Our Visual Arts students are bringing creativity to life through dynamic experimentation with mixed media, combining traditional handmade techniques with contemporary artistic practices to develop unique and expressive works.
Student learning in the Visual Art faculty focuses on individual creativity developed through hands-on experiences. Over a day, a week or an assignment this can include a wide range of media, processes, experiments, successes and challenges. Whilst we live in a digital, fast paced world, our students fully embrace the opportunities to work with 2D and 3D materials, following age-old traditional practices and new interpretations of these, reflecting artists contemporary practice in New Zealand and internationally.
Our students seek to communicate their ideas as a means of individual expression and connectivity. Junior students are introduced to new media or come with experiences that can be grown and refined. Every student is respected for the culture and personal histories they bring to the classroom, which provide a strong anchor for the development of their ideas through artwork. As students move into Senior school, they have the freedom to choose pathways and media that best express their ideas. With access to kilns, printing presses, a wet darkroom, photo studio and dedicated creative spaces there is an abundance of opportunities supported by the extensive professional knowledge of our staff.
In Design, students explore creative processes using handmade textures, overdrawing on imagery, stencil techniques and handcrafted typography to support originality and authentic artmaking. Creating through experimentation with mixed media highlights the richness, unpredictability and individuality that emerge when artists combine different materials, techniques and processes. Mixed media encourages exploration beyond a single tool or style, allowing texture, layering and contrast to shape work.
Creating marks, imagery and typography by hand preserves a direct physical connection between the artist and the work. Hand-made processes carry subtle imperfections, pressure variations and gestural qualities that give artwork character and emotional depth. This fosters experimentation and discovery, allowing students to take risks, respond intuitively and develop unique visual languages. This process strengthens observational skills and craftsmanship, exploring the happy mistakes while encouraging a more personal and authentic visual voice.
Senior Photography students are encouraged to explore a range of photographic techniques and conventions when developing the direction of their personal projects. This includes exploring what they can create using our professional studio facility. This offers them the chance to use bespoke studio lighting giving them control over how they capture their chosen subjects matter. Students are also continually considering how their work is developing technically and conceptually, encouraging experimentation and inquiry into new possibilities. Alongside this, their engagement in classroom conversations between student and teacher brings new ideas and directions in their thinking, developing their communication skills and ability to respond to ideas with purpose.
In an article on the World Economic Forum's website earlier this year, it was stated that “Creativity must remain human-centred” (weforum.org). It is our hope that through the experiences within Visual Arts, students will identify and preserve the value of creative exploration and encourage human innovation to remain a vital part of society whilst partnering, rather than depending solely on emerging technologies.
As Pablo Picasso one said, "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."