The focus for this unit is commentaries. In this unit, students engage with the social and cultural purposes of art making to produce a unique and cohesive body of work. Broad and innovative inquiry includes the conceptualisation and documentation of experiences within contemporary society. Students transform ideas and develop concepts using innovative approaches to art making and presentation. They document their thinking and working practices, having the flexibility to work across media and art forms.
Students research artwork providing critical comment on the meaning, purpose and values communicated. They examine their own beliefs and consider how the visual arts have reflected and shaped society in different times and places.
Consideration is given to the roles of artists in different societies, for example, hero, outsider, commentator and social critic. Students investigate the social functions of art, for example political and ideological expression, satire, social description or graphic communication. They address the relationship between form, function and meaning and develop understandings of how artists are influenced by pervasive ideas, events and circumstances, and how re-contextualisation contributes to meanings and messages in artwork.
Teachers and students explore one or more of the following suggested contexts in this unit (this list is not exhaustive):
· concepts: social commentary, power and persuasion, freedom of speech, satire, narratives, ceremony and ritual
· styles and approaches: the Bauhaus, modernism, postmodernism and abstraction
· materials: new technologies, found objects, aerosol art, new technologies, oil paint
· meanings and messages: narratives, popular art as cultural commentary, stereotypes, wars, art in society, propaganda
· purposes: propaganda and universal issues, such as globalisation.