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Our Visual Arts program provides students with outstanding creative opportunities to cultivate their artistic skills and knowledge. They learn through a stimulating mix of visual inquiry, studio work, exhibitions, and critical and historical reflection.

Opportunities exist to encourage accelerated learning through excursions, exhibition viewing and exposure to a wide range of resources and techniques by teachers and professionals who are leaders in their field.

The curriculum is designed to enable students to develop foundation skills in their visual arts practice in many studio areas including painting, sculpture, textiles, graphics, printmaking and jewellery.

Students develop skills in writing for a visual arts context on a regular basis. They are also required to write exhibition reviews, complete extended responses, research reports and notate visual inquiry pages.

Exhibitions and displays of student work are an integral component of the visual arts course. All students will have the opportunity to participate in internal and external exhibition processes.

Students work with professional artists, designers, illustrators and curators. Professional artists and mentors work with students in after school classes.

Apply for the Gifted and Talented Visual Arts Program here.

Eight Visual Arts Studio
Habits of Mind

Students are encouraged to use the Eight Visual Arts Studio Habits of Mind as part of the program.
Develop Craft
Technique: Learning to use tools (eg brushes, viewfinders), materials (eg paint, charcoal).
Learning artistic conventions (eg perspective, colour, mixing, figure drawing).
Studio practice: Learning to care for materials, tools and space.
Engage and Persist
Learning to embrace problems of relevance within the art world and/or of personal importance, and to develop focus and other mental states conducive to working and persevering at art tasks.
Envision
Learning to picture mentally what cannot be directly observed and imagine possible next steps in making a piece.
Express
Learning to create works that convey an idea, feeling or personal meaning.
Observe
Learning to attend to visual contexts more closely than ordinary ‘looking’ requires, and thereby seeing things that otherwise might not be seen.
Reflect
Question and explain: Learning to think and talk about aspects of one’s own work or working process and that of others.
Stretch and Explore
Learning to reach beyond one’s capabilities, to explore playfully without a preconceived plan, and to embrace the opportunity to learn from mistakes and accidents.
Understand the Art World
Domain: Learning about art history and current practice.
Communities: Learning to interact as an artist with other artists (i.e in classrooms, in local arts organisations, and across the art field) and within broader society.


Opportunities exist to encourage accelerated learning through excursions, exhibition viewing and exposure to a range of resources and techniques by teachers and professionals who are leaders in their field. The curriculum is designed to enable students to develop foundation skills in their visual arts practice in many studio areas including painting, sculpture, textiles, graphics, printmaking and jewellery.


Students are encouraged to develop their own visual sensibilities and discover their own unique ways of looking at and exploring the visual world within their art practice. There is a requirement for all students to commit to extension opportunities after school hours, which is reliant on the availability of artist tutors and timetables of exhibition events.

Students keep records of the practical and theoretical aspects of the course. Students also reflect on their own artwork and works of others, skills, processes and understandings that are covered in the workshops, class work and excursions. Visual diaries play an important part in the process of recording, exploring and experimenting. They form an integral part of classwork and homework; being a place for generating ideas and taking ownership of learning.

Extension & Acceleration

Art Intensive

  • Participate in the development of individual projects which contain clearly articulated aims and workable timelines to encourage independent learning.
  • Challenging and higher order activities such as integration of multimedia projects and written analysis skills.
  • Problem solving activities and research.
  • Use of reflective journals to integrate content across curriculum by focusing on issues, themes and ideas.
  • Participate in a diverse range of visual arts experiences including the input of local artists as art tutors, visiting and participating in external exhibitions, and workshops.
  • Visual Arts Camp in Year 8 and Year 11.

Exhibitions

  • Opportunities for selected, resolved, and appropriate artwork to be exhibited in the Curtin Theatre, Learning Centre and other local, national and international external venues.
  • Regular entries into local, national and international art competitions.
  • Excursions to museums, art galleries and offsite drawing locations.
  • All projects placed within an art history or contemporary context.
  • Variety of media, from contemporary technologies to traditional techniques, covering a range of studio areas.
  • Workshops with a variety of professional artists.

Curriculum

  • Extended curriculum that includes an extra in-depth Art History strand. This is made possible by compacting and accelerating the existing curriculum. Students work on content one year level above a normal curriculum delivery.
  • Written examinations development.
  • Students explore a range of broader, deeper and more challenging practical and written learning tasks than those delivered in a normal educational setting.
  • A broad skill base which includes foundation skills in painting, drawing, sculpture, jewellery, textiles, design, print making and digital media.

Please note: This presents an example of what is offered as part of the program.

Writing Skills

Students develop skills in writing for a visual arts context on a regular basis. They are also required to write exhibition reviews, complete extended
responses, research reports and notate visual inquiry pages. Frameworks will be taught in class and will place students at an advantage for further upper school studies.

Exhibitions and Displays

Exhibitions and displays of student work are an integral component of the visual arts course. All students will have the opportunity to participate in
exhibition processes, both internally and externally. Our students regularly exhibit in Year 12 Perspectives, Young Originals, the St George’s Art Awards,
metaMORPHosis, Shaun Tan Award, The Lester Prize, 25 under 25, the college’s Learning Centre, and other specific exhibitions in the local community and internationally, ie Saatchi Young Artist Awards.

Professional Artists and Tutors

All Gifted and Talented visual arts students have the opportunity to participate in workshops conducted by industry professionals.
Students work with professional artists, designers, illustrators and curators. Professional artists and mentors work with students in after school classes.
The skills obtained from these workshops are invaluable and instrumental to the development of our students in the Gifted and Talented Visual Arts Program.

Upper School Program

The development of skills in visual arts is designed to prepare students for upper school WACE courses in visual art, which prepare students for university or TAFE entry while offering enrichment, extension and acceleration.