Visual arts - external exemplars Level 3 2018 - Sculpture
Show: External Exemplars
The resources below contain examples of candidate work submitted in 2018 for assessment for the Visual Arts Achievement Standard 91459 Produce a systematic body of work that integrates conventions and regenerates ideas within sculpture practice. The purpose of this resource is to assist art teachers prepare their teaching programmes and their students for assessment.
Excellence
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| Panel 1 (JPG, 448KB) | Panel 2 (JPG, 362KB) | Panel 3 (JPG, 503KB) |
| Entire Folio (JPG, 1.2MB) | ||
This politically driven submission engages in a range of sculptural practice to investigate issues around plastic within our environment. The candidate starts with small-scale sculptural processes that quickly grow into complex, technically astute large-scale works. Shifts in scale have been used to move the proposition along so that the conceptual development grows in complexity. Initial simple investigations with ice and small-scale figures work well within the tradition of sociologically aware diorama sculpture. These dioramas introduce the narrative of manmade vs nature, akin to the whimsical figurative works of Ronnie van Hout. The candidate also recognises how to use a camera as a drawing tool to investigate sculptural scale in documenting small-scale works. These images add to the understanding of the work. For example, the depth of field, angle and lighting help give the sense of active disaster in the small-scale architectural works. This work sets up the narrative and ambition around the sense of entrapment within plastic as a material and its sense of pervasiveness in our lives.
It is logical, therefore, for the candidate to then experiment with a human scale and engage fellow students in a performative work that triggers ideas around respiration and entrapment. The shift in scale of figure here is critical to the candidate exploring the intrinsic relationship of humans to their environment. Lateral thinking is demonstrated in the drawing with organic materials, such as leaves, and a sensitivity to combining appropriate found objects and plastic elements. The work from here on has a greater sense of purpose and the candidate creates astute assemblages of human forms where breathing is marginalised by a plastic augmentation or infiltration. The candidate does not rest with one mode of sculptural activity. They keep testing their ideas with new forms of practice and scale. The reinterpretation of the initial performance work on panel two is ambitiously reworked into a site-specific installation in the school's dust-extractor system. This work eerily suggests that humans are trapped within the translucent plastic dust bags. Where the figures appear in the bags, the pose has been carefully considered to enhance the illusion that they are trapped within the extractor system. Site specific selection here directly informs the reading of the work. The student responds to the school environment and the political implications of the school's decision to collect an organic waste in a plastic container. The figures are presented as trapped in plastic as they are part of some sort of institutional systemic conundrum around the use of plastic.
The final works are very ambitious and well considered in terms of site. The school entrance way selected suggests that the plastic bags are flowing from the school in an institutional torrent. Not satisfied with this iteration, the candidate then explores a reworking of this idea in the controlled natural environment of a pine plantation. It is here that the idea resonates more with the notion of plastic gathering like an algal bloom waiting to expand its domain.