TAS HSC Works

Abby Lin Alexandria Graham

Anny Chen Ashlie Edwards Claire Ovens Annabelle Webb

Erin Thomas

Isabel Walker

Isolde Mamo Jessica Freedman Isobella Price Lilli Johnston

Kiana Vardy Tess Orton

Meredith Reynolds, Bella Walker, Ms Anne Starling, Mr Rafael Butron, Mackenzie Goldthorpe, Abbey Strong, Harriet McLean, Maya Turk and Sarah Glenn, Year 8

Whilst 2020 posed many challenges, it also presented a multitude of new opportunities for students to engage in art and to have their achievements celebrated. This year, the Visual Arts faculty launched its online gallery, Together with Art. In response to COVID-19, the online gallery mirrored the way communities around the world were bringing art to the public via an online environment. Term 2 kicked off with the launch of our After Quarantine Art Competition where students showed their vision of life after lockdown. Congratulations to Jasmine David, Year 11, Anna Ward, Year 8, and Madeleine Watson, Year 7, on achieving first, second and third prize respectively.

Understanding that ideas and emotions are a valuable starting point for their creative endeavours, students modelled their art practice on the Australian artist Joy Hester in order to expressively communicate ideas and feelings about their identity. In Term 3, the ‘Mysterious Creature’ unit ignited students’ imaginations as they transformed their visions from two-dimensional drawings into three-dimensional sculptures.

In Term 3, students welcomed Artists in Residence Anne Starling and Rafael Butron into their classrooms. Anne and Rafael shared their knowledge of printmaking techniques. Students developed designs based on their emotive response to the impact of climate change and human intervention on the environment. Works were exhibited in the Conde Library.

Immersed in the study of Australian art in the unit ‘Our Island Home’, students made artworks in a range of expressive forms to convey points of view about Australian identity and culture. In Term 3, feeding into the excitement of the Archibald Prize, students honed their skills to develop a series of portraits for submission into the Young Archie competition hosted by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Students commenced the year by developing their painting skills and extending their understanding of experimental tendencies of 20th century art movements. Informed by investigations into modern art movements, and inspired by the music of their choosing, students created artworks that celebrated formalist values in artmaking. In ‘The Artist’s Voice’, students explored a range of artists who challenge societal values, then developed a ceramic or printmaking artwork based on a social or political issue of interest to them.

In Term 2, the Visual Arts faculty launched its first online exhibition titled Figuration to Abstraction, celebrating the endeavours of Year 11 Visual Arts students. The artworks in this exhibition revealed the diversity of ways in which students explored traditional, modern and postmodern approaches to the representation of the human form.

Despite the interruption to their artmaking brought on by a period of remote learning, students showed strength of character to sustain the high level of engagement needed to resolve their body of work. The highly anticipated Year 12 HSC Visual Arts Exhibition was showcased at school and on the website. The exhibition left no doubt about the talent of the students, made evident by the outstanding quality of artworks produced. Alice Guan and Amber Cai, Captains of Visual Arts