[intro music]

KATE DOWLAND: Hi, my name is Kate Dowland, and I'm the ARTEXPRESS project officer at the Arts Unit. I'm very pleased to introduce our ARTEXPRESS Virtual exhibition for 2024. ARTEXPRESS Virtual is a world leading, award-winning exhibition, allowing equitable access to the gallery experience and exemplar highly resolved artworks for use in every classroom in NSW.

If you've been to the site before, I'm sure you're looking forward to engaging with the 55 artworks that have been added to the resource this year, as well as experiencing the new exciting gallery space. On this page, you'll find a variety of how to guides to support your experience engaging with both the gallery and the website options. We understand that not everyone has access to VR headsets. This resource has been designed to be widely accessible, using any device, even your phone.

This innovative platform showcases all 12 expressive forms, with a total of now 266 artworks to engage with via the 'Explore' function. There are ARTEXPRESS student interviews from each year, body of work analysis videos, featuring curriculum staff and 30 visual arts process diaries to view.

ARTEXPRESS is a joint partnership between the NSW Department of Education and the NSW Education Standards Authority. ARTEXPRESS Virtual is an initiative of the Department of Education, and we're very proud that this is the only permanent exhibition each year, with the artworks remaining on the virtual gallery walls forever. The Arts Unit team has presented ARTEXPRESS Virtual at conferences across the state and is continuing to build professional learning opportunities for teachers with our colleagues in curriculum.

Congratulations to the students whose artworks are showcased here across all years of the project. You have every reason to take pride in your efforts and celebrate this achievement. You have contributed to an invaluable resource for students and teachers, looking to your work for inspiration and an understanding of the possibilities within the visual arts syllabus.

The Department of Education is very proud of this growing resource. Now, to conclude, we have a message from the Secretary of the Department of Education, Murat Dizdar.

MURAT DIZDAR: Hello, it's Murat Dizdar here, Secretary of the NSW Department of Education. I'm delighted that you're about to venture and examine ARTEXPRESS Virtual. A big shout-out to our colleagues who have made this happen. We were thrilled to launch this world-class innovative resource in 2019, and it's grown from strength to strength, close to 300 pieces of artwork that have been assiduously developed by our students with the expert care and attention and guidance of our fantastic visual arts teachers.

What I know in education is that, when teachers and students form such strong, positive relationships, when teachers imbue that sense of passion for the subject, you get fantastic outcomes, and that's what you'll see here on ARTEXPRESS Virtual, a world-class resource. Tap into it, enjoy it, and to all our students whose work features, we're so proud of you to have you in the public education family, and you're famous in my eyes, because your art pieces are there for the entire world to see.