2020

This collage by Lucy Vaughan (9O) effectively contrasts the refuge of home and the calm of this small verandah corner, with the storm of world issues raging outside.

Projected across an entire wall in a darkened room, accompanied with a ‘Manifestation Meditation’ complete with diurnal rhythms, this work by Ruby Norris (12O) takes a tongue in cheek perspective on the artificial means used to construct transcendence from our busy lives.

Selecting a personally meaningful object as a subject for her painting, Maddie Miettinen (8B) applied her knowledge of paint techniques and colour harmonies to create this joyful and celebratory image, Precious, developed from her own photographic composition.

After investigating the work of Australian artist Del Kathryn Barton, Millie Smith (10O), was inspired to develop this double portrait which represents the emotional connection between the two figures.

These two altered book pages by Isabella Ho (8E) and Asha Stewart (8G), were developed in response to the work of artist, Tom Phillips. In making these works, each student took a page from a book and constructed a poem of words found from within the original text. The poem was then extended and complimented with an image demonstrating each student’s choice of media and representational style.

Living Static by Alexandra Keeley (11E) was developed in response to her investigation of the abstracted works of Kandinsky, and the use of elements and principles of visual language in expression. Alexandra’s work represents the daily experience of moving into and out of the structures of school life.

Shown as a point of light in darkness, the crumpled sheet music with its composition in progress is used as a representation of hope and curiosity in the search for understanding and expression. Devan Zhao (9L) uses the rich darks and lights of her charcoal media, Progress, to extend her theme of light and hope within darkness.

While participating in home learning last term, Year 9 Visual Art students developed a series of compositional collages to reflect the theme ‘A Room at the Heart of my Home’. In this work, Caitlin Davies (9W) represents the function of her living space as a repository of personal and family histories.

Working from her drawing studies of a seed pod, Year 7 student Mia Neubecker (7O) simplified and stylised her image, developing it as a relief printing plate constructed of found materials. After printing, her works were further extended with the use of mixed media components, creating a series presented as a concertina book.

Developed in response to a study of 20th century art movements, this self-portrait by Sienna Crosisca (10M), uses the visual forms of Cubism to express her contemporary experience of life and identity.

First composed as a photograph, delicately framing the subject with wave-like folds of fabric, and then developed with careful colour harmony and soft graduation techniques, this painting by Lara Koekoek (8L) shows wonderful observation and sensitivity for the ‘preciousness’ of her subject.

Developed from a photograph carefully framed and constructed by the student, this large scale charcoal drawing by Sherry Jiang (9M), develops her theme Relentless Melodies with creative attention to the observational detail of light, form, tone and texture.

Last term while learning from home, Year 10 students engaged in a series of self-portrait tasks reflecting on the work of contemporary Australian artists.

Responding to Tim Storriers’ work the Histrionic Wayfarer, Visual Art student Kiera Ryan (10E) first constructed and photographed a self-portrait figure using clothing and objects associated with her period of home learning. The posture and design of this figure was given further animation in a drawing exploiting the liquid qualities of her selected media.

Part of a series of experimental works created in the process of developing a finished artwork, this image, by Lola Thew (12R), of a human on the threshold of new experience retains a sense of a poignant moment.

Showing a wry sense of humour, Son of Elton, by Lucjia Noble (11M), is a photographic appropriation of René Magritte’s surrealist painting, Son of Man, made in 1964.

In this week’s Artwork of the Week, Jessica Do (11B), confidently appropriates the ideas and visual forms of three different representational styles to show facets of her own personal and contemporary context.

Constructed from printed acetate over a mirrored surface, this work by Lucinda Bell (12G), builds on her observation of the warped images of city buildings captured in the mirror glass of Eagle Street buildings.

In this multi stage work, Eliza Canfield (8E), used watercolour to develop two images of forms from nature. Her images were then printed in multiple, cut outs and developed into individual three dimensional forms complementing the natural form of the original. Using a grid of concentric circles with a five point radius, Eliza experimented with ways to combine her individual forms to build the three dimensional pattern and movement of her mandala.

Confidently executed with bold strong lines by Grace Gillies (8H), this drawing is one in a suite of quick ‘warm-up’ drawings undertaken by Year 8 students in the lead-up to their ‘Still Life’ painting task later this term.

