Year 9 Visual Art Students at Work

Food, Glorious Food!

As part of a modified short course of study to take us to the end of the year, students in my Year 9 Visual Art class are currently working on a drawing unit based around food.  As a part of this task, students were asked to collect a natural food item (fruit or veg) and bring this to class.  Using the lens of either decay, distortion, or deconstruction, students cut, rearranged, or manipulated their food item in some way and documented this process through photography.

Inspired by the work of contemporary artists such as Kathleen Ryan, Yuni Yoshida, and Kevin Parry, students were encouraged to see food items as a stimulus for art making, and interrogate their shape, surface texture, and tone, as opposed to a simple consumable.  Students have experimented with a range of drawing media including pencils, graphite, charcoal, and inktense blocks in order to translate the photographs of their food item into a dynamic drawing, documenting the change and movement of the object over time.  So far, students have started work on their A3 resolved drawings, using the drawing media of their choice and the results are looking great!  Spurred on by the opportunity to possibly display their work at a local café, Pod Espresso, students have worked well to master their drawing skills and harness their own personal aesthetic – well done, girls!

Rhiannon Markwell

Teacher