Visual Arts 2016 HSC exam pack (archive)

Candidates showed strength in these areas:

• employing a range of building techniques to create sculptural forms
• constructing inventive hand-built works that dealt with concepts of displacement, cultural identity and consumerism
• demonstrating refinement in the use of glazes, stains, slips, oxides and the use of non-traditional ceramic surface treatments
• submitting multiple pieces to further articulate the concept of the work and provide layered meanings for an audience
• integrating found objects and digital media to extend conceptual meaning.

Candidates needed to improve in these areas:

• ensuring curatorial choices are considered in the submission
• demonstrating an understanding of the drying, joining and firing processes
• maintaining technical control throughout the entire vessel, including the base and lip.

Candidates showed strength in these areas:

• investigating and making references to the artworld agencies
• demonstrating an awareness of artists’ practice from a range of different contexts
• providing clear instruction for the display, set up and curation of artworks
• demonstrating an exploration of a variety of expressive forms to attain cohesion.

Candidates need to improve in these areas:

• considering the importance of selectivity and refinement within the body of work
• reiterating ideas as opposed to repetition, in order to add further layers of meaning
• providing titles that allow the audience to interpret the works on a number of levels
• ensuring an awareness of BOSTES limitations on size, weight and duration.

Candidates showed strength in these areas:

• integrating technological components and processes, reflecting contemporary design practices to develop works such as digital media software, LED lights, laser cutting and the digital printing of fabrics
• transforming and fabricating every day and industrial materials such as paper and aluminium into wearable sculptural objects and relief sculptural surfaces
• referencing the artworld to inform architectural design.

Candidates need to improve in these areas:

• ensuring works are compliant with BOSTES requirements, particularly in the use of mannequins to display wearable items.

Candidates showed strength in these areas:

• demonstrating a knowledge of the agencies of the artworld and the role of the audience
• exploring digital post-production in Photoshop and Lightroom and the use of HDR filters
• displaying an understanding of the contemporary artworld and emergent technologies to document conceptual practice
• showing an increasing awareness of the selection of paper stock in photographic images to support the conceptual intention of the work
• exploring innovation in the practice of Documented Forms.

Candidates need to improve in these areas:

• providing titles that offer an opportunity for the audience to more clearly interpret the work
• understanding the importance of curation within a body of work
• providing clear display instructions
• ensuring awareness of BOSTES requirements of limitations on size, weight and duration of HSC submitted works.

Candidates showed strength in these areas:

• exploring surface qualities with a range of papers and materials to drive conceptual intent
• examining themes of portraits, identity, world events, animals, and fantasy
• considering the ways in which photographs can be used to inform approaches to drawing practice
• innovating and manipulating common place drawing materials such as biro, coloured pencils and graphite pencils with a variety of mark making techniques: geometric, cross hatching, stippling and dot
• exploring different conventions of drawing practice from high realism through to abstraction.

Candidates needed to improve in these areas:

• understanding the role and impact of careful curation
• demonstrating refinement in the development of drawing skills and techniques
• ensuring paper stocks and/or surfaces are selected to enhance specific approaches
• understanding how mounting and presenting can affect the overall dimensions of the work.

Candidates showed strength in these areas:

• understanding the diversity of contemporary graphic practices and forms
• discerning and inventive use of text, typography and design layout to support the conceptual content of the work
• referencing analogue practices through digital technologies: collaging, scanning, montage, compositing and drawing using tablets
• understanding graphic aesthetics such as Manga, comics and traditional and contemporary book and zine design.

Candidates need to improve in these areas:

• ensuring a consistent application of drawing, modelling and graphic conventions in the use of text and image
• sustaining the graphic style to extend the interpretation of subject matter
• rendering images through the use of post-production techniques for resolution and compositing.

Candidates showed strength in these areas:

• investigating a diverse range of subject matter, including contemporary allegories, migrant stories, rural and urban landscapes, portraits, scenes of cultural celebration, still-life, environmental fragility and loss
• exploring a range of approaches from the hyper real to abstraction
• inventiveness in the articulation of surfaces using thick, buttery applications of paint, glazing, washes and runs, scumbling, scraping, incising and blending using brushes, palette knives and fine linear brushwork
• accomplishment in using strong Fauvist colour and muted hues referencing the artworld
• recognising how audiences provide context and contribute meaning.

Candidates need to improve in these areas:

• careful curatorial consideration to ensure conceptual cohesiveness and demonstrate accomplishment in skill level
• consideration of the value and integration of text, collaged objects and photographs
• consideration of the integration and relationship of multiple stylistic approaches within the same work.

