Art A focuses on developing the student's ability to explore and understand major movements throughout art history. Students will trial and experience different studio arts practices by working through a series of introductory exercises covering a range of different studio art forms. The unit is designed to cater for all students irrespective of their ability or previous experience in the arts.

Students will use a range of arts media to record, experiment and refine ideas. Students will complete a folio of experimental artworks throughout the course. Students will observe how artists in various time periods and art movements have explored ideas and styles in their artworks. This theoretical aspect of the course should inspire the students’ practical work. They will be required to investigate and interpret artists and their artwork.

Students in this course will become expressive creators following the studio arts process. Art B allows for all students to experience the visual arts with confidence, curiosity, imagination and enjoyment while exploring a personal aesthetic. This is done through engagement with visual arts making, viewing, discussing, analysing, interpreting and evaluating. The unit is designed to cater for all students irrespective of their ability or previous experiences in the arts.

Students undertaking Art B will work through a series of introductory exercises. Students will become more independent in their approach to exploring, developing and refining images and forms. Art B is more exploratory in comparison to Art A. This means it has less structure around the style to base artworks on.

In this unit students focus on developing and exploring their own inspiration. In order to do this, the course involves looking into artist’s studio practices and processes. A range of art forms, materials and techniques are considered, to strengthen these before year 12.

Students learn that their artistic inspiration can really come from anywhere and everywhere. They need to know how to firstly identify it, and then create from it.

Within Unit 2, art students learn to write their own proposed exploration. This is perfectly in line as a practice for the process they will undertake in year 12, without all of the final year pressure! Aesthetics play a large part in determining individual subject matter.

Once some initial fundamentals are taught, the art room becomes an experimental studio space. Students are encouraged to trial with new materials and challenge old ones. This unit will solidify what will be expected within year 12 Studio art while allowing for the creation of final pieces at various stages.

UNIT 3: COLLECT, EXTEND AND CONNECT

In this unit students are actively engaged in art making using materials, techniques and processes. They explore contexts, subject matter and ideas to develop artworks in imaginative and creative ways. They also investigate how artists use visual language to represent ideas and meaning in artworks.

The materials, techniques and processes of the art form the students work with are fundamental to the artworks they make. Students use their Visual Arts journal to record their art making. They record their research of artists, artworks and collected ideas and also document the iterative and interrelated aspects of art making to connect the inspirations and influences they have researched. The Visual Arts journal demonstrates the students’ exploration of contexts, ideas and subject matter and their understanding of visual language. They also document their exploration of and experimentation with materials, techniques and processes. From the ideas documented in their Visual Arts journal, students plan and develop artworks. These artworks may be made at any stage during this unit, reflecting the students’ own ideas and their developing style.

UNIT 4: CONSOLIDATE, PRESENT AND CONSERVE

In this unit students focus on the planning, production and evaluation required to develop, refine and present artworks that link cohesively according to the ideas resolved in Unit 3. To support the creation of artworks, students present visual and written evaluation that explains why they selected a range of potential directions from Unit 3 to produce at least two finished artworks in Unit 4. The development of these artworks should reflect refinement and skillful application of materials and techniques, and the resolution of ideas and aesthetic qualities discussed in the exploration proposal in Unit 3. Once the artworks have been made, students provide an evaluation about the cohesive relationship between the artworks.