Visual Arts Faculty

From the Co-ordinator of Visual Arts

Year 12 Visit  the Art Gallery NSW – Art Express and Ron Mueck Encounter

On the morning of Thursday 19 March, Year 12 Visual Arts students boarded the bus for an immersive visual arts excursion, travelling to see Art Express and experience the acclaimed Ron Mueck exhibition. The day provided students with the rare opportunity not only to view exemplary works from the previous year, but also to hear directly from Art Express students as they spoke about their creative journeys, challenges, and successes.

Listening to these firsthand experiences offered invaluable insights. Key takeaways included the importance of ensuring a strong connection between material and conceptual practice, developing works that clearly acknowledge artist influences, and the value of selecting a clever, meaningful title to support and extend ideas. Students were also reminded of the critical role Visual Diaries play, encouraging experimentation, and developing ideas and concepts and in maintaining cohesion across a body of work, perhaps most importantly, the speakers emphasised the power of being inspired by something personal something drawn from their own world.

Following Art Express, students moved through the Ron Mueck exhibition, where they encountered sculptural works that challenge traditional representations of the human figure. Mueck’s practice centres on size and scale, often exaggerating or reducing the body to create an intense and sometimes unsettling audience response. Many of his works are inspired by people he has encountered, yet it is the dramatic manipulation of scale that captures attention and invites prolonged contemplation.

To conclude the day, students participated in a digital workshop exploring size and scale through forced perspective. This hands on experience allowed them to experiment with perception and spatial relationships, reinforcing ideas encountered in the exhibition while applying them in a practical, contemporary context.

A big thank you to Ms Blundell and Mrs Kemp for their help and support throughout the day. Their assistance played an important role in ensuring the excursion ran smoothly and was such a positive experience for all involved. Overall, it was a rich and rewarding day of observation, learning, and creative inspiration. A great day had by all.

Finalist Clay Gulong National Showcase – Gabriella (C10)

The Visual Arts Department is delighted to announce that Gabriella (C10), has been selected as a finalist in the Clay Gulgong National Showcase Exhibition 2026.

Gabriella’s stunning Fantasy Surreal clay totem explores an imagined landscape and environment, incorporating thoughtfully designed elements such as terrain, flora and fauna, weather patterns, architecture, and modes of transport. This work was developed under the expert guidance of Ms Kristie Stubley.

Finalist artworks will be exhibited in the K–12 Exhibition at the Holtermann Museum in Gulgong, with final judging led by guest judge Keith Brymer Jones, renowned ceramic artist and presenter of the popular British television series The Great Pottery Throwdown.

We are absolutely thrilled for Gabriella and congratulate her on this outstanding achievement.