City in Decline - Totemic Sculpture
| Grade | Work Samples |
|---|---|
| End of Stage 5 (end of Year 10) | |
| Grade B | Lou |
Description of activity
Using a range of construction techniques, students will make a freestanding sculpture in response to their investigations of the city, using found objects and recycled materials. They reference modern and contemporary non-traditional sculpture, as well as Indigenous totems, to develop their works. The works exploit the three-dimensional qualities of form as well as surface and associative qualities such as dissolution, fragmentation, asymmetry and patination.
Context
Students in Year 10 have explored the city as a metaphor for utopia and decline. They have investigated modernist and postmodern sculptors and sculptural practices through the structural and postmodern frames and the conceptual framework. They have experimented with the selection and combination of materials and objects, and a range of construction and joining techniques to communicate aspects of urban decay. Students have documented these experiments in their visual arts diary.
Areas for Assessment
Outcomes
5.1 develops range and autonomy in selecting and applying visual arts conventions and procedures to make artworks5.2 makes artworks informed by their understanding of the function of and relationships between artist - artwork - world - audience
5.3 makes artworks informed by an understanding of how the frames affect meaning
5.4 investigates the world as a source of ideas, concepts and subject matter in the visual arts
5.5 makes informed choices to develop and extend concepts and different meanings in their artworks
5.6 demonstrates developing technical accomplishment and refinement in making artworks
Criteria for assessing learning
(These criteria would normally be communicated to students with the activity.)
Students will be assessed on their ability to:
- understand the conventions and techniques of three dimensional sculptural practice revealed through making a 3D, freestanding sculpture - including assemblage techniques, shapes, surfaces, consideration of all viewpoints, scale, height, and base
- understand how the structural frame and aspects of the conceptual framework can be used to represent ideas about urban decay and a point of view about the city, to an audience, through signs, symbols and visual codes