Video transcript
ARTEXPRESS 2023 – Body of work analysis – 08. Jasmine J. Watson – Internal Examination

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DANIELLE PALMER: Hi. I'm Danielle Palmer. I'm a visual art teacher from Tempe High School.

MELANIE CASSIN: And I'm Melanie Cassin, Head Teacher, Visual Arts, from Bossley Park High School, and we're here today to talk about 2 drawings that have been selected for ARTEXPRESS.

Look at this one, Dani. This is a really unique piece. This is something that I haven't seen before, and it's the student's interpretation of the visual arts exam, and I just think this is quite a humorous take on what is normally quite a serious event in a student's life, and this work is called 'Internal Examination', and it really picks up the student's personal experience of the visual arts exam. Have a look at some of the notes that they've included on the reading instructions.

DANIELLE PALMER: I know. Some of the-- it's so humorous, and I always tell my students if they make me laugh, they get more marks from me because, you know--

MELANIE CASSIN: It's clever.

DANIELLE PALMER: Yeah. But this student has been given this type of format to do over a few years. You can tell this is a student who's really familiar with the process of the examination, the booklets, what it's going to be, and they've gotten to that point, which is great. The teacher has given them the experience of what it feels like to do the exam. They've actually used a very strong sense of postmodern-- the postmodern frame here and really using that sense of humour and irony in this, and some of the way they've reworded this paper-- when you first look at it, it looks like a legit paper.

MELANIE CASSIN: It really does. Then have a look at-- closely here. 'Reading time, 5 seconds. If you're not capable of doing this reading speed, it's because you didn't try hard enough.' So, it's really taking a real postmodern look at the instructions that students are given, and if we're looking here on how students will be assessed, writing a concise and well-reasoned way under a time limit that you have no chance to review, edit, or consolidate your work. This is the humour that's coming through here.

And how to present an informed point of view. To do that on the spot, the student is saying this is really challenging. They're looking at question 1. We're looking at the student's interpretation of the section 1 part of the paper, which is looking at plates 1, 2 and 3 on the page here. What do plates 1 and 2 show about the level of stress that the artist was experienced during the artmaking process? So, they're tapping into their own artmaking experience.

So, there's this interrelated relationship between the student's body of work, which is an examination, as well as the written examination. So, I think that is just such a really lovely juxtaposition and contrast that they're trying to show for us here. The student has actually created the plates for us. So, we've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 plates, 7 plates that they've actually created that they've then scanned and made into the plates document, which is, again, how to extend on the actual artmaking then to present it in a new way.

DANIELLE PALMER: And, in fact, I'm reading it as a self-portrait.

MELANIE CASSIN: Totally. Yes.

DANIELLE PALMER: This is a self-portrait of a student doing an HSC, and they've incorporated their major body of work, artmaking into it, but they're also reflecting, like you said, on the experience of HSC in high school and all that goes with it, the anxiety, the burnout, the intrusive thoughts.

MELANIE CASSIN: Look at the titles of these plates.

DANIELLE PALMER: Self-sabotage.

MELANIE CASSIN: Imposter syndrome.

DANIELLE PALMER: Escapism.

MELANIE CASSIN: Nostalgia.

DANIELLE PALMER: Nostalgia, and just tapping on nostalg-- every single one of these, different paper, different surface.

MELANIE CASSIN: Look at this, Dani. This is an end of a notepad. How intentional is that; that this is the end point, right?

DANIELLE PALMER: Exactly. The end, and they're saying nostalgia. So, they're thinking about what came before, and they're also thinking about their childhood in this one. They're thinking about a simpler time.

MELANIE CASSIN: Well, it's a journey. It's a before, a during and an after. Maybe they're looking at the processes and the emotions that they're going-- as they go through the whole experience of being a Year 12 student, the end point being the examination and the reflection that comes upon the whole end of the exam cycle. This student clearly knows how to draw.

And they've got this whimsy, sort of loose drawing ability that's been really clearly illustrated on this exam almost as doodles or students are doodling on their exam papers. But then they've got these refined works in these finished plates. But look at the use of watercolour or ink and lots of other drawing implements in here, and you can see that sort of illustrative notion coming through, that illustrative style coming through.

DANIELLE PALMER: Yep. They've really found a clever way to demonstrate a broad range of skills. Even though it looks like quite a compact little artwork, it actually is showing a level of detail, their ability to render drapery that looks like it has folds in it, their ability to show a collection of strong colours, but that are relevant to the image. They're significantly placed.

MELANIE CASSIN: Some images are quite simple and pared back, where others are really multi-layered. You look at the different-- the composition happening here, this internal figure that's in the centre of this particular plate here with the devices and the TVs and the connectedness that students are experiencing at this time through their research and using technology. Look at the escapism, Dani. Look, it's what it's been made on.

DANIELLE PALMER: Yeah, the book and the referencing that idea of escaping in a book and see how the head-- the head disappears into the horizon. They are escaping. But that choice of medium, that choice of surface that the student has gone with, like the back of the notepad, is really considered, and this is part of the student's strong curatorial choices. I would imagine there's probably another 10 drawings somewhere that were done for this work, and there has been that strong sense of really refining and discarding the less significant or less relevant works to support this concept.

MELANIE CASSIN: It replicates the plates booklet, where the exam writers are considering what plates to put in this booklet that will unpack the questions. So, if we're linking back to what the questions asked, it says here, question 5, using relevant course language, explain why these artworks are considered as an accurate example of the artist's overall skill. So, there's a purpose here. There's been a purposeful selection here, and the student has intentionally selected a variety of surfaces to create work on that's part of the whole story here.

DANIELLE PALMER: They're examining themselves in relation to that marking criteria.

MELANIE CASSIN: And they're examining what is possible in making a body of work.

DANIELLE PALMER: Yeah, they really are, and I can also see in here there's a lot of support from the teacher. The teacher has recognised in this student that what they've done here, these doodles, what seem like whimsical, sort of offhanded drawings they've done in the margins, the teacher has recognised this as having value and that this student could do something with this, and I can see the teacher's support behind this. I really can. Not just the student. The teacher has actually gone, 'You know what you could do with these--'

MELANIE CASSIN: How far this could actually go, and this could have been a starting point as very well the student doodling on the examination and then how that has then expanded onto, well, consider a plates booklet and what artworks you would put in that plates booklet, and then the student has really tapped into the conceptual meaning of this work and how it best relates to what they need to do in the exam.

The student's choices and intentions have really resulted in quite a successful body of work here. Their choice of paper, their deliberate choice of imagery, and how they've tied that in to the written examination is really quite sophisticated.

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