VISUAL ARTS
HELLO FROM VISUAL ARTS!
Welcome back Art lovers!
The Visual Arts Department is looking forward to 2022 with nothing but excitement. Despite the adversity our students have faced over the last couple of years, there have been so many fantastic achievements worth celebrating.
Students and staff enjoyed a successful collaboration with multidisciplinary artist Vivian Qui, as part of the Creative Arts Victoria artist in residence program.
We celebrated the inclusion of our Visual Communication Design student work as part of VCAA’s 2021 Season of Excellence and learned of Liana Kelemen’s acceptance into the 2022 Top Arts exhibition with her moving Studio Arts video, Business Man. Congratulations Liana on having your work shown alongside some of our nation’s best at NGV Australia. We look forward to your interview being published on the NGV website soon:
We would like to formally welcome three new art teachers to the McKinnon Community:
Emma Butler
Emma will be teaching Ceramics and Art at the East Campus.
Jonathan Pertile
Jonathan is teaching VCE Media and Junior English at the Main Campus.
Rebecca Johnson
Rebecca will be teaching Senior Ceramics and Junior Art at the Main Campus.
We also welcome two Art Technicians to the MCK family. Annalise Bosnjak, our Main Campus Art Technician, is a practicing Printmaker who has worked as an educator for RMIT and the NGV. Ilya Parakhin, who graduated last year, will be staying on as a technician and digital design expert at the East Campus.
If you see them around, make sure to say hello and show them what you are working on - they both have great ideas!
Our McKinnon Visual Arts Captain Program continues with many creative applications already submitted. Our 2022 applicants already have some great suggestions for events and activities you can look forward to this year:
- Senior Art Club
- Junior Drawing Club
- Art Competitions with prizes
- Art After Hours programs
- Student-run masterclasses
Remember to keep an eye on Compass for information about future events, activities and sign-up sheets.
With the opening of the East Campus, this year will bring some exciting changes. It has been fantastic to see students in our new art classrooms, enthusiastically engaging with their teachers and eager to create. Art at McKinnon is always evolving. Remember to check us out on Instagram and see what all the fuss is about!
Peter Eglezos and Jessica Rogosic
Learning Area Managers - Visual Arts
JOURNEY TO TOP ARTS
My Studio Art process involved an exploration of satire and the corporate world. Utilising the creative freedom my SAT folio gave me, I was able to improve my ATAR by doing things I could never do in other subjects. I made videos of me in a suit smashing computers, dancing around the street at night and making animations with my face as the canvas. I decided to have as much fun with these early exploratory trials as possible to make the endless process of printing stills, cutting things up, sticking things down and annotating my folio pages a little bit less arduous.
One photography series of my final film was inspired by was “High Fashion” by Pawel Jaszczuk. The series presents photos of exhausted office workers drunkenly asleep on Tokyo city street floors. The series title came from their sprawling poses, reminiscent of the poses of high fashion models. It was really engaging for me because although it was humorous, I couldn’t get past the fact that these are real photos of a serious overwork epidemic and the accompanying issue of alcoholism. I liked this way of communicating a message: politics through comedy.
My studio process for developing the idea involved me carrying around a suitcase and suit on car trips so that whenever we passed somewhere interesting looking I could tell my dad to get dressed and I’d start filming him on his iPhone as he walked around in costume.
Because of covid, towards the end of my filming process I wasn’t able to travel outside my 5km radius, which was disappointing because I would have liked to film in the city. This setback forced me to investigate cool places within my neighbourhood, which in the end was far more valuable.
Since getting accepted into TOP ARTS 2022, I’ve been interviewed by Pip Wallis and David Menzies who are the curators of the exhibition. My interview will be playing on their website and screened at the exhibition. I did have to cut out two animation segments I’d made (one was a claymation and one was of my dad), in order to make the film more cyclical for the exhibition. I really can’t complain when anything I’ve made will be in the NGV!!
I am so proud of my progress this year and I am super excited for any opportunities that may come from this, in my hopes of becoming a film director when I graduate.
I am currently working on another film this year for Year 12 Media, again starring my dad.
Liana Kelemen
Class of 2021
ART AT McKINNON EAST CAMPUS
In 2022 Years 8 and 9 students have been welcomed back to school at the new East campus.
The campus is equipped with brand new classrooms, technology and opportunities. The Art area has many exciting new facilities, including 3D printers, laser cutters and Mac labs.
These resources allow an endless opportunity for students to be creative and create outstanding work.
The new equipment and materials will allow students the freedom to pursue new projects in Art and feel inspired to strive higher to do their absolute best.
Suzy Mankov
Year 9 Student
On Friday afternoon Year 9 Ceramics students began working with clay in the new purpose built ceramics room. This was most definitely an enjoyable and relaxing way to finish a busy week.
Tracy Griffiths
Ceramics Teacher