Madonna on the Rocks

Catherine's yearwork focussed on the Catholic faith. Her religion and faith in Catholicism has become stronger over the years, but she has used both her artworks to explore how general perception of the Catholic Church has deteriorated. She believes that the strict orthodox views, morals, values and rules of the Catholic church have been diluted.

She paintes a self portrait on a rotting door covered in grafitti (found at the side of the road). Her portrait reminds us of Virgin Mary portraits - but unlike the Virgin Mary Catherine covers herself - not in a blue veil - but a red one - suggesting worldy temptations.

She copies recognisable religious artworks but distresses the drawings by treating them with various techniques - (burning and dripping & various other techniques). The large rotting frame that encloses these drawings symbolises the deterioration of the Catholic faith.

Interactive art

Two of my Grade 12 students have integrated their artworks into their environment. Paige has made a board wired with LED's that reacts to human touch and movement.

Paige looks at how people influence each other through touch – as each person touches the board – so it responds in different ways. I photographed & made a short clip of one of my Grade 9 students moving in front of the board:

Megan's yearwork and exam piece makes use of the space of the art room. She created a chicken wire tree that stretches up the space created by the gable of the building. Although this tree is quite bulky and sculptural - it is visually unobtrusive - it seems to almost disappear in the sunlight. 

This tree is flanked by drawings of birds (part of her yearwork) and the houses that make up her exam piece. The exam theme was "Stranger in the Village" - Megan wanted to suggest that humans are the strangers on this earth with our rigid houses stuffed full of waste (the shredded paper).  

I also love these little drawings of views from the Drakensberg by Megan.  She has an illustrative style that captures life in these little scenes. Each drawing is stuck onto a matchbox and inserted into the "potters tray" that frames these little drawings.

The final countdown

My art room has been very quiet these last few days – the Grade 12 students have been frantically working to finish their exam pieces. My lessons are generally quite loud – I often tell the kids that I feel like I am running a pub – music playing & a convivial atmosphere – I just don’t serve snacks & drinks! I will post more images of girls' work once everything is up on the walls. I thought I would take some before and after pics – so that you can see how the studios transform.  

Below: Michigan drawing

Below Nicky putting the final "touches" on to her exam piece: 

Santhuri has attempted quite an interesting technique – she is making drawings by piercing holes with different size needles to create shading in the drawing. A section and close up of her work is below:

Our exhibition is on the 11th of October & the studios will be open to the public from the 12th to Friday the 28th of October. The studios will close briefly (from about 9am – 11am) on Tuesday 12^th October for moderation and will close again on the 17^th of October when the examiner arrives to mark the exam pieces.

Please feel free to visit anytime during the school day - the studios will be open until 3.45pm.

Lady Gaga and Orlan

Some of my Grade 12 students, while studying for their preliminary Visual Culture Exams (new name for art history), came across quite an interesting clip on the performance artist Orlan. Click here to watch it on You Tube (It is quite a long clip so download it if you can) It does have artistic nudity and surgical procedures so should only be shown to older groups. I teach Orlan because she does prompt debate about gender stereotyping, cosmetic surgery and religion.

Orlan undergoes a series of plastic surgeries to further explore the standards of beauty established by centuries of male artists. As she explains in an interview with the Guardian in 2009: my goal was to be different, strong; to sculpt my own body to reinvent the self. It's all about being different and creating a clash with society because of that. I tried to use surgery not to better myself or become a younger version of myself, but to work on the concept of image and surgery the other way around. I was the first artist to do it."

My Grade 12 students pointed out that the horns that Orlan had implanted in her forehead are very similar to the implants that Lady Gaga had put into her face and other parts of her body for her performance accompanying the Born This Way album release.

The notes and slide show I use are available for free download. (Click links)

Stop-frame animation in Paint

Hassana submitted the following stop motion video as part of her yearwork this year. It is called DOT DOT LINE LINE based on the children's rhyme: "Dot dot, line line. Spiders crawling up your spine, tight squeeze, cool breeze, now you have the creepies..."

Hassana draws using mendhi designs. She has adapted these patterns to create a stop-motion video using the simple windows program called "Paint". Every mark she made on the screen she saved as a jpeg file & then at the end of her drawing she made the stop-motion animation film using "Windows movie-maker".
The artwork comments on African civil war (external) and the war she experiences within herself (internal) as a young muslim woman growing up in contemporary South African society.