Visual arts is a mandatory course for Stage 4 and elective in Stage 5 where students develop their critical understanding of the artist and different points of view of the visual arts. They also develop their art-making practice, using a variety of materials and techniques.
Students will develop knowledge and skills in visual arts when:
The sample Stage 4 and 5 scope and sequence documents provide teachers with overviews for programming and assessment in visual arts.
Visual Arts content is organised into 3 broad areas that are applied to both artmaking and critical and historical studies. Practice, the conceptual framework, and the frames provide a language and structure to support students in making meaningful, fully resolved artworks, and in their interpretation and analysis of other artists’ work. In Stage 4, practice, frames and the conceptual framework can be considered separately. As students progress through Stage 4 and 5, the relationships between these are explored in more meaningful ways.
Practice describes the intentional activity or work of artists and/or art critics and historians to produce and interpret artworks.
Practice can refer to the technical and material processes and procedures used by artists when creating artworks. It also includes their intentions and the meaning represented in their work, and the ways in which they are influenced by and apply their understanding of their world.
In critical and historical studies, practice can refer to the activity of art critics, historians, curators, and other artworld professionals, who all bring their own interests, influences, and intentions into their work.
The visual arts frames, conceptual framework and practice poster is available to print and display in your classroom via the link below.
The visual arts frames infographic (PDF 5.57 MB) defines and provides teaching and learning activities for each fame in an eye-catching format.
The four frames offer a flexible and robust lens through which to interpret artmaking, art criticism and art history. The frames provide an interpretive scaffold from which students can generate a range of understandings from different perspectives.
The frames resource (DOCX 81.7 KB) provides examples of how each frame can be used to explore the function of the ‘agencies of the artworld’ and the relationships between them.
This 10 week unit of work investigates the artmaking practice of Barkindji printmaker Badger Bates. Students interpret the artist's use of visual language to represent personal and cultural meaning in his work ‘Mission Mob, Bend Mob, Wilcannia 1950s’, and then develop their own set of signs and symbols to create a lino print that represents a site that has personal significance to them.
A student-centered module which introduces the frames as a tool for understanding and engaging with different points of view in artmaking and critical and historical studies. Students demonstrate their knowledge by completing a series of reading, writing and artmaking activities that explore historical and contemporary artworks from subjective, cultural, structural and postmodern perspectives.
A student-centered module which explores portraiture as an area of practice, using the frames as a tool for understanding and engaging with different perspectives and points of view in artmaking and critical and historical studies. The first section, ‘Technical drawing practice’, contains a sequence of activities designed for students to develop and refine their drawing skills as they learn about the conventions of portraiture. This is followed by four standalone lessons that apply the perspectives of the subjective, structural, cultural and postmodern frames to an artmaking and critical/historical activity exploring one or more focus artworks.
This digital resource package provides Stage 5 students with opportunities to investigate and interpret contemporary intersections between art, technology, storytelling, social change and collaboration by focusing on the practice of five Australian artists including:
Student guided online learning sequences to support learning from home or in the classroom.
A student-centred online unit that builds understanding of the importance of mise en scene in film-making and photography. Students will investigate the practice of classic filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock and his influence on four contemporary photographers inspired by his practice. Students will demonstrate their understanding of mise en scene in their art historical and critical writing and their artmaking. The activities would be appropriate for Photographic and Digital media and Visual Arts students.
This unit involves an investigation of drawing, painting and sculpture conventions to make an artwork that represents self. Students explore the conceptual framework to make artworks that represent themselves through signs and symbols in the structural and subjective frames. In critical and historical studies they investigate, interpret and explain how contemporary artists have represented themselves through the medium of sculpture.
Explore the sample unit signs and symbols.
The KASCA visual arts framework breaks down the core components of practice, conceptual framework and the frames into a series lesson sequences. All lesson sequences come with ready-to-use differentiated learning and teaching resources and are available in an online format here and an e-book (PDF 12.75 MB) version that can be downloaded to your smart device.
These teaching and learning strategies and the accompanying resource, reflects the findings of an evidence-based investigation of critical and creative thinking in visual arts classrooms in NSW.
This website may be useful in the teaching of visual arts for Stages 4 and 5.
The Google arts and cultureExternal link website includes images from a large number of artists, art movements and mediums.
Further information and teaching support is available on NSW 7–10 Visual Arts Syllabus (2003)External link.
Stay connected with the creative arts curriculum team by:
