Sample work Visual Arts Year 11: activity 1 figurative sculpture

Description of activity

Students make a large-scale (approximately 60 cm) figurative sculpture based on an approach to the representation of the figure investigated in class. Students engage with a selected sculptural tradition to make their figurative sculpture and use one or more frames as a focus to investigate the figure as a site to represent ideas and interests. Peer assessment is used to provide feedback and support each student’s conceptual and material practice.

Context

Students have been introduced to figurative traditions through western sculpture. Examples used include a range of artists and their works illustrating different approaches to the representation of the figure, eg Henry Moore, Greek archaic, Rodin, futurist styles, Giacometti and a range of Australian contemporary sculptors. Concepts such as contrapposto have been investigated through figure drawing and research. Students have been introduced to and experimented with aspects of sculptural practice, including large-scale construction, to support their artmaking practice.

Outcomes

• P1: explores the conventions of practice in artmaking
• P2: explores the roles and relationships between the concepts of artist, artwork, world and audience
• P3: identifies the frames as the basis of understanding expressive representation through the making of art
• P4: investigates subject matter and forms as representations in artmaking
• P5: investigates ways of developing coherence and layers of meaning in the making of art
• P6: explores a range of material techniques in ways that support artistic intentions

Criteria for assessing learning

(These criteria would normally be communicated to students with the activity.)

• Understanding of the conventions of figurative sculptural practice
• Understanding of how one or more frames can be used to represent ideas and interests to an audience
• Use of selected sculptural techniques in construction including scale, volume, mass, shape and texture and patina, and considerations such as voids, base, viewing in the round to support conceptual practice