Visual Arts

In Visual Arts education, students develop visual literacy and aesthetic awareness as they manipulate and transform visual, tactile, and spatial ideas to solve problems. They explore experiences, stories, abstract concepts, social issues, and needs, both individually and collaboratively.

They experiment with materials, using processes and conventions to develop their visual enquiries and create art works. They view art works, bringing their own experiences, sharing their responses, and generating multiple interpretations. Their meaning making is further informed by investigation of the contexts in which art works are created, used, and valued. As they develop their visual literacy, students are able to engage with a wider range of art experiences in increasingly complex and conscious ways. The visual arts develop students’ conceptual thinking within a range of practices across drawing, sculpture, design, painting, printmaking and photography.

Visual Art in Year 9 is a compulsory one-term course, while Year 10 is a half-year option subject, where students are given practice in the fundamental techniques of drawing, painting and printmaking.

In Year 11 Visual Art students will complete a practical art course following a Level 1 NCEA programme, culminating in the completion of an externally assessed portfolio of work. Years 12 and 13 split into separate discipline-based subjects in Photography, Design and Painting. These follow NCEA programmes of study which focus on the methods, ideas and conventions from established practice appropriate to their chosen discipline, working through project-based internal assessments to develop ideas and deepen understanding. Finally, they will complete an externally-assessed portfolio of original work.