Bush Studio
Students in Years 3 to 10 are invited to participate in a suite of immersive visual arts programs at Environmental Education Centres.
Opportunities to observe, interpret and respond to their immediate environment will inform students’ artmaking practice across a variety of mediums.
The following visual arts opportunities are available in 2024:
Primary visual arts professional learning workshop
- Date: Monday 18 March 2024 (Term 1 Week 8)
- Time: 9 am – 4 pm
- Venue: Gibberagong Environmental Education Centre
- Cost: $150 per teacher
- Registration through Gibberagong Environmental Education Centre
Bush Studio: Primary visual arts professional learning workshop aims to provide participants an opportunity to develop skills and strategies for teaching visual arts activities with their students. Participants will learn strategies to explore their immediate experience of the landscape to create preliminary works across a variety of mediums, including drawing and printing.
Teachers will be provided with written instructions and material lists for each artmaking activity in the event they wish to replicate it in their classrooms.
Primary visual arts immersion workshops
- Dates: Tuesday 27 and Wednesday 28 August (Term 3 Week 6)
- Venue: Field of Mars Environmental Education Centre
- Cost: $48 per student
- Registration is through the Field of Mars Environmental Education Centre
Students in Years 3 to 6 are invited to spend the day immersed in and inspired by the unique urban bushland setting at The Field of Mars Environmental Education Centre in this visual arts enrichment program. They will experience and examine the local natural and man-made objects, patterns and textures to create original artworks that reflect their own experiences and feelings about this juxtaposed environment. Students will view the work of Australian artists who have created in similar environments and spend the day making, creating and learning new visual arts skills. Media used will include drawing, painting, printing, mixed media, textiles and collage.
The workshop is delivered by a specialist visual arts teacher and Field of Mars teachers. This full-day workshop is designed to extend participants' skills and artmaking experiences beyond the classroom. Students who display a higher level of engagement in visual arts will benefit from this extended opportunity.
Year 7 and 8 visual arts camp
- Dates: Thursday 7 – Friday 8 November 2024 (Term 4 Week 4)
- Venue: Gibberagong Environmental Education Centre
- Cost: $200 per student
- Registration is through Gibberagong Environmental Education Centre
Bush Studio: visual arts camp provides an opportunity for public school students in Years 7 and 8 to be involved in an engaging, challenging and stimulating visual arts program led by an experienced visual arts teacher.
The aim of the camp is to provide students with an opportunity to observe, interpret and respond to their immediate environment at Ku-ring-gai National Park, Bobbin Head. Students will learn strategies to explore their immediate experience of the landscape to create preliminary works as departure points for resolved studio-based artworks.
Bushwalking in the Ku-ring-gai National Park will provide exciting opportunities for students to directly observe and visually document the subtle nuances of the natural environment using drawing and mixed media. Students will investigate ways to create sculptural works using natural found objects and use these sculptures to facilitate the making of drawings and monoprints. The program will culminate in an exhibition for families, friends and teachers.
Year 9 and 10 artist in residence
- Date: Thursday 15 – Friday 16 August 2024 (Term 3 Week 4)
- Venue: Gibberagong Environmental Education Centre
- Cost: $200 per student
- Registration through Gibberagong Environmental Education Centre
Bush Studio: artist in residence is a visual arts camp for students in Years 9 and 10, especially those considering further studies in visual arts. Students are given the opportunity to work alongside a carefully selected artist to observe, interpret and respond to their immediate environment at Ku-ring-gai National Park, Bobbin Head.
2024 artist-in-residence Emily Besser, practised native title, environmental and planning law for 10 years before she returned to her painting practice. Her work is predominately abstract and process-based, approaching each work with no expectation of a particular outcome.
“My work emerges from a cycle of drawing, painting and collage, an endless process of creation and destruction. The work feeds itself and is always moving on in some way. In other works, the beginning is first a feeling, or the sight of something interesting. It could be the way light has hit a feature of a building, a peculiar shadow, or the way an urban wall has been painted with two different kinds of green paint. There is no essential meaning in these things, but they move me nonetheless and my work helps me say, I’m here in this moment.”
Bush Studio | Visual arts camp | Gibberagong
Bush Studio | Artist in residence | Gibberagong
2023 artist in residence, Patrick Shirvington, is an accomplished children’s book illustrator and artist. Shirvington’s work investigates his relationship to the natural world through drawing, believing the practice of drawing is fundamental to the cognitive process and to opening doors to the unseen. Working with a variety of mediums, his artmaking looks at the natural world surrounding us, firstly bringing attention to the picture surface, followed by a deeper revelation.
