Curricular Arts News

Year 11 Visual Art students have had a busy start to the term. As part of their current unit of work, “Art as Code”, we welcomed professional collector of pop culture, collectables, antiques and kitsch, John Graham, who after studying a Bachelor of Science majoring in plant pathology at University of Queensland spoke to the students about how his career quickly shifted to full-time collecting, where he is now his own boss. Students selected a pop culture object from John’s collection which will form the starting point for a number of experimental artworks for their practical folios.

During Week 1, the students also travelled across to St Joseph’s Gregory Terrace to participate in a workshop with contemporary Australian artist Nic Plowman. During the workshop, students developed their observational drawing skills and created a blind contour drawing based on a self-portrait photograph. They were led through a number of steps using line, shape and tone, with a strong focus on maintaining accurate proportion in producing their graphite self-portrait drawings. Nic was born in Brisbane but lives and works in Melbourne where he often facilitates drawing classes at the National Gallery of Victoria. He has had 17 solo exhibitions and has been a finalist in the prestigious Dobell Drawing Prize, the Doug Moran Portrait Prize and the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship. We are very grateful to have been invited to participate in such an invaluable drawing experience.

We would like to acknowledge the hard work and dedication of our Year 10 Visual Art students who at the end of last term created ceramic spherical forms, all to a very high standard. Inspired by First Nations artist, Thancoupie and based on imagery and symbols from the natural and built environments, the ceramic pieces were bisque-fired and then finished with a final glaze firing.