Quick questions on Artmaking practice: HSC Visual Arts core concept

Intentions can be personal, political, formal, spiritual, commercial, or some combination. Picasso painted Guernica (1937) with explicit political intentions; Margaret Olley painted still life with intimate, observational intentions.

Processes include preparatory drawing, photographic source-gathering, collaboration, experimentation in a sketchbook or VAPD, studio routines, and revision. Brett Whiteley's process involved obsessive observation and a constant interplay of drawing, writing, and painting. Tracey Moffatt's process is heavily constructed and cinematic, with elaborate sets and casting.

Artmaking practice is the sustained activity through which artists produce artworks. NESA defines practice as encompassing the artist's intentions, choices, actions, and ideas. It is not a single moment of making but a pattern of engagement that develops across a career.

Five dimensions recur in NESA's framing of artmaking practice.

Artists' practices change. Picasso moved from Blue Period figuration (1901-1904), to Rose Period (1904-1906), to Analytic Cubism (1908-1912), to Synthetic Cubism, to Neoclassicism, to Surrealism-influenced work in the 1930s, to the political mural Guernica (1937), to the late ceramics and sculpture of the 1950s and 1960s. Each phase reflects shifts in intentions, processes, conceptual interests, and world context.

NESA distinguishes artmaking practice from art criticism practice (the practice of interpreting and judging artworks) and art history practice (the practice of situating artworks in temporal, cultural, and stylistic contexts). The three practices interact: artists are sometimes critics, critics often write history, and history is constructed from acts of criticism. But the distinction matters in the written exam, where questions are often framed at one of the three practices.

Why does the artist make work? Intentions can be personal, political, formal, spiritual, commercial, or some combination. Picasso painted Guernica (1937) with explicit political intentions; Margaret Olley painted still life with intimate, observational intentions.

How does the artist make? Processes include preparatory drawing, photographic source-gathering, collaboration, experimentation in a sketchbook or VAPD, studio routines, and revision. Brett Whiteley's process involved obsessive observation and a constant interplay of drawing, writing, and painting.

What does the artist use? Materials range across the eight expressive forms (drawing, painting, photomedia, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, textiles, time-based forms). Patricia Piccinini works in silicone, fibreglass, and hair; Emily Kngwarreye worked in batik and then synthetic polymer paint on canvas.

What ideas does the artist pursue? An artist's conceptual interests are the recurring themes their work addresses. Banksy's conceptual interests include surveillance, consumerism, war, and the institution of art itself.

Where, when, and within what culture does the artist work? Albert Namatjira's practice cannot be separated from his life as an Arrernte man in the Hermannsburg mission. John Olsen's practice is inseparable from the Australian landscape and his time in Europe in the 1950s.

Practice is sustained. Note the time-scale of the practice (months, years, decades).

Practice has material and conceptual sides. Strong answers address both.

Frames are interpretive lenses applied to artworks. Practice is the activity of artists, critics, and historians. Different concept.