Visual and Creative Arts   

Unlike last year, the VCE Art students are enjoying 'real' rather than virtual experiences and the opportunity to visit the National Gallery of Victoria to gain inspiration for folios and written assessments.

At the time, the city and the galleries seemed quiet, giving us plenty of opportunity to view and discuss the broad range of works on display. ‘Bark Ladies’ was a feature for the students, broadening their knowledge of the varied styles within contemporary indigenous art in Australia. Artworks by Lorraine Connelly-Northey and Fred Williams were an integral part of the visit to the gallery as they were the focus of SACs.

In the Art Room, the Year 12 Art students worked diligently on their folio developments. They have unique themes with exciting ideas. We are looking forward to seeing some exciting work over the next few months!

The Junior Art classes enjoyed sharing ideas and ‘hands on’ creativity in the Art Rooms.  Working both individually and in groups, the focus for most classes in Term 1 was developing skills in designing and making 3D ceramic artworks. 

Camille Riordan 

Art Teacher 

Unit 1 - Area of Study 1-  Drawing as a Means of Communication

In this area of study students were introduced to knowledge and skills that underpins some of the stages in the design process of generating ideas, developing concepts and refinement of visual communications. 

Through the process of observational, visualisation and presentation drawing, students developed their understanding of the aesthetics, appearance and function of objects and structures. 

They investigated ways of representing form and surface textures, depicting the direction of light, shade and shadow and representing surfaces, materials, texture and form and applying different materials and media to render their drawings. 

Once they refined their individual music player device design, they applied 3D drawing methods such as paraline, perspective and third-angle orthogonal.

Sue Radford

Visual Communication and

Design Teacher

Top Design Exhibition

For the last 20 years the works of Victoria's brightest VCE design students have gone on display at the Melbourne Museum. The ‘Top Designs’ Exhibition is a chance to discover the future of contemporary Australian design and see some of the finest works created by the 2021 VCE students. 

On Tuesday 4 May, the Year 11 and 12 students studying VCE Visual Communications had the privilege to visit ‘Top Design’. We were filled with excitement on the train as we made our way up to Melbourne Central and walked to the Melbourne Museum. 

There were 83 students’ works that ranged from Media, Design and Technology, Engineering and Visual Communication, on display and it was clear to everyone why these pieces were exhibited. 

The Visual Communication works that were selected had to include an exemplary folio, have a diverse range of concepts and ideas, demonstrate exemplary skills in manual and digital production and show an understanding of design thinking and significant imagination and flair.

Some of the works shocked us regarding how outstanding they were. There were multiple mini building designs which would have taken weeks to produce, the folios ranged from 60-170 pages of hard work and followed the design process- research, generation, development, and refinement, which had to be done twice, and all work was so carefully thought-out and neatly presented. 

Once we had finished with the exhibition, Mrs Radford took us out to the lovely, scenic gardens and we did some observational drawings of our surroundings. 

The excursion overall was amazing and has influenced us as to what our end of year product will be. Although it was very intimidating seeing all the A and A+ folios, and how much time and effort goes into producing such high-quality products, they were very inspiring and now we all know what to look for within our own folios. 

Hopefully, by this time next year, one of our students' works will be in the exhibition! 

Viviana Bartolome

Year 12

Top Screen Exhibition

Yesterday the Year 12 Media class went on an excursion as part of the research phase of their Media productions. We attended Top Screen at ACMI, watching celebrated examples of student made short films. We then toured the permanent collection of the NGV, researching existing artworks, exploring ways in which we could potentially use similar styles and techniques, such as reflection, texture, colour, contrast, framing within our own media work.

 Wayne Murrill

Teacher