Explore & Express Ideas

"Explore and express ideas and artworks from different cultures as inspiration for making their own artworks." (VCAVAE025)

Contemporary, First Nations artist Steven Rhall uses his practice to examine public space and traditional country. This resource produced by ACCA (Australian Center for Contemporary Art).

The resources offers a range of activities recommended for various school levels from 3-10. I am specifically focussing on the ‘Dream School’ activity for levels 3 & 4 which asks students to examine the mark making that is around their schools and then create their own ‘dream’ school. 

I was initially drawn to this resource as due to be produced using the inspiration and artwork from a contemporary first nations artist. When including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content in Visual Art it is incredibly easy to fall into cliches, focussing on dreamtime stories and more tribal Aboriginal dot painting or Torres Strait Islander totems. Students need to recognise that first nations people are also contemporary people working in the here and now. Steven Rhall’s work forms a beautiful link between traditional ideas of country and aboriginal ways of seeing and the contemporary, often urban environment. 

The resource relates directly to the ideas of explore and express, as it is an observation of what is there and then a creation of what could be when students express their own ideas. It has some helpful suggestions of questions to pose to help students better express their ideas or if that were at a loss for idea to prompt them of things to think about. 

This resource could also easily be adapted for differentiation; for students not yet at level 3 they could explore mark making based on observations without the additional dream school overlay and it could be extended for students that have already met the standard by taking it further into a larger map making experience.The map making overlay of this resource links to the 8 ways of Aboriginal learning pedagogy that is includes, symbols and image, storytelling and learning maps.