Combining impressions of the local Spring Hill area, Maxine Gamer’s (10G) mixed media work, ‘Brought to Life’, shows the layers of life and experience informing the neighbourhood. From the new tower blocks overshadowing original homes to bright domestic decoration, the artist shows us the energy and richness of our inner-city suburb.

2019

In this project, Year 7 students came together to design and construct a ‘Plastic Fantastic Chandelier’ from recycled plastic waste. Adopting an ocean theme, this group from Year 7 England researched and interpreted underwater life forms such as squid, coral and barnacles using available materials, linking their forms with repeated vertical elements suggesting bubbles and water currents.

Using the postmodernism technique of appropriation, Grace Yang (10M), alters a work by French Surrealist artist, René Magritte, to illustrate a dark dystopian vision of new pressures and conformities issuing from the mores of social media.

Developed as an extension of a previous project, this work, made in two weeks by Elizabeth Moss (12E), graphically depicts the malfunction of overthinking, as words and thoughts jam and disable the mechanisms of the mind, preventing proactive movement.

In this personal and poetic evocation of the Spring Hill neighbourhood, Sienna Crosisca (9M) showcases meticulous painting skills combined with collage elements for a contemporary reflection on living history.

In this work, Ella-Mae Brucklacher (12H) uses the boarded, nailed and chained glowing box and glazed red apples to represent temptation and desire—a yearning and aspiration for things ever out of reach.

City Abstract is a three dimensional experimental work by Tamrah Nicholas (11G) who used metal foil and acetate. Her work responds to her observation of the way in which reflections warp the rigid steel and glass grids of the cityscape.

The queues and multiple directions of the three-dimensional cars in this work titled, Cacophonous Cars, by Simran Mackrani (9H), evoke the constant sound and movement of business and traffic, which fills the air in the densely populated neighbourhood of Spring Hill.

This work by Francesca Lenti (12E) represents the idea of life as a constantly forming and reforming flow of molecular structure. The hourglass shape is used to represent time and repetition. The upside-down turning of the device with its contained flow and reconfiguration of fine particles, and the red and blue projected light and open branching structures evoke images and diagrams of circulatory systems.

Laid out in sand across the dancefloor in the Creative Learning Centre, the symbol form of this experimental work by Chelsea Warat (11R) shows the snake tongue of gossip whispering into a listening ear. The choice of sand as media is designed to evoke the insecurity of shifting relationships.

This arresting image is the central focus of video work, Unwoven World, by Sarah Mangos (12G). It provides witness to a changing world environment reflected in the earth textures and weather currents moving across the watching visage.

In this work, Guiding Messages, Carissa Kua (9L) uses stencilled and collaged imagery and slivers of packaging to comment on the proliferation of signs and directions she found populating the local Spring Hill streetscape. The concentration of imagery and the title Guiding Messages invites the viewer to consider the balance of freedom and direction required to maintain our quality life within the urban environment.

Working creatively within a triangular geometry, Madison Stewart (7B), uses the direction of her stylised leaf and petal shapes to take the eye of the viewer on a continual visual over and around her carefully interlaced mandala form, titled Nature.

This self-portrait by Trinity Huf (10B), builds on the artists understanding of the anarchic ideas and motivation of the Dadaist art movement in her use of mixed media and readymade political imagery to represent a personal sense of the madness of contemporary life.

Mia Clarke’s (12M) work Hunter and Gatherers comments on the shift of human livelihood from subsistence to the abstract world of knowledge collection and paperwork, and our constant sifting and searching for meaning and more.

The repetition of the skull image in this photographic work by Nellie Osmani (11M) is designed to focus the viewer’s attention on the aesthetic qualities of the form, and the place of the individual within the larger unfolding pattern of time, life and history.

In this work, Autopsy of a ‘Perfect’ Woman, by Isabella Nye (12O), the two halves of the mannequin are pulled apart to reveal the commercial images and products poured into the manufacture of a perfect exterior while inner confidence erodes.

In this drawing, Midnights Gift, Mink Godfrey-Asseraf’s (9M) acute attention to detail and feeling for her subject has produced a beautifully crafted and sensitive response to the theme of ‘Curiosity’.

Framing her object with lush folds of satin, Avalon Blundell’s (8E) beautifully executed graduations in Precious show the sheen of her subject with the warm pink glow of light reflected between subject and material.

