​Rationale

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This education resource was designed to accompany the exhibition ‘Balance of your world’ to assist students with understanding how abstract artists convey ideas about their world. Working from the familiar concept of the student’s world, they are taught to recognise how to manipulate shape and colour to convey their feelings and ideas towards various changes occurring within their lives. Art is about expressing one’s identity and exploring and interpreting the surrounding world to develop an understanding to make sense of one’s environment (ACARA, 2012). It is imperative that students view art, not as an isolated creation, but as something which is contextualised and influenced by its environment. Through the activities, students are given the opportunity to explore aspects of their world including issues such as globalisation and climate change. This was achieved through the selection of an Abstract Art focus, which uses symbolism, colour and form to convey feelings and emotions towards various scenes, objects, people, places and things, rather than representational art which depicts an exact image (Hahn, 2012).

This education package was designed for year 5 students using the Essential Learnings Framework and the following descriptors:
 

Knowledge and Understanding
• Colour shades (adding black to a colour) and tints (adding colour to white) are used to create balance, contrast and patterns
• Curved, angular, symmetrical, asymmetrical and overlapping shapes are used to create balance, contrast and patterns

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Ways of Working
• Create and shape arts works by organising arts elements to express personal and community values, beliefs and observations
• Rehearse and rework arts works, using interpretive and technical skills
• Respond to arts works by identifying and interpreting the influences of social, cultural and historical contexts, using arts elements and languages
• Reflect on learning to identify new understandings and future applications.

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The education package has been organised with pre-visit activities, a worksheet for during the exhibition and after-visit activities which include insights about the artists and their works. Students are expected to have a prior knowledge of colours including warm and cool colours, and regular and irregular shapes, as per the Essential Learnings (Queensland Study Authority (QSA), 2007). They should also have a basic knowledge of the elements of line, colour and tone and be developing skills of manipulating paint brushes, acrylic paint and watercolours.

During the pre-visit activities, students review their prior knowledge of the elements of art, particularly in relation to colour tints and shades and use of asymmetrical and symmetrical shapes to create balance, contrast and patterns. This knowledge provides students with a knowledge base to draw upon as they enter the exhibition and analyse the artworks it contains. It is critical that students have the necessary skills and metalanguage to be able to analyse and respond to art (Tertiary Art Education Group of Victoria).

The exhibition viewing process is scaffolded through a worksheet, which provides students with questions and activities to respond to the artworks. Reflection is a critical component of the Arts Curriculum and art itself, as students utilise meta-cognitive skills to analyse how the elements have been used and can subsequently translate this knowledge to their own work (Bowie-Russell, 2009). Each artist was explicitly chosen due to their use of colour value and shape to create an image which reflected their social and cultural context or world. 

After the exhibition, students develop a deeper knowledge of the artists and their techniques through reading an artist statement and completing related activities which are explicitly related to how colour and shape create balance, contrast and pattern (Queensland Study Authority (QSA), 2007). Activities, whereby students select and manipulate colour to reflect the moods of their world, focus on developing their ability to utilise abstract techniques of using colour in a symbolic way, where tints and shades create emphasis and contrast to reflect the mood of an artwork. Students also learn to isolate shape within their environment, drawing on cubist techniques, ensuring they are scaffolded when identifying and manipulating pertinent elements of the paintings.

The summative task involves students utilising the techniques they have learnt to create their own abstract artwork, using shape and colour to express their feelings towards their world. This provides students with an opportunity to work with the Arts' processes and create and present their own artwork drawing on higher-order thinking skills. This is accompanied with a reflection component to develop student’s ability to critically analyse their own work and begin developing the skills to write an artist statement.

By working through this education package students will develop a knowledge of how the elements of colour value and shape are manipulated to create patterns, contrast and balance through working through the Arts' processes of investigating, ideating, creating and evaluating (Dinham, 2011).