Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery Exhibition

Our partnership with Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery has been an invaluable experience for our Gifted and Talented Visual Art students, this visit being part of a long standing relationship with the gallery and its curators through numerous visits as well as the Art in a Box Program.

Balcatta SHS GAT Visual Arts students have the opportunity to work with practicing artists on specially organized weekly Saturday Morning enrichment classes which provides extension and the opportunity to learn specific art skills and techniques.

During the week addition time allows students to learn and understand the practice and theory of the broad areas of the Visual Arts. Students undertaking the program from Years 7 to 12 have opportunities to express their imagination, form personal imagery, develop skills, and engage in the making and presentation of artwork culminating in the large scale Annual Exhibition.

In July this year, our Year 10 Gifted and Talented Visual Arts students had the opportunity to visit and engage with works from Feeling Abstract? at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery with work from the collection. Students spent the day at the gallery and were given a specific book to sketch, make notes and identity what attracted them or they what identified with most within the range of works available.

Our students were asked to identify with either an artist, or a theme explored in the exhibition, and develop an artwork in response to their visit. Students found their inspiration in artists such as Sydney Ball, George Haynes, Margot Lewers, Erica McGilchrist, Tony Tuckson, and Jenny Watson.

The Year 10 Gifted and Talented Visual Art students have responded enthusiastically to the opportunity to participate in this exhibition and have developed strikingly varied responses in a range of media depending on the work selected and their own personal style.

For our students some of this lead to their work exploring figurative elements, and for others looking at abstraction gave them permission to a discover the joy of experimenting with these stylistic forms in ways that they have not done so previously.