This year’s Visual Art awards were announced at a function on 6 August.
The external judge said: ‘The high calibre of work, range of media and approaches and the depth of thinking applied to all these entries made selecting an overall winner a challenge. I was impressed with the number of students working at such a high level.’
The judge asked for Special mention to the pieces that had a strong contextual background such as ‘Today’s Catch’ by Alex Lopez, ‘Wild Hair Day’ by Lili Clarke and ‘Get Out’ by Lila Edwards.
Visual Art award winner – Alex Lopez Year 12 with ‘Aeta’ a study of a Filipino boy. Media: Acrylic, paint and coloured pencils. The judge commented – ‘This work demonstrates the exceptional technical painting ability of the artist. The inclusion of a range of colours and expressive brush marks bring this piece to life, moving it beyond realism.’
Highly commended work is ‘Pins & needles’ by Madi Juriss – A mixed media piece using paint, collage, pastel, oil pastel, sewing, bandages, tracing paper, indian ink, pen & glue. The judge said ‘This work reflects a high level of cognitive and pictorial thinking layering both material and contextual ideas. This student has appropriately referenced expressionist artists and has applied a mature approach with media and mark making.’