HSC Visual Art Resources

July 19, 2012 / / No Comments

Every now and then something comes along that has all the hallmarks of becoming a future place of pilgrimage in the educational landscape. Emily Portmann’s new Stage 6 Visual Art WordPress blog site is just that.

HSC Visual Art Resources is Portmann’s response to the need for an articulate, concise and informative repository of case study resources for HSC Visual Art students and teachers.

Recently launched and still in it’s infancy HSC Visual Art Resources is already flush with quality content that is organized into a systemic and logically sequential flow of information that addresses the work of each cataloged artist in terms of biographical information, ‘Conceptual Framework’ breakdown, ‘Frames’ breakdown and relevant ‘Practice’ references along with a healthy selection of supporting images.

As Portmann so succinctly put it

“HSC Visual Art Resources’ aim is to become a data base of relevant artists explored as case studies for both teachers and students. Teachers can access new contemporary artists in which to add to their own programs and course content, whilst students can access this information as inspiration for their own artmaking (particularly in reference to their HSC Body of Work, BOW’s) as well as for their theoretical studies of art criticism and art history.” @http://hscvisualartresources.wordpress.com/

Emily Portmann is an acclaimed photographer entering a promising educational career.

I would certainly encourage any teacher and/or their students to do themselves a great service; visit the site and select any artist under ‘Recent Post’s’ in the right sidebar and enjoy the journey.

ArtExpress at the AGNSW

March 11, 2012 / / 1 Comment

I was at the AGNSW leg of the 2011 ArtExpress exhibition recently and had the opportunity to snap a few images on my phone. Any art teacher here in NSW knows what this is about and should be deservedly proud that senior high school students have the opportunity to have their talents nurtured by such a group of committed educators. For anyone from outside NSW see my post at Adobe Education Leaders for a fuller explanation of the selection process. Of course it’s wise to remember that the curatorial decisions of the various galleries are just that and may not necessarily represent the best of the pool of works put aside for the curatorial teams.

On another note, the show at the Armory Gallery at Newington is the biggest of the exhibitions with Bodies of Work from over 60 students on display. I saw the show last week and it’s truly worth the visit. The Armory show is themed around representations of the landscape and as usual there’s some extraordinary work there. The students, their parents and teachers are no doubt justifiably proud.

Small faculty promo…we have 3 students from Wyndham College in that show and one at AGNSW

These exhibitions speak highly of the quality of art education in NSW.

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See the full selection of works from the Art Gallery of NSW

I’ll be posting slide-shows from other venues in the coming weeks.

Leonardo in London

December 5, 2011 / / 2 Comments

“Just as Leonardo’s Last Supper followed a Leitmotiv of triples (three windows; groups of apostles in threes) to honour the Trinity, so there should be three triumphs in connection with the remarkable exhibition of his work at the National Gallery in London: “Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan”.

As it happens, the triumphs are unmistakable in two parts of the enterprise. The curator Luke Syson’s achievement in gathering together nine of Leonardo’s 15 surviving paintings is an astonishing feat. It seems extremely unlikely that such generosity among the scattered owners of these masterworks will be repeated in the foreseeable future”……..

Read here

Reunited, sort of: the Louvre’s (left) and the National Gallery’s Virgins are installed on opposite ends of the fourth gallery, making it impossible to get more than the vaguest idea of how Leonardo changed his mind over the years.

Sintel | Blender Animation

November 28, 2011 / / No Comments

“Sintel” is an independently produced short film, initiated by the Blender Foundation as a means to further improve and validate the free/open source 3D creation suite Blender. With initial funding provided by 1000s of donations via the internet community, it has again proven to be a viable development model for both open 3D technology as for independent animation film.”

The Blender community have engaged in a number of ‘open’ movie projects involving online collaboration with hundreds of animators around the globe. This is the third such project and it is no doubt quite an extraordinary testament to the power of open source technology and online collaboration.

You won’t find an ‘Untitled’ among my works

October 31, 2011 / / No Comments

“In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Neo Rauch’s enigmatic paintings—an intensely coloured mix of realism, surrealism, pop art and comic-book imagery—brought him huge international success. In Germany his work still fuels debate on the pros and cons of figurative painting.

This month the Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden is opening a Rauch retrospective (27 May-18 September, see What’s On). Curated by art historian Werner Spies, the show will cover the artist’s development over the past 20 years. Of particular interest will be the presentation of Rauch’s first sculpture, titled Nachhut, 2011″.

text + image courtesy of The Art Newspaper

read more here

One masterpiece can go a long way

September 23, 2011 / / No Comments

An interesting development that underpins the problems that lack of sufficient funding for public institutions and the buying power of corporate collections poses for Exhibitions curators.

“There might be less money to organise exhibitions in many US museums, but by borrowing one masterpiece, putting it on display, and so turning a single work into a star attraction, several are stretching their budgets a long way.”

Caravaggio’s “The Fortune Teller” at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, proved a big draw

Read the full article here

Image courtesy of the Art Newspaper

Arts education in England under threat

September 23, 2011 / / No Comments

A disturbing new trend surfaces in education in England.

“Arts organisations, including the Cultural Learning Alliance (CLA) and Arts Council England, fear that arts subjects could be cut from secondary school education in England following the introduction of the English Baccalaureate, a way of ranking pupils according to grades achieved in five core subjects: maths, English, science, a language and either history or geography.”

Read the full article here

Perception, Language, and the Web

September 5, 2011 / / No Comments

A great article on language usage and interpretation. This is also a great asset in terms of helping your students understand the power of language and to help them learn to contextualize responses in an exam setting.

Whilst not everything will apply to an art education context there are some very useful gems of information here.

“Storytelling is a buzzword with lots of different interpretations. Either the internet is killing stories, or it’s the best thing to happen to them since the printing press.

Stories have been around as long as we have, helping us understand our world and ourselves. We learn and retain information best through stories, because they turn information into more than the sum of its parts. But what makes a story a story, and what does it mean for the digital world we’ve built?
”

read the full article at A List Apart here

Gallery system is structurally weak

August 1, 2011 / / No Comments

“A recent and new report by the non-profit dealers’ federation, Cinoa finds that fair-led and online business is taking over as the main source of revenue;

The traditional gallery model is in decline, according to a new report by the non-profit dealers’ federation Cinoa (Con­féd­ération Internationale des Négociants en Oeuvres d’Art), which found that fair-led and online business is taking over as the main source of revenue.

Gallery visits are declining as the art market expands to new international centres served better by art fairs or electronic media.”

read more here