Focus on Visual Arts
Celebrating Visual Arts with Ned Kelly
After spending term one engrossed in colour, we are now cutting, tearing and pasting all sorts of papers, even our own painted ones!
We are captivated with collage art!
Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly Series 1946-7 has encouraged us to create our own interpretations through collage.
Foundation Collage Artists
We used our orange hand painted paper as a background for our Ned Kelly collage, where we pasted blue paper to the top as the sky. We cut rectangles and a square of black paper for Ned Kelly just like Sidney Nolan. We even cut a slit for his visor but decided to add eyes so he could see!
Year 1&2 Collage Artists
Our two painted works of hot and cold colours were just perfect to be collaged for our Ned Kelly work. We drew a horizon on the back of our hot coloured paper and cut it into two pieces. We layered these pieces onto the cold coloured paper to create a landscape like Sidney Nolan’s. Foreground and background were considered as we cut and collaged our Ned Kelly’s into place.
Year 3&4 Collage Artists
We used our two painted complementary coloured papers to be our background for our version of Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly. A horizon was cut on one paper and layered on the other to form the landscape. A large Ned Kelly and a small one was positioned to signify perspective.
Year 5 Collage Artists
We are fascinated by a later series of Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly, painted in 1955. Nolan’s style has changed but the square head has remained!
Our collages are being influenced by ‘Ned Kelly – Glenrowan Fragments’, where the painting is divided into window like boxes, with Ned Kelly looming in the foreground. We are collaging fragments of our own life with a portrait of ourselves, featuring the square head, of course!
Year 6 Collage Artists
Sidney Nolan’s second Ned Kelly Series is also motivating our collages.
We have taken his ‘After Glenrowan’ and transformed it into our own experience. We painted a tonal background of a chosen colour, painted another abstract work of colour, shapes, lines and patterns representing an experience in our lives. Drawing a ‘square headed’ portrait on the back of our abstract, we cut it out and collaged it to our tonal work. Strips were also cut and pasted to fill space. Detail to the work and face were added with pastel and fine line markers.
Collage Art is such a multi layered form of expressing yourself as well as being such fun!
Our students will continue to create works of collage in the theme of Sidney Nolan, such as ‘sporting heroes’ and ‘superheroes’!
Artist in Residence
We will also be fortunate to work with an Artist in Residence this term. Corrin McNamara will share her practice and her artistic journey. With her expertise, she will demonstrate her design and printing knowledge to broaden our understandings of the printing processes. She will support and enthuse us to create our own interpretation of Sidney Nolan’s works through print and collage.
~ Marjie Tkatchenko, Visual Arts Teacher