Group Six - The Arts

What do we learn in Visual Arts?

The subject is predominatly practical - we learn and practice skills such as drawing, painting, photography, print-making and sculpting using modern artist`s equipment and materials. The subject encourages it's students to broaden theri own creative and cultural horizons. In Visual Arts we learn to critically analyse works of art developing analytical skills in regard to thinking differently and finding creative solutions to problems in the student’s everyday life.

How do we learn?

We learn mainly by doing - practicing techniques and skills in order to use them creatively in our artworks. In visual arts students have three areas to investigate: visual arts in context, visual arts methods and communicating visual arts. All of these areas come to play in how we organise our classes. We have: theoretical practice, art-making practice and curatorial practice. By the end of the school year we have multiple assessments where we show what we’ve learnt in all of these areas with the practice we’ve done during classes.

How are we assessed in this subject?

Visual Arts is the only subject without a final exam in the IB in Bergen Katedralskole. Instead it’s assessed on three different tasks: an exhibition, a comparative study and the process portfolio.

The exhibition is the only internal assessment and counts for 40% of your final grade. Students taking SL should make 4-7 artworks while HL make 8-11 artworks following a common theme. These will be graded by your art teacher, and will be made throughout the two years of Visual Arts course.

The comparative study is a paper where you have to compare at least 3 artworks by at least 2 artist. HL students must also include how these artists and artworks have influenced their work involved in, for example, their exhibition pieces. This counts as 20% of the student’s final grade.

The last 40% of the final grade is based in your process portfolio. A portfolio of all your best investigations, experiments, explorations as well as the process you used when creating your exhibition pieces.

What is the workload in this subject?

For Visual arts you have to consider the possibility of devoting some of your free time to finish everything on time. You will have to do several investigations and experiments within the time limit for each unit as well as 11 pieces in 240 hours for HL students or 7 pieces in 150 hours for SL students. The teacher keeps the art room at Bergen Katedralskole open outside class time for students to use.