NCEA Level 3 - Visual Arts 2008

1. NCEA Level 3 - Visual Arts 2008 Examples of Candidate Work - Painting

2. Achieved

6. Achieved Using a constrained colour palette, this submission explores variations possible from a specific range of graphic motifs derived from Kowhaiwhai. Evidence of knowledge of the characteristics and constraints of established procedures is sufficient for achievement of this standard. The pictorial idea contained here is manipulated through variation but lacks clarification and regeneration. A broader approach to drawing as a means to gather subject matter may have enabled the candidate to generate and later analyse and clarify an idea. Overall the submission stands still, with no evidence of a purposeful inquiry being pursued..

10. Achieved This submission shows work by a candidate engaged in a pictorial idea based on the figure in the landscape. The work is derived from established practices in new surrealist and narrative painting. The skills in rendering and representational drawing are naively expressed but sufficient to achieve the standard. A vocabulary of devices for testing relationships of integration and disjuncture are used; divisions of horizon, extended horizontal format, montage of disparate elements, exaggerations of foreground/background, flattened stylisations. This combined with the use of conventional ‘non-real’ icons provides the candidate with appropriate and fruitful means for painting. While the folio is limited in breadth and range of inquiry, the latter works show greater skill and evidence of the analysis and regeneration of ideas from that of earlier works.

11. Merit

15. Merit Panel one contains graphic drawings derived from photographs of a selected subject. A variety of compositional arrangements are used and simple alterations in the tonal range are tested for their influence in figure/ground interchanges. The works in panels two and three coherently and systematically examine how translations into colour and further manipulations of ‘flat’ and ‘deep’ space can be achieved. A major limitation in this submission results from the candidate being ‘trapped’ in the source photography. All works in panels two and three appear to be made over photocopies or digital prints that have been ‘coloured in’. This severely impairs the student’s use of conventional material and techniques in painting to test the pictorial dynamics established. Techniques in brushwork; gesture, blending, blurring and glazing etc, could have been used to critically evaluate the pictorial idea and extend its purpose.

19. Merit Panel one shows work that quickly reveals the candidates interest to extract linear and planar information from architectural imagery. As the work proceeds, moves towards abstraction develop, while references to perspective and photographic illusion remain. The candidate demonstrates an understanding of the use of formal and informal grid structures in their work. A restricted colour palette enables the candidate to focus on priorities of opacity and translucency, push and pull of figure and ground, flat forms and painterly application. Given a narrow vocabulary, the work purposefully regenerates options through extracting information from the initial works and through evaluating ideas as the work develops in panel two. By these means the candidate shows their understanding of ideas and methods founded in recent genres of architectonic painting. .

20. Excellence

24. Excellence This folio succeeds in extracting a broad pictorial vocabulary from a specific and limited range of subject matter derived from iconography and pattern from Pacific Island cultures. The works at the bottom of panel one quickly establish a pictorial idea in which interplays between flat gridded patterns and figurative imagery are manipulated. In panel two the stability of the grid as an anchor for the works is systematically challenged through shifts in scale, gentle illusory devices and vignettes of colour. Symmetry and the reduction of figurative imagery to linear overlays bring resolve to the latter works as the grid is subtlety reinforced. This folio plays off traditions of flat graphic picture-making from Pacific cultures with traditions of illusory pictorial space originating from Western European painting.

28. Excellence Panel one reveals both the derivation of the subject matter (from Renaissance fresco painting and the candidates own classroom /gym) and the generation of pictorial ideas related to the figure in interior space. Manipulation of portraiture, montage, and perspectival illusion are tested with witty reference to a selection of artistic precedents. The works in panels two and three demonstrate increasing clarity of purpose as the earlier manipulations are synthesized into a suite of works that exploit variations in size and format. This results in an ironic reflection on an idealized mythology of life at secondary school.