Visual Arts  

2023 KSC VCE Art Exhibition - Art, Media & Visual Communication Design

As we celebrated the Opening of the VCE Arts Exhibition on Tuesday 10 October, we witnessed amazing pieces of artworks from very talented students. It is so exciting to be part of all this creativity and be inspired by the talents of students in Art, Media and Visual Communication Design. Thank you to all the students who exhibited in the exhibition – you should all be very proud of your achievements, hard work, dedication and success.

Many thanks goes to the Visual Arts Domain who worked very hard to set the exhibition up, Darren and Peter for setting up, our amazing admin staff, Helen and Gill for creating awards and editing newsletter items.

 To the A Block Team and teaching staff of A Block for loaning us A Block and being very accommodating with furniture being rearranged. Thank you to the Executive team for supporting the Arts and taking the time to select the Principal Acquisition Award winner.

To the Visual Arts staff- Amy Mclellan, Peter Scott, Chris Henson, Georgina Russell, Emma Crimmings and Alia Stewart, for all they have put into making this VCE Art Exhibition look polished, refined and creative.

To the Arts captains (2023), Erin Daw and Linda Zhang, who both undertook folio subjects yet found the time to give back to the Arts.  A special thank you to Erin for a super great speech which highlighted the efforts that students and staff had made to ensure that works of Art and Design were highly represented. Erin spoke about how lucky we are to work as a team where all our efforts go a long way. 

We say goodbye and thank you Erin and Linda welcome Estelle and Romy who did a super job running the People Choice awards.

To the students of Art, Media and Visual Communication Design, well done and we can see the amount of work that you have completed – we are so proud of you all!

We hope that you have all found your artistic voice, we hope your creative lives continue to flourish.

We congratulate the following students:

ART- Amy McLellan

Artistic Excellence: Sophie Greig

Highly Commended: Mia Burgess

Teacher Award: Elinor Green

People Award: Linda Zhang

MEDIA- Peter Scott

Highly commended: Ava Booth

Teacher Award: Enze Chen

People Award: Enze Chen

VISUAL COMMUNCIATION DESIGN- Helen Briffa

Artistic Excellence: Estelle Lau

Highly Commended: Sophie Greig

Teacher Award: Sophie Zarafa

People Award: Andreana Joannides

PRINCIPAL ACQUISITION AWARD 

Parmis Abedini

VCE Arts Exhibition Open Night 

Helen Briffa 

Visual Arts/Technology Teacher

Arts Domain Leader

Year 9 Urban Art

This semester in Urban Art, the Year 9s have been investigating the ways artists create works in the public domain, and how audiences respond to these. The students then used their knowledge to create two works which reflect these attitudes.

In Term 3, students created series of spray-painted works. The students learnt how to create a stencil, how to develop a variety of effective background designs, and to apply spray paint to create a work. The resulting works examine issues around power, identify, gender, the environment and mental illness. The students exhibited care in the making of their works, carefully selecting colours and refining their process to achieve effective results and polished final artworks.

This term, students moved from creating 2D works to a 3D sculpture. The class investigated sculpture in public spaces, reflecting on areas they’ve encountered works (such as the sides of freeways, in the city or in parks). The students explored the hard-edge abstraction movement and produced maquettes (designs for a large installation) which feature the sharp edges, flat shapes and bold colours of the hard-edge abstractionists. The variety of sculptures created by the class embody figuration and complete abstraction, all constructed and painted for maximum visual impact. 

Year 10 Photography NGV & City field trip  

On October 26, Koonung’s Year 10 photography students charged-up the batteries on the school’s DSLRs, topped up their Myki cards and journeyed into the city for a photographic field trip. First stop was the National Gallery of Victoria’s impressive new photographic exhibition, Real and Imagined.  Drawn exclusively from the NGV collection, Real and Imagined showcases more than 200 works by Australian and international photographers and artists working with photo-media from the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. 

Wondering throughout the exhibition, students were able to get up close to some of photography’s global greats, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Wall, Dorothea Lange, Man Ray, Thomas Stuth, Candida Hofer, Mervyn Bishop, Gillian Wearing and Ansel Adams – to name just a few.

After spending time engaging with the ‘real and imagined’ inside the NGV, students took to the streets with their cameras to apply their knowledge of composition principles and genre conventions of street, documentary, and architecture photography.  With the backdrop of Federation Square, Flinders Street Station, Hosier Lane and Alexander Gardens as inspiration, students were able to practice and push their photographic skills. 

If you’re curious to see more of the student’s work, following are links to a couple of great examples of a learning activity they have completed, which was to create a web-portfolio.

https://sites.google.com/koonung.vic.edu.au/lilyharrisphotographywebsite/page_1 - Lilly Harris

https://sites.google.com/koonung.vic.edu.au/vincentlamphotographyportfolio/home -Vincent Lam

Emma Crimmings and Chris Henson 

Visual Arts Teachers

Year 10 2D Art

This term, the Year 10 2D Art students visited the NGV Ian Potter Centre and NGV International to explore historical and contemporary works from their collection, and to engage and respond to these works in meaningful ways. Students were asked to analyse the contexts which shaped the works, such as the culture, relative historical events, and social norms of the time. They also learnt about artists’ working habits, mainly how to manipulate painting to achieve refined works of art, a skill which the students have translated into their self-portrait painting. Students spent time viewing staple works of the collection such as Tom Roberts’ Shearing of the Rams and Grace Cossington-Smith’s The Bridge in-curve, as well as newer works like Lee Ufan’s Dialogue. The class also had the opportunity to view the recently opened Watercolour Country exhibition, engaging with 100 works produced by Albert Namatjira and other Hermannsburg painters from the 1930s to now. Special thanks to Ms Sharyn Paspa, who accompanied the class on their outing and also helped to provide further insight into works on display.

Christopher Henson

Year 10 2D Art Teacher