Candidates showed strength in these areas:

• showing awareness of contemporary photographic practice and theory
• using photomedia to investigate a theme which can be interpreted on a number of levels
• understanding and engagement with the audience
• demonstrating a thorough understanding of post-production
• sensitivity in using a variety of paper stock to support the intentions of the image.

Candidates need to improve in these areas:

• utilising post-production to refine photographic and graphic qualities
• curatorial discrimination within the submission to include only best practice
• awareness of post- production techniques, manual camera craft, differing view-points and lighting.

Candidates showed strength in these areas:

• demonstrating technical proficiency in the construction of imagery and in the awareness of printmaking conventions: lino relief printing and etching
• sensitivity in the selection and application of a range of tools for mark making, demonstrating control in the rendition of form and contour, light and shadow
• investigating technologies such as engraving, laser etching, graphics and digital printing
• demonstrating innovation, such as the deliberate choice to submit the block rather than the printed image and printing onto stock papers and other found objects
• transforming explorations of subject matter beyond literal or derivative representations in order to construct engaging and complex narratives and sustain significant investigations of conceptual practice.

Candidates need to improve in these areas:

• discernment when selecting printing surfaces other than paper to ensure that the material is sympathetic to the printed image
• awareness of the capabilities of a laser cutter.

Candidates showed strength in these areas:

• investigating and understanding the relevance of spatial relationships
• manipulating scale to engage an audience
• exploring themes of cultural identity, animal rights, the built and natural environment and the impact of social media
• considering the ways in which raw and engineered surfaces and the use of plinths and bases can enhance material practice and conceptual meaning
• understanding how found objects can be transformed beyond their literal representation.

Candidates needed to improve in these areas:

• calculating the volume of three dimensional works, including negative space, to meet the course requirements
• understanding that some materials are affected by temperature fluctuations and can become unstable
• demonstrating refinement in the application of glue and collaged elements
• ensuring curatorial choices are considered in the layout of the body of work.

Candidates showed strength in these areas:

• integrating found objects into textile and fibre practices as a means to develop the sculptural forms
• challenging the tradition of textile and fibre practices by transforming two dimensional surfaces into sculptural forms
• investigating connections between traditional craft and art to explore contemporary issues such as feminism
• developing and enhancing fabric surfaces by using technological methods such as digital printing.

Candidates need to improve in these areas:

• ensuring the stability of forms, particularly fragile sculptural forms, through gluing and reinforcing
• considering the importance of selectivity when combining fabrics and stitched surfaces to layer works in sculptural relief.

Candidates show strength in these areas:

• demonstrating a knowledge of camera craft by considered use of exposure and depth
• effectively using set and lighting design to ensure the film presents the narrative or ideas
• understanding the importance of sound to strengthen the relationship with the moving image
• acknowledging the practice of established directors and artists and employing their conventions in a knowing manner.

Candidates need to improve in these areas:

• developing and refining scripts that clearly outline the narrative or experimental aspects in the submission
• applying post production techniques that show considered knowledge of image resolution.

Question 1

Candidates showed strength in these areas:

• identifying how Wolseley depicts aspects of Australia through discussion of symbols from the artwork and the aspects of Australia they represent
• demonstrating understanding of the relationship that can exist between artworks, audiences and world
• providing descriptive interpretations of the artwork that articulate approaches to how aspects of Australia are revealed.

Candidates need to improve in these areas:

• developing responses that progress from description and identification of symbols to a detailed discussion investigating how aspects of Australia are depicted
• referencing the appropriate plate for the question.

Question 2

Candidates showed strength in these areas:

• clearly addressing all elements of the question through a well-informed analysis of artworks, using indicators of how imagery, colour and scale inform ideas
• developing a multi-layered account of artists’ material and conceptual practice through an examination of traditional, modern and contemporary approaches to art
• demonstrating a highly developed knowledge of how artist’s ideas are linked to their society, world and environment.

Candidates need to improve in these areas:

• expanding knowledge of artists’ practices through a more informed discussion of artists’ works, through an analysis of both conceptual and material practice
• examining artist’s practice in a less descriptive manner, supported by statements explicitly linked to a sustained investigation of both plates
• using a more extensive art vocabulary to examine all elements of question, such as ideas, imagery, colour and scale
• understanding the nature of investigation and drawing conclusions about the diversity of domesticity from the personal perspective of both the artist and the audience
• articulating the significance and relevance of Zahalka’s, Do Ho Suh’s and Song Dong’s contemporary representations as a means of communicating ideas about personal and domestic views.

Question 3

Candidates showed strength in these areas

• using the source material selectively and recognising that the Frames are intrinsically connected.

