvador Dali’s “Persistence of Memory” (also known as The Melting Clocks!) We have transformed it into our own experience. We painted a tonal background of a chosen colour. Drawing a melting object, we explored different ways of painting it, shading it with pastels. We cut it out and collaged it to our tonal work. Other images were also cut and pasted to fill the space.
Collage Art is such a multi-layered form of expressing yourself as well as being such fun!
Our students will continue to create works of collage in the theme of surrealism.
Painting backgrounds for their collages
Painting backgrounds for their collages
Painting backgrounds for their collages
Painting backgrounds for their collages
Artist-in-Residence
We will also be fortunate to work with an Artist-in-Residence for two weeks this term – the last week of May and the first week of June.
Nicholas Jones will share his practice and his artistic journey with the students. With his expertise, he will demonstrate his sculpting knowledge to broaden our student artists understandings of this sculpting process.
He will support and enthuse them to create their own book sculpture.
This work will provide opportunities for the students to see the transformation of an everyday object, a book, into something new and different – one of the themes of surrealism. They will be transgressing the boundaries of conventions of what a book is for and alter it into an artwork.
For this project each student will need a hardcover book. Let’s check our bookshelves and scour the Op shops to find a preloved book that is looking for a new life.
We require over 500 books, so if you can help please bring hardcover books to the Art Studio, ready to be transformed.
~ Marjie Tkatchenko, Visual Arts Teacher