The focus of this week’s Artwork of the Week was on the sweeping curves of the surface contour of the shell, drawn here with great feeling by Madison Miettinen (7B).

This portrait series, More than a Pretty Face, by Francesca Archibal (10O), plays on the artist’s understanding of the ideas and visual conventions of three 20th century art movements—cubism, dada and pop—giving each a personal and contemporary twist.

In this installation Cocophony by Sophie Nolan (12B), the viewer is invited to step inside a space of dark, rustling and densely overlaid verticals scrawled, etched and collaged with words. Forcing their way through the hanging strands and closely surrounded at the centre, the viewer is faced with a physical and aural cacophony of voices, reflecting the overwhelming claustrophobia of a media saturated world.

Elevated spirits, by Sneha Jaiswal (12W), depicts the human capacity for hope and faith even among those who have very little. The small houses and ladders cobbled together from found objects represent the fragility of the village while also showing community connection. The kites suspended above these structures show the elevating presence of the human spirit while the ladders lead down to prayer offerings, conveying the repeated practice of prayer as a daily ritual in life.

In this three-dimensional work, Jillian Campbell (9O) uses the image of a hand gesture with an embedded mouth to reference the multiple ways in which humans communicate. The loose and ‘ramshackle’ construction of this form extends this idea, reflecting on the layered and individual construction of our language and expression.

The pop imagery of this work, Barani, Yagu, Bari, by Eliza Douglas (12H) was developed from a combination of photographs taken while on expedition to Kangaroo Point. The bright dance of the background buildings, the sleek rounded forms of the car and the collage of shopping bags have been used to refer to the bright promotion and social obsession with acquiring new and shiny material goods.

In this bold composition, Elizabeth Choo (10M) uses a compilation of letterboxes to point to the layers and varying character of the homes, both old and new, comprising the dense urban scape of the local Spring Hill area.

This week’s Artwork of the Week is a mandala created by Keira Crouch (7G). In this task, students stylised images from nature using variable brush lines and applied watercolour techniques to develop their images. Each image was then folded and glued to create three-dimensional forms which were further extended using a geometric grid to create a sculptural mandala.

This term, the new Visual Art curriculum invited students to consider a range of methods to thinking and approaching representation of the material world. In this work, Anabelle Horton (11L), considers the question of ‘beauty and aesthetics’ in her use of an everyday object as a point of reflection on the accumulative environmental impact of human domestic activity.

The observational focus of this shell drawing by Emma Wong (7W) is surface contour. Emma uses curved contour lines to build the illusion of three-dimensional form.

In this work titled, Life Study, Esme Carr (11M) uses repeat images of a vertebra to create a new form representing the struggle of life against a background of time and flux.

This week’s Artwork of the Week, Seedpod Drawing, is by Stella Carrett (7M). In Year 7, students are introduced to the idea and practice of ‘slow looking’, measurement and persistence in checking back and forth between observed object and drawing. Once the initial outline is achieved, the focus of the work is on developing the pattern and texture of the object using pen, ink and mark making.

In this charcoal drawing, Curiosity, Juliette Lodge (10L) uses the fence as a symbol for the point of separation between the known and unknown. Her drawing shows excellent control and experimentation with media.

In this photo series, titled Neither the Beginning or End, Renee Newcomb (12R), references the sight, sound and smell of tea-making to reflect on the warmth and calm evoked by the use familiar objects and repeated ritual actions.

This week’s Artwork of the Week is Blue, a three-channel video installation by Isabella Nye (12O) that explores the feeling of the body isolated and suspended within an emotional experience.

This mask by Sherry Jiang (8M) has been developed from a fusion of forms observed from nature. Her initial drawing was extended with three dimensional paper construction and brought to life with patterns and textures derived from the original forms.

This animated building constructed by Nellie Tilbury (10G), combines both natural and human-made forms to muse the possibility of a lifestyle more dynamically integrated with nature.

The ever-expanding circles of Chandelier of False Promise by Francesca Lenti (12E) are made of mass produced plastic cutlery. The form of the chandelier and its throwaway components point to the lack of illumination and the cheap promises of consumerism. This work was displayed in close proximity to the school Café to bring the ideas into the realm of the student audience.