Candidates need to improve in these areas

• understanding that artworks can be investigated from multiple viewpoints
• articulating an argument in response to the demands of the question, with a focus on multiple viewpoints and interpretations backed by evidence from the plates
• referencing source material using appropriate visual language rather than providing a descriptive account with unsupported interpretations.

Question 4

Candidates showed strength in these areas:

• presenting a thesis that investigates connections between art and society through an analysis of artists’ context, conceptual intentions and material manipulations evident in artworks
• developing a degree of interpretation and relational thinking to connect art to a causal effect in society
• advancing ideas of art and society being linked through representation to changing values and established traditions over time and/or an art world influence at a point in time, technological availabilities and material innovations and/or a global and cultural context.

Candidates need to improve in these areas:

• investigating that connections between society and art practice could be considered as more than simply the representation of conceptual ideas related to subject matter and could also encompass a synthesis with material actions to support links to society, for example, implementing innovations in paint technologies, printmaking, developments in photomedia, digital technologies and time based forms
• developing the idea of society within the context of practice as involving more than a passive association to the physical viewing of art by an audience.

Question 5

Candidates showed strength in these areas:

• identifying and establishing connections between practitioners’ ideas and their material outcomes
• describing artworks with depth and understanding of artists’ personal interests, concerns and motivations
• exploring a range of artistic developments from varying art periods, cultures and contexts.

Candidates need to improve in these areas:

• qualifying and elaborating on the relationships between material and conceptual practice
• positioning conceptual practice within the broader scope of understanding of the contexts, which inform and motivate the discreet practices of artists and/or art critics and/or art historians
• examining examples beyond description to an expanded analysis of the different ways ideas, intentions and purpose inform material actions.

Question 6

Candidates showed strength in these areas:

• demonstrating substantial understanding of historical contemporary practices as part of a synthesised discussion of the relationship between artist and audience
• analysing artworks to convey complex understandings of artist’s intentions for connections with audience and providing a meaningful reference to the question
• using a wide range of artists and confident articulation and judgements of the diverse roles and relationships between artist and audience.

Candidates need to improve in these areas:

• ensuring there is an effective synthesis of knowledge of the agencies of the art world
• providing substantial evidence using appropriate examples, reflecting a depth of knowledge within their discussion of the artist’s relationship to audience
• interpreting and applying concepts reflected in the quote in a synthesised discussion.

Question 7

Candidates showed strength in these areas:

• explaining how artists interpret their world both aesthetically and conceptually
• synthesising knowledge of the artists and their historical and contemporary relationship with the world
• developing a contextually rich response that presented a sophisticated knowledge of the relationship of artists and world to support an explanation of the varying interpretations offered in the artworks discussed.

Candidates need to improve in these areas:

• identifying and addressing all aspects of the question, evidenced through development of a succinct and informed explanation that explicitly references artworks in terms of the artist’s interpretation of the world
• accounting for the complex connections that exist between the agencies in order to build a knowledgeable response that avoids descriptive accounts of artworks and inferred, rather than explicitly explained meaning
• identifying the influencing features on the perception of the artist as a significant aspect in determining their interpretation on the world.

Question 8

Candidates showed strength in these areas:

• referencing the quote to examine the wide range of ways artists and artworks represent and challenge notions of social and cultural identity through traditional, modern and postmodern practices
• explaining the significance of the material and conceptual intentions of artists and artworks to reflect and challenge aspects of their world, including cultural, social and artistic values
• interpreting artworks by embedding them within complex understandings of specific cultural and historical contexts and acknowledging the ways in which meanings can change over time.

Candidates need to improve in these areas:

• addressing all aspects of the question, including how artworks differ due to their cultural and social contexts, by referencing the quote throughout the response
• providing evidence to support an argument that moves beyond the description of an artist’s work, to analyse and interpret social and cultural identity
• demonstrating an understanding of the complex relationships that exist between artists, artworks audiences and the world in determining historical, social and cultural meaning.

Question 9

Candidates showed strength in these areas:

• providing a sophisticated investigation into the ways in which the artist reveals what is otherwise hidden or invisible, which linked cultural, historical and psychological relevance of the artist's' world and the world at large
• comprehensively addressing the question and supporting the argument with in-depth analysis of artists and artworks
• developing responses that were multi-layered and went beyond just audience recognition, but showed an impact or change to audience beliefs
• explicitly demonstrating knowledge and understanding of the structural frame to discuss the visual language as a device to communicate a message.

Candidates need to improve in these areas:

• moving beyond an overly descriptive component in the analysis of an artwork and using the visual evidence in the artwork to support a point of view
• developing an understanding of how artists create and employ a visual language in order to communicate to an audience
• expanding on the judgements being made using the artists and artworks, and relating this back to the question within the body paragraph.