Rationale
This rationale complements and extends the rationale for The Arts learning area.Visual arts includes the fields of art, craft and design. Learning in and through these fields, students create visual representations that communicate, challenge and express their own and others’ ideas as artist and audience.
Aims
In addition to the overarching aims of the Australian Curriculum: The Arts, visual arts knowledge, understanding and skills ensure that, individually and collaboratively, students develop:conceptual and perceptual ideas and representations through design and inquiry processes
Structure
Learning in Visual ArtsLearning in Visual Arts involves students making and responding to artworks, drawing on the world as a source of ideas. Students engage with the knowledge of visual arts, develop skills, techniques and processes, and use materials as they explore a range of forms, styles and contexts.
Example of knowledge and skills
Years 7 and 8
Years 7 and 8 Band Description
In Visual Arts, students:
- build on their awareness of how and why artists, craftspeople and designers realise their ideas through different visual representations, practices, processes and viewpoints
- extend their thinking, understanding and use of perceptual and conceptual skills
- continue to use and apply appropriate visual language and visual conventions with increasing complexity
- consider the qualities and sustainable properties of materials, techniques, technologies and processes and combine these to create and produce solutions to their artworks
- consider society and ethics, and economic, environmental and social factors
- exhibit their artworks individually or collaboratively, basing the selection on a concept or theme
- document the evolution of selected art styles and associated theories and/or ideologies
- reflect on the ‘cause and effect’ of time periods, artists and art styles influencing later artists and their artworks
- draw on artworks from a range of cultures, times and locations as they experience visual arts
- explore the influences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and those of the Asia region
- learn that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have converted oral records to other technologies
- learn that over time there has been further development of techniques used in traditional and contemporary styles as they explore different forms in visual arts
- identify social relationships that have developed between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and other cultures in Australia, and explore how these are reflected in developments in visual arts
- design, create and evaluate visual solutions to selected themes and/or concepts through a variety of visual arts forms, styles, techniques and/or processes as they make and respond to visual artworks
- develop an informed opinion about artworks based on their research of current and past artists
- examine their own culture and develop a deeper understanding of their practices as an artist who holds individual views about the world and global issues
- acknowledge that artists and audiences hold different views about selected artworks, given contexts of time and place, and established ideologies
- extend their understanding of safe visual arts practices and choose to use sustainable materials, techniques and technologies
- build on their experience from the previous band to develop their understanding of the roles of artists and audiences.
Years 7 and 8 Content Descriptions
Years 7 and 8 Achievement Standards
By the end of Year 8, students identify and analyse how other artists use visual conventions and viewpoints to communicate ideas and apply this knowledge in their art making. They explain how an artwork is displayed to enhance its meaning. They evaluate how they and others are influenced by artworks from different cultures, times and places.
Students plan their art making in response to exploration of techniques and processes used in their own and others’ artworks. They demonstrate use of visual conventions, techniques and processes to communicate meaning in their artworks.