VISUAL ARTS

CRITICAL VISUAL LITERACY EXCURSION

On Friday 19 April, myself and ten others including Ms Rogosic visited three art galleries, NGV International, the Ian Potter Centre and ACMI. We started off the day at ACMI, looking at an exhibit called “the Story of the Moving Image.” After that we took a tram to the NGV’s Gestalt Psychology tour, looking at and engaging with Art within the permanent collection with educator Leah Santilli, testing our memory and various aspects of visual perception. Overall, the day gave me a new perspective on art and how we perceive it, the educational experience was honestly so much fun. 

Critical Visual Literacy (CVL) is a subject that combines Viscom, aspects of Science and Psychology with Art. We delve into meanings behind famous artwork, explore visual language, and have engaging conversations. This class is different for those who love Art but want to look behind the curtain to find out more, what, why, how, when and where of art from all across the world. I would 100% recommend this subject to anyone as you learn so much about our visual world without even realising it, you will never look at a billboard, Macca’s packaging, or even a plain block colour the same again. 

Tehila Levy, Year 9

I really am enjoying CVL this year as it teaches me the background behind artworks and how people interpret them differently. Coming into this subject I didn't really know what it was about, I thought it was teaching us about Psychology and Art at the same time, which it is but in a way that is better than I imagined. I think everyone should do CVL as it helps us to figure out different ways to interpret images and artwork. We can connect to it on a psychologically deeper level. I can now look at an artwork and pick out different symbols in it that all have different meanings to create the artwork that it is. 

Ashanti Kawalsky, Year 9

On our Critical Visual Literacy excursion we started off from the main McKinnon Road campus and headed towards McKinnon station. Before we entered the train we decided to grab a hot chocolate as a small morning beverage and then proceeded to the platforms. The train took us all the way to Flinders Street station, and we proceeded our journey to the city there. 

We first went to ACMI at 10am. We explored the art behind film making and different ways cameras were used in archaic times. It was an amazing experience as there were multiple areas to explore different elements of film such as sound, color, the evolution of animation and even an area to play video games! My friend and I even made a flip book where a system recorded us dancing and printed it on a piece of paper. 

After finishing our tour at ACMI, our team took a train to the NGV. We put our belongings in a locker and a kind lady, who was assigned to be our guide, gave us a small tour of the Museum. We visited a few artworks and the guide helped us analyse the different elements of the artwork using different elements and principles such as ‘The Gustav Principles.’ 

After our tour at the Museum, we were allowed to proceed to find a place to eat lunch. 

After lunch we wandered around the ground floor of the NGV and then ended our journey by returning back to McKinnon station. 

Overall, the excursion was really enjoyable and an amazing experience. My favorite part was looking at the evolution of film and I really loved how relaxed and free the excursion was. Additionally, exploring the different artworks in the gallery left me in awe as they were so intricate, modern and just beautiful. 

The excursion related to the things we learnt over the course of the subject so far. We look at how to interpret different artworks and infer the meaning behind them. Our first learning task was modifying a famous artwork to communicate our culture or message of our own. We have also looked at some physics topics very briefly and it enhanced our knowledge on how cameras work. We have made cameras; one out of pringle cans and another called a Camera obscura. 

Overall Critical Visual Literacy is a subject that is combined with science, art and psychology and it is definitely worth considering doing. 

Jinia Ganguly, Year 9