Arts News
By Julia West - Faculty Coordinator: Arts
As we move into to the last weeks of Term 2, students refine and resolve art and media works, complete designs and perform dance works, drama and music items. Students have worked with creativity, skill and focus to create works that are personal and responsive to a task or a design question. During this time, both Arts Staff and students work together to ensure learning is valued and worthwhile. While it’s a busy time with expectations applied, we are proud of the art and performance works our students create.
Top Arts/Top Design Excursion
Semester 2 has begun for our students studying VCE and our Year 9 & 10 elective program. In light of this, Unit 1 Art Creative Practice, Media and Visual Communication and Design students recently attended the 2025 Top Arts Exhibition at the NGV Ian Potter Centre and the 2025 Top Design Exhibition at the Melbourne Museum.
Visual Arts staff commented on the value of the educational experience where students, for example, saw ‘high-quality folio examples in person, and seeing penny dropped for a few of them about the quality and amount of annotations’ and the how ‘seeing the high-quality folios and media and design works has become are real motivator’.
In speaking with Year 11 Art - Creative Practice student Zoe Crack, we learn more about how our students think about and learn from such experiences:
What did you learn or what did you personally get out of the excursion?
“It was a generally very good experience… seeing people my age being able to create amazing art and using a creative mind set, which is something I strive to use and so to be able to see this in action was incredible.”
What themes or use of materials did you connect with?
“I saw an artwork where someone had used latex to symbolise skin…I had never seen then used before, and reminded me how free the form of art making is. There is no fixed way.”
In what way did the excursion help you think about what you might create next year, in Year 12.
“The art work by Erin , the Loreto College student, where she used a UV light to create the internal skeleton of a bird…the idea of using different materials, not just painting and drawing, showed me that you can select different materials that suit you as an artists and perhaps one can think about what you can work with, what can you do well with?”
Year 10 Drama Performance
Year 10 Drama students selected to perform two scenes from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. In editing these scenes for clarity, students styled some of the language to make it coherent for the audience and accessible for themselves as actors. This task was constructed over Term 2, with students becoming directors, costume coordinators, set designers, actors, lighting and sound designers and operators.
The one-night performance was held on 5 June with students asking family and friends to attend, with students’ stage managing and running the show. The actors were excellent in their use of expressive skills: voice, gesture, facial expressive and movements. The use of stagecraft; lighting, sound and stage direction was wonderfully executed. Directors, Baeli Jans and Neve Eskdale, were insightful and creative in working with their peers to build mature and beautiful performances.
We’d like to thank past Loreto College student Bo Clarke who assisted the students with learning skills and knowledge in theatre practice. Bo volunteered their time to assist students to build skills in many areas, including combining dialogue and gesture and how to provide feedback to actors.
